Does your succession planning process move your organization toward or away from the whole organization’s desired leadership culture? How would your future be different if you had a succession planning process that ensures the leadership culture the organization desires will be supported and strengthened by your placements, and by competent candidates?
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you start:
- Describe your organization’s current leadership culture.
- How would that description be different based on where in the organization the answer was coming from?
- How sure are you?
- Same questions about what an ideal leadership culture would look like.
- How are you making sure you hire people that will support moving toward the ideal culture, instead of holding the organization back?
- How ready are you to fill the positions you can already anticipate needing to fill in the next five years?
- How ready is your potential pipeline for unexpected openings in critical positions?
- How intentionally are your high potential employees grooming themselves (or are being groomed) to be part of the ideal culture and not obstacles to it?
One recommended plan:
- Clarify what the current and ideal leadership culture looks like by asking the entire organization. We use The Leadership Circle Culture Survey for this step.
- Determine key strengths, challenges and gaps. Pick the top few based on ease and need.
- Engage existing leaders and high potential employees with the opportunity to see how they already are supporting the desired leadership culture, and identify any areas in which their behavior may be holding themselves, and the organization, back. We use The Leadership Circle Profile 360 Assessment for this step. Following a one-on-one debrief of the individual leader’s results, we offer targeted coaching to create and implement individual development plans that support the desired changes.
- Use additional behavioral assessments to determine which candidates most closely match the ideal leadership culture and develop a plan to close identified gaps.
- Involve the current leadership teams in strengthening and furthering the desired culture. We offer group coaching to get this process started productively, ensuring that any obstacles to the desired leadership culture can be proactively and positively addressed by the teams so they can continue this work effectively on their own.
