You can also access this resource and many others in Issue 363 of my Talent Edge Weekly newsletter.
Much of succession planning focuses on defining future role profiles, identifying required skills, and closing readiness gaps. These are all important. But I believe there is even greater potential in making readiness more contextual by asking: Ready for what? The same role may require a very different leader depending on whether the organization is entering a turnaround, rapid growth, major transformation, stabilization, culture reset, or a period where strong performance simply needs to be sustained. A recent study published in Journal of Applied Psychology reinforces why this distinction matters. Researchers followed leadership transitions across 113 U.S. elementary schools and found that one specific leadership approach, hands-on coaching, improved engagement and performance when employees believed change was needed, but produced declines when they did not. While the research focused on elementary schools, I believe the idea extends well beyond education: context shapes which leadership behaviors are most effective. A successor who is well prepared to lead a turnaround, for example, may not be the strongest choice for a business that needs stability and continuity. How are you factoring different scenarios, ranging from a turnaround to a culture reset, into how you assess and develop successors? We’ll go deeper on this in Talent Edge Circle, my private community for internal HR practitioners.
