Let’s say tomorrow, you ditch your leadership hat and dig out your summer straw hat. You turn your phone off, write an out-of-office email, and disappear to a remote island for three months. Do you think your business is more likely to grow, coast along, or grind to a halt in this time?

If the answer is one of the last two, this article is for you. So, join us as we explore four ways to give people ownership in your organization, and build a business that’s ready for a future without you. In other words, how to nail leadership succession planning.

But first, a definition and distinction between two often-confused terms.

What Is Leadership Succession Planning?

Leadership succession planning is the process of identifying, developing, and preparing people to step into leadership roles as your organization grows and changes. Rather than a plan you dust off when someone resigns, it's the continuous practice of building capability throughout your team.

This is often confused with business succession planning which is the literal ownership side of things. This can encompass the sale of the company, the transfer of shares, and keeping the taxman happy. Of course, this is all important stuff, but it’s a totally different job to leadership succession.

Think of it like this: business succession planning moves the assets, whereas leadership succession planning moves the capability.

Now, here are four ways to get leadership succession planning right, so your organization can continue to thrive as it evolves.

1. Spot Potential Before It Asks for a Promotion

The first part of succession planning for leaders is knowing who your future leaders are, which is harder than it sounds.

You might assume the next big leader is your best performer, for example, but this is rarely the case. Why? Because we’re talking about completely different skillsets here, and being good at your job doesn’t mean you can teach others to be good at theirs.

You might also be swayed by the loudest voice in every meeting, or the person who makes everyone laugh at lunch. However, as we’ve covered extensively in the past, there’s much more to leadership than being the loudest.

Instead, look for the people who ask good questions, take ownership without being asked, and make the people around them better. Then, it’s a case of having development conversations with these people early to learn more about their leadership capabilities.

A coaching mindset helps enormously here, because the goal isn't to anoint a chosen one to singularly lead your organization to the promise land. It’s to grow several capable people and encouraging leadership all around you.

2. Build Capability, Not Dependency

Once you know who you're developing, the temptation is to show them how you do everything, line by line. However, leadership development and succession planning work best when future leaders find their own way. This means you take on the role of a guide rather than giving them explicit instructions at every step.

The practical tool here is delegation, which you can use in a number of ways. These include:

• Delegate results rather than tasks
• Allow for failure (also known as learning)
• Give people the right level of authority and responsibility
• Stay close enough to keep an eye on things without being overbearing.

And remember that delegating doesn’t mean abrogating. You're still accountable, you’re just no longer the only person who can move things forward.

Not sure where to start? The next time someone brings you a decision they could make themselves, try these magic words: "You know what, I'll let you decide." This is a great way to assess how ready for leadership somebody really is, or if they have a long way to go.

3. Transfer Knowledge Before It Walks Out the Door

Every business has knowledge that lives in one person's head. Client history, supplier quirks, the reason you never schedule anything with finance on a certain day of the week. Unfortunately, when that person leaves, the knowledge leaves with them, and their successor spends a year trying to work it all out.

Effective leader succession planning gets that knowledge passed over early. This means bringing future leaders into the meetings where decisions are made, walking them through your thinking, and asking for their ideas.

4. Give People Ownership

You can identify potential, build capability, and transfer knowledge, and still fail at leadership succession because nobody was ever given anything real to own.

Real ownership means outcomes with consequences, decisions that stick, and the freedom to do things differently to you. Because if every call still routes through your desk for sign-off, you’ve developed a well-trained messenger, not a leader. As a result, their first test in the real-world will likely catch them off guard.

This kind of ownership is where future leaders are made, because it's the only place they can really practice being one. So, don’t avoid it, and drop some people in at the deep end. Chances are that they’ll swim.

Final Thoughts

Leadership succession planning is a habit of continually developing the people around you. This means spotting potential early, building capability without dependency, moving knowledge out of your head, and handing over ownership.

Do it well and you build a business that can lead without you. Which, funnily enough, is the strongest position a leader can find themselves in.

Find Out More

If you're serious about developing the next generation of leaders in your business, the MDL Membership is built for exactly that. It develops leaders across five levers of leadership, with the structure and daily practices that make growth stick.

Join it yourself, or better yet, put your future leaders through it.