How to Build a Succession Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide for HR Leaders

A strong leadership bench doesn’t happen by chance—it takes strategy and foresight. Yet 80% of organizations lack confidence in their pipelines, according to DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2025. In a world of rapid change, turnover, burnout, and uncertainty, building a succession plan is critical for future growth and stability.

If your company is among the majority without confidence in its leadership pipeline, the good news is that it’s not too late to start.

In this guide, I’ll offer a practical, research-backed process to help HR professionals build a stronger leadership bench.

What is a Succession Plan and Why Do You Need One?

Succession planning is about making sure you have the right people ready to step into leadership roles when you need them. It’s not just an HR exercise—it’s a business necessity.

Unlike replacement planning, which focuses on short-term backups for emergencies, succession planning is a long-term strategy to grow high-potential talent. This approach builds leadership continuity, preserves company culture, and prevents costly disruptions.

The risks of not having a succession plan are significant. From losing top talent and institutional knowledge to decreased stability and performance, not having a succession plan is essentially a crisis ready to happen. Effective succession planning is one of the best tools to manage leader transitions, prepare for the unexpected, and build organizational resilience.

The 3 Succession Strategies—and Why One Outperforms the Rest

There are three main approaches to succession planning. And one clearly delivers the highest return on investment (ROI).

For a quick overview, watch the video below or keep reading. 

1. Do Nothing (Avoid at All Costs)

It may sound surprising, but many organizations default to doing nothing. This passive approach presents major risks. Without a succession plan, your company won’t be ready to fill important roles. And, potential successors won’t have the skills or support they need to advance.

With this option, uncertainty becomes the norm. Top talent may feel stalled and leave. Teams left behind lose momentum. The perception of company culture takes a hit. While it’s not uncommon for organizations to lack a formal strategy, this is a path to avoid at all costs.

2. Buy from the Outside

Hiring external candidates can sometimes be the right move. For example, when a role requires niche expertise or outside perspective. But this strategy often comes at a high cost, with a high failure rate.

High failure rates are common at senior levels. In fact, 50% of external executive hires fail. Culture misalignment is a big reason for this. Even with the right capabilities, bringing in a new leader can be like organ rejection from the company if their style is at odds with the culture. And if the culture fit isn’t there, it can disrupt teams and halt progress.

3. Grow from Within (Best ROI, if Done Right)

The most effective succession strategy is growing your leaders from within. When it’s done with intention, it delivers the highest ROI.

That’s because this approach lets you work within a known budget while retaining top talent and reinforcing company culture. It builds leadership resilience from the inside, preserving institutional knowledge and preparing people with the right skills before roles are open.

Growing leaders from within is the proven winner, with the highest success rates and results. Companies that develop leaders from within are 2.8x more likely to outperform peers.

How to Build a Succession Plan: 6 Steps to Strengthen Your Leadership Bench

You’ve seen that growing your leadership pipeline from within delivers the best results, but how do you begin? Or how can you improve the process your company already has?

Let’s walk through a six-step process to nurture growth in your top talent and create lasting resilience for your organization.

Step 1: Commit to Succession as a Business Priority

Succession planning only works when it comes from a partnership between senior leaders and HR. This support shows your organization that building a succession plan isn’t just an HR project, but a critical initiative for the business.

Start by asking: “Does our senior team see bench strength as a critical area of improvement?” Data speaks, so use it to connect leadership pipeline gaps to business risks and gain buy-in from the broader organization with clear metrics.

Step 2: Define Leadership Success by Level

Leadership success looks different at each level—what works for a frontline leader won’t cut it in the C-suite.

Start by defining what great leadership looks like at every stage. While many core competencies remain the same, how leaders apply them should shift based on their role and impact. For example:

• Frontline leaders organize and plan work priorities, guiding individual contributors.
• Mid-level leaders translate strategy into team execution.
• Executives set the strategic direction for the business.

The goal is the same, but the execution must align with each person’s scope of responsibility and influence.

When success at every level is clear and linked to business strategy and future needs, you ensure that development and succession plans support your company’s top priorities.

Step 3: Identify High-Potential Talent Early

Having a clear, objective process is essential to create consistency and avoid bias in succession planning. Use objective criteria, not “gut feel,” to find high-potential talent.

In talent reviews, look at both performance (how they achieve results today) and potential (their ability to grow to meet new challenges).

Step 4: Assess Readiness with Objective Data

This stage is where I’ve seen most organizations struggle. Without data, you're throwing darts at a moving target.

The solution? Use immersive behavioral assessments to measure readiness for future roles. This feedback gives both HR and senior leaders realistic, future-focused insights on how leaders might respond to key challenges and where they still need to grow. And, it provides leaders with personalized insights about themselves to focus and accelerate their development.

Step 5: Grow Talent Through Targeted Development

Once you know where your leaders need to grow, design development to fill the gaps. This is essential for accelerating your leaders’ readiness to step up.

Structure development around the challenges, competencies, and skills leaders need most to succeed. For example, as leaders move up to more senior roles, they must learn to lead themselves, lead teams, lead the business, and lead across a larger network. Note that leaders benefit most from an intentional and targeted approach.

Use a blend of high-impact group experiences, peer learning, and personalized coaching to have the most impact. Leaders stay more engaged when they see a clear link between development opportunities and their future goals and daily work.

Step 6: Sustain and Scale

Succession planning isn’t a one-time project. It’s an ongoing cycle of measurement, review, and leadership committee involvement.

Create a culture of growth across the leaders you’ve chosen to invest in, not just a checklist to plug holes when someone leaves. Use a succession optimization review to regularly assess your pipeline, identify risks, and refine your approach. This step helps guide succession decisions and sustain momentum over time.

Succession Planning at Every Level

When most people think about succession plans, their mind goes immediately to executive transitions. But the most effective leadership pipelines start much earlier and stretch across every level of the organization.

Succession isn’t just for the C-suite. In fact, some of the greatest risks may lie deeper in the pipeline. 21% of high-potential individual contributors plan to leave within the year. They are 3.7X more likely to leave if there aren’t opportunities for growth. 

Building your bench means starting early. Succession planning should include high-performing individual contributors, frontline leaders, mid-level managers, and finally, executives. When you wait too long, you risk losing future leaders before they ever have the chance to grow.

Expanding your succession plan across all levels creates a stronger leadership pipeline—and when it’s done right, the ROI is significant.

Succession Planning ROI: The Payoff for Doing It Right

Building your leadership bench isn’t just a best practice—it delivers measurable business results. Organizations that grow leaders from within are 2.8X more likely to outperform industry peers.

Effective succession planning also increases retention and engagement. When leaders see clear development paths tied to real business needs, they’re more likely to stay and grow. And when internal candidates step into leadership roles, they already understand the culture and bring institutional knowledge, which lowers risk and speeds up their impact.

A solid pipeline reduces the high costs (and high risks) associated with external hiring. And while the ROI is compelling, the cost of inaction can be even greater. Leadership gaps, lost talent, and poor transitions compound over time and can erode long-term business value.

Common Pitfalls in Succession Planning (And How to Avoid Them)

Even well-designed succession plans can run into challenges. Here are four of the most common pitfalls—and how you can avoid them.

No Objective Data

Without objective data, succession decisions often rely too heavily on instinct or opinions. This creates unnecessary risk and leads to missed opportunities. To avoid this, use leadership simulations to understand leaders’ readiness for future roles. These assessments provide two outcomes: objective data that gives HR insight into individual and group bench strength, and actionable, personalized feedback that helps leaders understand their strengths and development needs. Together, these insights form the foundation of smarter, more strategic succession planning.

Inconsistent Development Experiences

It’s hard to keep leaders engaged and build a strong bench with episodic development opportunities that lack an overall strategy. Avoid this with a consistent, structured approach that combines group learning with one-on-one coaching. By aligning development to specific business needs and personal growth areas, you’ll prepare leaders more effectively for future roles.

Lack of Sustained Structure

Succession planning isn't a one-time project—it’s an ongoing strategy. Without a sustained structure, initial efforts can quickly lose momentum. To keep leadership growth on track, build in regular reviews with key stakeholders, refresh your data over time, and create a culture that continually invests in leadership development at all levels.

Lack of Transparency

A lack of transparency about who’s being developed (and why they’re being developed!) can frustrate top talent and drive them to leave for other opportunities. Shift the focus away from tagging talent with a “high potential” label. Instead, set clear expectations as you invest purposefully in accelerating their skills and readiness for future roles. This signals to leaders that HR is committed to their development, increasing retention among your succession candidates.

About the Author
Patrick Connell is an industrial/organizational psychologist and Director of Consulting (North America) who leads a team of consulting professionals in the areas of executive succession, competency modeling, personnel selection, and leadership development. Dr. Connell works with clients in a variety of industries including financial services, health care, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, manufacturing, and retail. He also worked as a strategic advisor and coach in both short-term and long-term coaching engagements.