If you are an executive-level leader who cares about the future of your organization, you may think that you have an effective succession plan with high potential managers preparing themselves to lead. But as I have heard from many organizational leaders, you don’t fully realize that your executive bench is lacking … until you need it.
Our workplaces are dealing with an unprecedented amount of change and uncertainty. You could have a senior leader who leaves, or growth accelerating faster than expected, or a new initiative requiring someone to step up and lead at a higher level. In these circumstances, you will find yourself asking this question: Who is actually ready?
Unfortunately, the answer is often unclear.
Earlier in my career, I spent years working at a well-known entertainment company, and I’m proud to say that we cultivated an environment where leadership development was taken seriously. We had a defined set of leadership competencies—seven sets of behaviors that every leader was expected to demonstrate. Those competencies shaped how we hired, how we evaluated performance, and how we developed people.
And those competencies worked. They created consistency throughout the organization, reinforced expectations, and helped entry-level and frontline leaders understand what effective leadership looked like.
At the time, I would have told you this approach was highly effective—I saw and felt the results firsthand. And I still think this way, but I might amend my assessment to say it was highly effective for what it was designed to do.
Looking back, I am able to see the limitations more clearly. That system succeeded at preparing entry level managers to lead frontline employees. To put it another way, it prepared them to conform to a model of leadership that worked at one level of the organization—leading frontline employees, driving operational execution, and managing local performance.
But it did not prepare leaders to lead at higher levels of the organization. It was not designed to prepare someone to:
- Lead other leaders
- Manage and coordinate efforts across functional areas
- Make enterprise-level tradeoffs
- Prepare, interpret, and execute a long-term business strategy
- Develop and communicate a clear vision for the enterprise in the face of ambiguity
And it’s in these areas where most leadership development misses the mark – and I might add, these “misses” happen quietly, as few leaders enjoy calling attention to organizational weaknesses.
If you’re responsible for building a leadership pipeline, you’ve likely worked from a reasonable assumption: If someone performs well, develops over time, and takes on more responsibility, they will eventually be ready for executive leadership. You see this assumption play out every day, in succession planning conversations , talent reviews, and how development investments are prioritized. And it’s not without logic, but there’s a problem. Performance and readiness are not the same thing.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most organizations are developing managers, not executives. This doesn’t mean that your development efforts are failing. It means they’re working—just not for the level you will ultimately need.
Most systems are built to reinforce execution, reliability, problem-solving, and accountability, and these are exactly the capabilities that make someone a strong manager. So when it’s time for someone to be elevated to a higher level of leadership, we tend to promote the managers who excel in these areas. And why not? These managers are seen as top performers, so of course they become your executive bench.
But leadership doesn’t develop in a straight line. Leadership actually develops as a series of transitions. In The Leadership Pipeline, the authors describe five major leadership passages, each requiring a fundamental shift—not just in skills, but in how a leader thinks, how they spend their time, and what they value. These five passages are:
- From leading self to leading others
- From leading others to leading leaders
- From leading leaders to leading a function
- From leading a function to leading a business
- From leading a business to leading an enterprise
It’s this way of approaching leadership that most systems overlook. It is important to remember that these shifts are not incremental; they are discontinuous. What makes someone successful at one level can become a limitation to their leadership abilities at the next level. And if your leadership development approach doesn’t intentionally address these shifts, leaders are left to figure them out on their own—often after they’ve already been promoted.
Being a strong manager does not predict success as an executive. At first, the difference can be hard to see. But to clarify:
- Managers drive execution, optimize within their function, and rely on their expertise to hold employees accountable for performance.
- Executives set direction across the enterprise, make tradeoffs between competing priorities, and influence outcomes through people they don’t directly control.
These are not incremental differences; they are fundamentally different roles. Executive level leadership is not about working harder or knowing more—it’s about diagnosing complex situations, making choices, and aligning resources against those choices.
Most managers are never asked to operate in this way! And if they’re not being asked to operate in this way, then they’re not being developed to operate in this way.
If you’re a CHRO or a senior talent leader, this is where the challenge becomes difficult. Because to all outward appearances, everything looks like it’s working. Your managers are performing, your leadership programs are underway, and your succession plans are populated. There are no obvious failure signals—until a transition forces the issue. And that’s when the gap becomes visible. It’s not because your people lack capability. It’s because they were never developed for the role you now need them to play.
But there is a different way to look at your bench. A real executive bench is not a list of names. It’s a set of people who have been prepared—intentionally—for a different kind of leadership. They are not just ready for more responsibility, they are ready for a different kind of game entirely. And if that preparation hasn’t happened, the bench isn’t there—no matter how strong your managers may be.
So when the moment comes—when a role opens, when the business shifts, when the stakes get higher—and you find yourself asking: Who is actually ready?
The answer is no longer surprising. Because the issue was never a lack of talent. It was a misunderstanding of what readiness actually requires.
Addendum: For leaders who are serious about succession planning and leadership development, The Leadership Pipeline is one of the most practical and enduring frameworks available. It makes a simple but powerful point: leadership is not a single skill set that scales upward. It is a series of passages, each requiring a shift in skills, time application, and work values. If your development approach does not account for those shifts, your bench will always reflect the level you are developing for—not the level you ultimately need.
Charan, R., Drotter, S., & Noel, J. (2024). The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company (Updated Edition). Wiley.
Amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Pipeline-Developing-Leaders-Digital