Leadership Development and Succession Planning—

They’re Not Just HR’s Responsibility

By Liz Weber

Contents Leadership Development and Succession Planning—They’re Not Just HR’s Responsibility .................................................................................................. 1

1. Create an organization that believes in solid leadership development and succession planning. .................................................................................... 1

2. Create leadership development and succession planning systems that work 3

About Liz Weber................................................................................................................ 6

Leadership Development and Succession Planning—They’re Not Just HR’s Responsibility by Liz Weber, CMC, CSP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at: http://www.wbsllc.com/blog/copyright-attribution

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Leadership Development and Succession Planning—They’re Not

Just HR’s Responsibility

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We’re making headway, but many executive managers in the public and private

sectors still believe the human resources department is primarily responsible for

developing leaders and the organization's succession plans. It' a shame to say it,

but those organizations are going to face a long, hard road ahead. The longer

executive management continues this limited mindset, the further behind their

organizations will be in developing their future leaders and their organizations’

succession plans. You see, it’s not primarily HR’s responsibility to develop the

organization’s succession plan for future leaders; it’s the leaders' responsibility.

And that scares the heck out of most leaders.

“Succession planning and leadership development are more than just lining up

recruits for vacancies, and most public sector managers haven’t caught onto this

yet,” said Eric Henry, former Executive Director of the Pennsylvania State

Employees’ Retirement System. “Solid leadership planning and development

means you’ve created an organization that has a number of junior and mid-level

managers ready to step up and take over for a number of your department

heads when the need arises; whether through planned attrition or unplanned

departures.”

Henry is right on target. Notice he said, “…created an organization…” He didn’t

say, “identified the right candidate.” Herein lies the first major challenge:

1. Create an organization that believes in solid leadership

development and succession planning.

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How do you create an organization that believes in the value of developing

future leaders and succession planning? It can only work if it comes from the

top. Your senior management must believe in its importance or no other

managers or employees will. Once senior management believes in the necessity

for this type of planning, you’re ready to help others believe too. To do that, you

need to help all of your employees see the future. You need to help them see

what your organization will look like. You need to help them see what future

leaders of your organization will be responsible for leading. You need to create a

clear, concise vision for your organization. If you can help them see the future,

you’ll start to create greater understanding in your managers, and potentially

your entire employee population, of the need to develop future leaders.

The biggest hurdle I’ve seen over the years, however, is that few organizations

create effective vision statements. Those that do create vision statements are

often nothing more than “feel-good” statements that make you want to hug one

another, but provide no focus and little clarity for the future. Create a vision that

is measurable and has a due date. Create, as Stephen Covey, Ph.D., said, a

“Wildly Important Goal.” Create a vision employees can understand, internalize,

and get excited about.

Once you’ve provided a vision for others to see and understand, you then focus

on creating an organization that believes in your vision. How do you do that?

Create a plan to accomplish the vision. The vision, if created properly, will, by

default, touch every department of your organization. Therefore, every

department must do something to help attain the vision. If your vision is far-

reaching and forward thinking, every department will be tasked to assert its

skills, talents and energies to new levels to help you reach the vision. When each

department starts to understand and plan what it needs to do to help attain the

vision, by default, they will need to address staffing, leadership, training, project

management and other leadership development and planning issues. You’ve now

set the foundation to have HR work in tandem with every department to develop

depth and “bench strength” within, not only every department, but throughout

the entire organization.

“HR’s role is to find the appropriate avenues to develop each employee whether

it be training, mentoring, or other special programs,” said Cheryl Krchnar,

Director of Human Resources for the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement

System (SERS). “Our role is to work in conjunction with our managers in

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determining the most effective means to help them develop their department’s

future leaders.”

Because they, like most organizations, have experienced the loss of staff with a

great deal of knowledge stored only in their minds, SERS is focusing on

developing its culture into one that stresses the need for shared knowledge. One

of many initiatives currently underway at SERS is establishing a stronger

Knowledge Management System to ensure that anyone who steps into a new

position knows where to get data when they need it.

“We’re moving away from an environment of ‘Knowledge is Power; Sharing is

Not’ to one of ‘Shared Knowledge,’” added Henry. Just one way they’re doing this

is moving away from identifying only one potential heir apparent for each

position. Instead, SERS is working to create a culture in which all managers will

be constantly monitoring and teaching others how to become viable candidates

for other positions within the agency.

Henry continued, “Most public agencies focus on who’s going to retire and when.

That’s short-sighted and a waste of time. People don’t always leave on schedule.

Young and old leave for various reasons.”

This mindset by most managers tends to create a no-win situation and one in

which there is always guessing as to when and who to recruit. Instead, why not

create an environment, in which there is the flexibility to address planned and

unplanned departures? Why not create a culture where every employee has the

potential to be a candidate for appropriate promotions or future openings? Why

risk demoralizing some staff by focusing only on one or a select few? Why not

create an environment where all employees are held to high expectations, are

truly valued and know it? Once that type of organization has been created, the

employees will not only understand the need for continuous leadership

development and succession planning, the employees will want it.

The second major challenge to successful leadership development and

succession planning is:

2. Create leadership development and succession planning

systems that work

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This is where the expertise of Human Resources kicks into high gear. As

indicated above, HR’s role is to work in conjunction with other managers to

create systems to develop individual employees’ skills to allow them to compete

effectively for and fill various positions within the agency or without. To do this

however, HR needs to be the primary architect of the overall organization’s

development and succession plans. Using HR’s expertise in identifying

competency requirements and skill development needs, HR can take the first

step in helping managers grapple with developing others now and for the future.

HR, in coordination with other department managers, must focus on coordinating

and then matching development needs with prospective solutions. These

solutions include such things as:

Revising position descriptions/job tasks to reflect performance management

concepts. Focus more on results and less on tasks.

Guiding managers in coaching, training, and supporting their employees in

performance management techniques

Creating and guiding the formation of a management development council — a

dedicated group of managers selected from across the agency that meets

regularly to discuss and monitor only the development of staff and future leaders

to ensure the agency continues to develop staff skilled at moving the

organization toward its vision.

Developing mentoring programs to enable more experienced staff (old or young)

to team up and work with other staff members to enhance skills throughout the

organization.

Providing opportunities for employees who project the values of the organization

to move into other departments to broaden their knowledge and skill sets. As

Henry said, “I can always backfill with the technical skills if I’ve been developing

solid leadership skills along the way.”

Creating an application-oriented training program that provides programs that

focus on the soft and hard skills. More importantly, the program needs to be

real-world based. It needs to incorporate projects and issues being faced by the

participants and organization, as well as opportunities to apply the training

concepts and skills on-the-job during and after any formalized training programs

end.

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An integrated system allows an organization to feed and sustain a culture of

development and planning. HR is a critical player. HR must often take the lead to

establish a partnership with the executive and mid-level managers to put the

internal development systems, training, programs, projects, mentoring

opportunities and management review teams in place to make solid leadership

development and planning a reality.

However, leadership development and succession planning are not just HR’s

responsibility. They're leadership's responsibility. But if you want your

organization to face it and embrace it, HR must guide and coordinate the plan.

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About Liz Weber

Known as The Dragon Lady of Leadership

Accountability®, Liz Weber, CMC, CSP, is an

expert in strategic planning, leadership succession, and leadership development. She creates clarity and makes leadership E.A.S.Y. Liz is one of only 12 people to hold both Certified Management Consultant (CMC), and Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designations. Liz is also the author of several leadership books including:

Something Needs to Change Around Here: The Five Stages to Leveraging Your Leadership

Don’t Let ‘Em Treat You Like a Girl - A Woman’s Guide to Leadership Success Leading from the Manager's Corner

Liz's leadership articles appear in outlets globally. Contact Liz Weber at info@wbsllc.com.

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