CHROs Share Succession Habits That Prevent Leadership Gaps
Leadership transitions can cripple operations when succession planning is treated as an afterthought rather than a continuous discipline. Chief Human Resources Officers from high-performing organizations have shared sixteen specific habits they use to build resilient leadership pipelines and eliminate single points of failure. These proven practices range from enforcing mandatory vacations that expose knowledge gaps to maintaining live skills matrices that make succession decisions faster and more objective.
Expect Each Supervisor to Grow Your Bench
Unexpected departures should test your leadership system, not expose its weaknesses.
I’ve never viewed succession planning as identifying who gets the next title. It’s about ensuring someone is already growing into the next level of responsibility long before a position becomes available.
The habit that kept our leadership bench strong and ready was simple: every leader was expected to develop another leader.
That expectation wasn’t reserved for annual reviews. It became part of everyday leadership. During coaching conversations, we discussed not only current performance but also future potential. Every emerging leader had growth goals, stretch assignments, intentional cross-training, and increasing decision-making responsibility. We weren’t preparing people for a vacancy. We were building the capabilities our organization would always need.
Cross-training became one of our most valuable leadership practices. It wasn’t just about covering an absence. It broadened perspective, strengthened collaboration, reduced dependency on any one individual, and helped leaders understand how their decisions affected the entire organization.
One question I reflected on often was, “If one of my leadership team members were unexpectedly gone tomorrow, who would be ready to step in with confidence?” If I couldn’t answer that question with certainty, it wasn’t a succession problem. It was a leadership development opportunity.
That reflection kept me focused on what mattered most: developing leaders instead of replacing them.
It also reinforced an important truth. Readiness isn’t measured by whether someone understands the work. It’s measured by whether they can exercise sound judgment, communicate effectively, develop others, and make decisions under uncertainty.
When a critical leader leaves, there should be disappointment, but not disruption. That only happens when coaching, cross-training, and leadership development are embedded in the culture rather than delegated to an HR process.
Succession planning isn’t about preparing for someone’s departure. It’s about building an organization where leadership is continuously developed, transferred, and strengthened. When every leader is responsible for developing another leader, your leadership bench is never theoretical. It’s tested, growing, and ready.
Trust is built in the moments nobody’s watching for it. And it’s lost the same way.
Reflection Questions:
- Where have you been making commitments your follow-through hasn’t been matching, and who on your team has noticed?
- If your team quietly audited the gap between what you’ve said and what you’ve done in the last 90 days, what would they find?
May your leadership journey be rich with purpose, relationships, resilience, and discovery. I look forward to exploring new insights together in our next issue.
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About the Author
Dr. H. Gearl Loden is a nationally recognized leadership coach, keynote speaker, and Superintendent of Nixa Public Schools in Missouri. A finalist for the 2025 AASA National Superintendent of the Year and a former State Superintendent of the Year, Dr. Loden brings more than 30 years of educational leadership — including transformative turnaround experience — to every coaching engagement.
He is the founder of Loden Leadership & Consulting Group LLC and author of Before It Breaks: The Seven Pillars of Trust Every Leader Must Build, an Amazon #1 New Release. His coaching work equips superintendents, executives, and emerging leaders to build cultures of trust, clarity, and lasting impact.
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Impactfully,
Gearl
