CHROs Share Succession Habits That Prevent Leadership Gaps

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.

Effective Internal Communication: Tips for Growing Teams

One of the most common challenges I help leaders navigate as their organizations grow is maintaining clear, trusted communication. Whether I am coaching a superintendent, a CEO, or an executive leading multiple teams, the pattern is remarkably similar. As organizations scale, communication becomes more difficult, and trust becomes easier to lose.

Leaders Share How to Set Fair In-Office Norms in Hybrid Work

Leaders Share How to Set Fair In-Office Norms in Hybrid Work
Hybrid work has forced organizations to rethink what fairness means when some employees are in the office and others are not. Getting this balance right requires clear policies that focus on outcomes rather than arbitrary attendance rules. This article brings together insights from workplace leaders who have successfully implemented in-office norms that respect flexibility while maintaining team cohesion.

Make Your Weekly Goal Review Fast and Useful

Make Your Weekly Goal Review Fast and Useful
Honor Wins and Picture Success Ahead

A weekly review turns into paperwork the moment it becomes accounting. You tally what got done, square the columns, feel briefly organized, and walk into Monday no different than before. The form gets filled. Nothing inside you actually shifts.

I stopped treating mine as a ledger. I treat it as reflection.

The trust gap you can’t see

Damon West has spent his life studying what holds people together when conditions go hostile. His read on why this book matters lands on the same point I’ve been making all week:

“The most important thing I know about lasting change—in a life, a team, or an organization—is that character under pressure isn’t accidental. It’s built. That’s why Before It Breaks matters. The Coffee Bean is about choosing what you become when the water gets hot. Gearl Loden shows leaders how to build the trust infrastructure that lets a team hold its shape under heat. The Loden Trust Framework turns trust into seven behavioral disciplines—so your leadership doesn’t fracture when it’s tested. If you lead people, this belongs on your desk.”

— Damon West, bestselling co-author of The Coffee Bean

Today the book opens for pre-order. And one thing your best people are watching for.

Seeing your best people is a discipline, not a feeling. It’s one of seven in Before It Breaks, the book that names what separates leaders who retain strong people from those who lose them. Pre-order at https://go.lodenleadership.com/Before_It_Breaks_Pre-Order and  receive the Before It Breaks resource bundle and the companion workbook plus a seat at the live Seven Pillars in Practice masterclass on July 14.

The feedback you’re avoiding is the most important investment you haven’t made.

Every leader has a list.

Not a written one. The one that exists in the back of their awareness. The conversations that need to happen and haven’t. The feedback that is overdue. The standard that has been slipping and hasn’t been named directly.

Most leaders are aware of every item on that list. They can tell you exactly who needs to hear what, and roughly how long it has been waiting.

What they cannot always tell you is why they haven’t had the conversation yet.

The answers they give are usually practical. The timing isn’t right. Things are busy. The relationship is at a delicate point. There’s a lot going on for that person right now.

All of those things may be true. None of them is the real reason.