Succession Planning Coaching

Readiness is about the role, not the person's track record

A successor is usually named because they are excellent in their current job. Readiness, though, depends on what the target role demands: a wider set of stakeholders, a board or owner to manage, decisions with longer consequences and a team that may include former peers.

So coaching starts with the role. We describe what the job will actually ask of its next holder over the first year, then compare that honestly with how the successor leads today. For a primer on the wider process, see what succession planning is.

Where organisations bring me into succession

Succession coaching is most useful when a handover is real and close enough to focus the mind. These are typical situations.

• ✦A long-serving executive will retire in the next couple of years and the named successor has never worked at that level.
• ✦A family business is preparing the next generation, alongside non-family executives who also need to accept the change.
• ✦Two strong internal candidates are being developed for the same role, and the organisation wants both to stay engaged.
• ✦An expatriate incumbent is handing over to a national successor as part of a localisation plan.
• ✦The board has asked HR for evidence that the succession bench is genuinely ready, not just named.

Four readiness gaps I see most often

The incumbent can make or break a succession

Handovers fail as often because of the person leaving as the person arriving. An incumbent who has led for many years may find it hard to share decisions, introduce the successor to key relationships or step back from meetings.

Where the organisation agrees, I offer the outgoing leader separate, confidential coaching on their own transition. We also hold occasional joint conversations about how authority will move across. In family businesses this matters even more, and how to prepare a family business successor explores the family dimension.

A first session maps the role the successor will inherit

In our first session I ask the successor to describe the role they are preparing for as if they already held it. Who do they meet in their first week? What decision keeps them awake? Who will test them early?

Their answers usually reveal where confidence is real and where it is borrowed from the current leader. From there we agree a small number of readiness goals, which they then share with their sponsor in a three-way meeting. Sessions are usually weekly or every two weeks, in person in Manama or online.

Why I approach succession from both sides

My early career was in HR and talent management, building talent strategies and supporting executive teams through growth and transformation. I have seen succession plans that looked tidy on paper and fell apart in the first month of a new appointment.

As an ICF Professional Certified Coach with systemic coaching training, I look at the whole system around a handover: the successor, the incumbent, the team and the owners. Once the appointment happens, new leader transition coaching can carry the work into the first months in role.