How to Train A Management Successor

October 9, 2020 Employee Performance and Coaching, Interviews, Hiring, and Layoffs

Developing Your Own Succession Plan

Succession planning is a fundamental part of building a leadership path for talented employees. As leaders move up, move on, or move out of the business, a good succession plan at the organizational level identifies the pipeline of individuals who are ready to fill future open roles and vacancies.

But what about developing your own successor, the future leader who takes over your role? How do we prepare and develop a successor to become the manager?

Developing and grooming a successor to a management position entails more than just forwarding him or her emails and saying, ‘Please take care of this.’ Rather, training and coaching the person who takes over for you when you move on requires careful thought and planning.

Here are 10 tips for how to develop a successor as a manager and why you need to do it.

Why Succession Plans are Important and How Grooming Your Replacement Will Benefit You

Building a succession plan for your business is a pivotal part of ensuring a healthy talent ecosystem in your organization. People can move on from their positions at any time for any reason – and that includes you!

By contrast, lacking a clear succession pipeline is detrimental to both the organization and to you, for two reasons.

First, with respect to the company as a whole, when managers or key figures leave suddenly without a clear successor ready to take over, it creates a gap in the organization. In some cases, months can go by before a critical leadership role is filled. Organizations that do not plan for succession well are often left feeling the effects of turnover and staffing changes for quite some time.

The second reason why succession planning is important is to help you transition out as a manager when the time comes. If a new opportunity comes your way and there is no one immediately ready to step-in, your transition to the new role will always be held back – you’ll find yourself doing double duty indefinitely.

Thus, having a successor that is ready to step-in is not only good for the organization, but it’s also good for you. Because changes can happen swiftly – an unexpected opportunity comes your way, an organizational shake up occurs, or you get promoted – having a successor (or successors) ready to fill the void is ideal.

Should I Develop a Single Successor, or More Than One?

At first, you might think it’s best to focus your energy on one particular individual as your successor. Sure, there may be a specific employee who you feel is best suited for the job today.

However, just as you may be tapped on the shoulder for a different position or opportunity at any time, who’s to say your “go to” second-in-charge won’t be either? Or, what if they ultimately decide managing a team isn’t for them after you’ve spent months preparing them?

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s best to take a few of your key people under your wing to ready them for your job. Whether it’s for your role or other leadership vacancies that become available, developing highly talented staff members for future leadership positions is always a best practice.

RELATED: How to Manage Your Top Talent

Do Experts Make Good Successors?

A common misconception is that a team’s supervisor should be the team’s expert. Further, the team’s resident expert should always be the one promoted to fill an open management position.

Experts are certainly knowledgeable and skilled in the subject matter – whether it be financial principles, business strategy, or manufacturing know-how. But being a subject matter expert does not necessarily mean they are great leaders, skilled at dealing with people problems, or able to lead a team.

While you shouldn’t simply write off your subject matter experts as possible management successors, it is wise to evaluate them primarily in terms of their leadership and interpersonal skills. Just because they’re experts in what they do doesn’t mean they are best suited for the leadership role.

What Makes a Good Successor for a Manager?

Management roles are – by definition – leadership roles. Thus, characteristics to look for when identifying and developing a successor should mimic that of good leaders, including:

A strong work ethic
Viewed as a respected contributor by his or her peers, and other leaders in the business
A willingness to participate when addressing issues and problems
A strong and engaging communicator
An ability to easily adapt to changes
Has a desire for advancement

Additionally, as you look around your team for possible successors, keep an eye out for individuals who are naturally sought by their peers. In other words, who do your employees already seek for support? This is often an indicator of their interpersonal skills, natural leadership qualities and a positive attitude.

How to Develop Your Successor as a Manager

Now, let’s talk about how we develop and mentor our next-in-line employees so that they can eventually manage the team. To start, there are three basic phases to training your management successor.

These include:

Identifying and Evaluating Candidates
Introducing the Role and Responsibilities
Developing and Tuning Their Skills

The first phase of developing and grooming your successor is to establish a list of names and to identify worthy candidates. During this phase, you’re engaging your employees to determine his or her leadership potential as well as evaluating their interest in the job.

Once you’ve established a list of potential successors and have determined a basic level of interest, the second phase begins with exposing him or her to management duties. Throughout this phase, you are giving the employee a first-hand look behind-the-scenes at what it is they would do in your role.

The third and final stage of developing someone to replace you as the team’s leader is to sharpen and hone their leadership skills. At this point, they have the confidence and desire to lead the team, and you are acting as their coach.

Here are some suggested development activities that gradually step through these phases to ensure your successor is prepared.

1. Establish Your List of Possible Management Successors

As you go about your regular duties, identify and take note of your employees’ leadership traits. For those with strong leadership potential, ask about his or her career aspirations. Career discussions during your regular one-on-one meetings are an excellent time to have these conversations.

It is worth noting that your successor does not necessarily have to be one of your current employees – it could be a talented employee in another department or an up-and-coming individual with whom you worked previously.

Having a desire for advancement is an important ‘box to check’ when identifying your possible successor. A natural leader and a well-respected individual may they be, if there is no interest in advancing, do not force it. Offering some encouragement is fine, but if there’s no personal desire, you should move on.

2. Discuss the Role

“More pay? A big office? You bet!” The pure notion of getting a promotion and being the boss sounds good to many employees.

However, most employees do not realize or appreciate some of the work that supervisors do – just as we didn’t before we became leaders of people. At times, it can be very exciting. Other times, it can be administrative. And other times, it can be downright stressful.

Giving them an in-depth look behind the curtain from your perspective will ensure they’re still onboard with the idea of taking your job someday.

Here are some examples of introductory topics you might want to cover:

A day in the life of your job
The challenges and rewarding aspects of the role
What you’ve since learned in the position
How you’ve benefited and grown

The last thing you want to do is to recommend a successor who ends up either hating the job or decides it’s a bad fit.

3. Ask What They Feel They Need to Understand

As a manager, our daily activities quickly become habit. It’s easy for us to overlook some basic elements of what we do – the meetings we attend, the progress status we report and the budget updates we submit.

From the outside looking in, though, many non-managers simply do not know the basic terms we use or the responsibilities we have.

When bringing your successor up to speed, providing a brain-dump of information to your protege is only going to get you so far. Instead, as you develop and coach your replacement, encourage him or her to bring their questions and topics of interest to the table. What do they feel they need to understand?

Here are some questions you can use to prompt the discussion and to get them thinking:

What do you feel you need to learn?
What skills or experience do you feel you need to develop?
Is there a specific topic where you feel you lack sufficient knowledge or confidence?

It’s quite common for staffers to seek an understanding of basic processes and activities that you never thought to even share because it’s just part of your normal workday.

4. Understand and Address Their Concerns

Take the time to address your successor’s questions and concerns. Some questions you’re likely to be asked include:

Is it a lot more work?
What’s the hardest part of the job?
What if I’m not good at it?
How does that process work?
I’m not the smartest one here. How can I lead this team?
Why do you think I’d be good at this?

Basic questions such as these are common. Answer them fair and honestly – part of grooming and developing your successor as a manager is building up their confidence.

5. Have Successors Shadow You in Daily Work

Give up-and-comers to supervisory roles exposure to management topics as part of their development activities. Letting them participate in various behind-the-scenes discussions gives your potential successor a good sense of what the job responsibilities entail.

Examples might include:

Strategy discussions
Budget planning discussions
Project reviews
Customer communications

Broad exposure to such things establishes a clear understanding of what the role requires and the breadth of topics that come with the job.

6. Deliberately Delegate Select Tasks to Them

The next part of preparing your successor advances their development – here they go from just being a participant to taking an active role. You can accomplish this by delegating specific assignments that are educational and informative in nature.

Below are examples of tasks or duties that you could consider delegating as a training exercise.

Planning and managing your budget
Reviewing a customer request
Preparing a presentation

Delegating some of your basic management duties will give the employee a more hands-on understanding of the day-to-day responsibilities they would have in your role. Further, it will give you a chance to provide feedback on the result of their work.

For example, you may wish to have them review a new project proposal for approval. You can then discuss his or her evaluation and provide feedback on their approach and analysis.

7. Participate in Applicant Interviews

Truth be told, most employees don’t give much thought to evaluating the skills or organizational fit of others – until they actually manage their own team. Interviewing and hiring takes skill and is a worthy development exercise for your successor.

As part of grooming your replacement, invite your successor into candidate interviews with you. Interviewing candidates together has two distinct advantages.

First, it gives the individual a chance to practice their interview skills while also allowing you to subsequently give them some coaching and mentoring.

Second, interviewing together allows him or her to observe how you ask questions and identify what it is you feel is important for adding team members.

An impressive resume may sway a novice, but an experienced interviewer will know how to look past it. A joint interview of a candidate will ensure your successor is ready to do it alone once you’ve moved on.

8. Provide Specific Opportunities to Develop Their Skills

Having leadership potential is one thing. Being able to flex those leadership muscles and grow those skills is another.

Keep in mind that as an individual employee, your successor may not always be in a position to truly develop and demonstrate his or her skills. Often times, there are other more senior team members running the meetings or they may not be the decision-maker on the project.

For this reason, as part of your successor’s development, create opportunities that allow them to practice and bolster their leadership skills. Practice makes perfect, as they say.

Here are some examples of leadership development opportunities you can create for your successor:

Decision Making – Ask they represent the you in cross-functional meetings to get them comfortable with speaking up and making commitments as the face of your team.

Facilitation – Have them lead discussions to learn how to drive a conversation towards results and action.

Mentoring – You never know what you know until you teach. Being able to coach, mentor and help junior team members grow is an important skill to have as a manager. Assign your successor as a mentor for a new employee.

Negotiating – Working through conflict and finding common ground is another essential leadership quality to have for any manager. Deliberately assign work that forces them to work through conflict.

9. Focus Discussions on Decision Making

Decisions-making skills – that is, the thought process, the considerations and the ultimate path we choose to take – are a specific area of focus for developing your successor as a manager.

The thought process that we as managers often go through tends to be different from those of our employees. It’s not because we are any better or smarter, it’s simply because we look at situations through a different lens.

Here’s an example:

If you ask any employee who they think is most suited to take on a certain assignment, chances are they will either identify an individual who has time immediately available, or someone who is the most capable and experienced. Both are acceptable answers.

However, experienced managers may identify employees who:

Could benefit from the assignment as a learning opportunity.
Who need a new challenge.
Who need a new project to work on in order to get a break from something else they’ve been doing.

Again, this is not about being smarter or better than the successor you are grooming. Rather, it is about teaching him or her how you make management decisions against the backdrop of more variables.

10. Ask Difficult Scenario Questions

Nothing will get an up-and-coming employee thinking like a leader more than being asked challenge questions and being forced to make decisions. A great way to really push your successor to start thinking like a manager is to put him or her on the spot and challenge them with realistic scenarios they will eventually face.

Here are some examples of ways you can accomplish this:

After a tense team meeting, privately ask your successor how he/she would have handled it. Talk through scenarios.
When deciding which projects to cut from the budget, ask your protege for his or her recommendations and rationale.
If you have a difficult employee, ask your future successor how he or she would address the situation.

Challenging questions allows your employee to think through difficult – yet realistic – situations they will likely face in your position. Further, by talking through considerations and variables you can strengthen their managerial courage in a safe way before they are truly tested.

Developing Your Successor for Managing a Team

Grooming and developing someone to take over for your is a valuable exercise and worth the time you invest. Further, having spent so much time developing your staff and piloting them to success, it’s always good practice to leave your team in a good place when something new comes your way.

By evaluating their leadership qualities, ensuring they have a desire for advancement and giving them exposure to the responsibilities before they take the helm, you can ensure you leave your team in the best of hands.

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