Building your leadership bench is one of the most important outcomes of effective management succession planning. Building a strong bench means internally developing talent so they are prepared to step into key roles when the need arises. When done well, succession planning becomes a powerful tool for strengthening your leadership pipeline, reducing risk, and supporting long-term organizational success. In this article, we’ll explore best practices for building your bench through management succession planning and what organizations can do to prepare future leaders before transitions occur.
Identify Critical Management Roles
Organizations need to build strong talent pipelines throughout the organization. Many organizations begin and end their succession planning with their CEO or executive team. While those roles are critical and require a strong bench, effective succession planning must extend beyond the C-suite.
To truly build bench strength, organizations should identify management and leadership roles that would create risk if they were left vacant for a long time. This often includes leadership roles that require specialized skills, department leaders, and key operational positions. Strong benches are built role by role, not all at once. Using risk and impact to prioritize where to start helps ensure succession planning efforts are the most practical.
Evaluate Talent Objectively and Consistently
How can you build your leadership bench without truly knowing where your internal talent stands? The truth is, you can’t. Relying on informal conversations and gut feelings about future potential often leads to blind spots and inconsistent decisions.
The best practice is to use standardized evaluations to understand where each person’s leadership skills are currently. Objective and consistent evaluations provide clear insight into individual strengths and development needs. This will also give you a clear picture of your organization’s full bench, while creating more visibility and transparent communication within the team. This approach helps organizations better understand their bench strength today, and where development is needed for the future.
Create Development Plans That Actually Prepare Future Leaders
You can’t have a strong bench of future leaders if you don’t develop them. Just identifying people as potential successors isn’t enough! Without the intentional development, leadership bench strength remains theoretical.
To avoid “check-the-box” development plans, organizations should focus on role-specific skills gaps and personalized development opportunities. Each person’s development needs will differ based on their experience, readiness, and future role expectations. Well-designed development plans will help your talent grow in a meaningful way while increasing their readiness for future leadership opportunities.
Make Succession Planning a Continuous Process
Organizations often handle succession planning on an annual planning cycle. This means that the plan is reviewed once, documented, and then largely forgotten until the following year. However, to build a strong bench organizations need to shift toward continuous succession planning.
As roles evolve, employees develop, organizational strategies shift, and unexpected changes occur, succession plans should be revisited and updated regularly. Plus, talent development requires consistent tracking and follow-up to ensure you are creating a strong bench. To get the most out of your leadership pipeline, succession planning needs to become a continuous process, not just a one-and-done task.
Use of Technology to Simplify and Sustain Succession Planning
When succession planning becomes too complicated, it often doesn’t get done. Disconnected spreadsheets, static documents, and manual tracking make it difficult to review and update your plans over time.
The right technology can help simplify the process by providing a centralized and guided platform for all succession planning needs. With SUCCESSIONapp®, you get a complete picture of your organization’s bench strength, leadership pipelines, and development plans in one easy-to-use system. A good technology solution helps organizations actually use and update their succession plans.
Having a Strong Leadership Bench is a Competitive Advantage
Strong bench strength doesn’t happen by chance. It requires clarity around critical roles, objective insight into talent readiness, and intentional development plans. Ultimately, effective bench building strengthens more than just the individual leaders. It strengthens the entire organization. By investing in management succession planning your organization can be prepared for whatever leadership transitions lie ahead.
SUCCESSIONapp® makes it easy to build your leadership bench. Our global award-winning platform simplifies both the management succession planning process. The software gives organizations real-time visibility into leadership pipelines, readiness levels, and development plans, all in one easy-to-use system. Instead of relying on spreadsheets or static documents, SUCCESSIONapp® supports an ongoing, transparent, and efficient succession process that evolves as your organization does.
If you’re ready to modernize your succession planning approach in 2026 and beyond, sign up for a demo to see how easy succession planning can be with SUCCESSIONapp®.
