The Leadership Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight

Here’s a statistic that should concern every executive team:

Only 29% of organizations say they have a strong leadership pipeline.

That means seven out of ten companies are one retirement, one resignation, or one unexpected departure away from a critical leadership gap they’re not prepared to fill.

And the consequences are severe. When key leadership positions sit vacant or get filled by unprepared successors, projects stall, teams lose direction, institutional knowledge evaporates, and competitors gain ground.

But here’s what makes this crisis even more troubling: most succession planning processes identify the wrong people.

Organizations look at their highest performers and assume they’ll make great leaders. They promote based on current results rather than future passion for leadership itself.

Then they’re shocked when their newly promoted manager struggles, disengages, or quietly resents the role they never actually wanted.

The problem isn’t lack of succession planning. It’s succession planning built on the wrong foundation. And until organizations learn to identify who genuinely wants to lead, the leadership pipeline will remain dangerously thin.

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The Myth of the “Natural Next Step”

Most career progression follows a predictable pattern:

You start as an individual contributor. You excel at your job. Your manager notices. You get promoted to a leadership role managing people who do what you used to do.

This progression seems logical. After all, who better to lead a team than someone who’s proven they’re excellent at the work itself?

But there’s a fatal flaw in this logic: being good at doing the work is completely different from being passionate about leading people who do that work.

The engineer who loves solving complex technical problems might find managing other engineers frustrating and draining. The salesperson who thrives on closing deals might dread coaching underperformers and navigating team dynamics. The accountant who finds fulfillment in detailed analysis might feel suffocated by the interpersonal demands of leadership.

Yet succession planning processes rarely ask: “Does this person actually want to lead? Will leadership energize them or exhaust them?”

Instead, they ask: “Who’s our top performer? Let’s groom them for management.”

And that’s how succession planning creates leadership problems instead of solving them.

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The Hidden Cost of Promoting the Wrong Person

When succession planning puts someone in a leadership role they don’t genuinely want, the damage compounds across multiple dimensions:

The Individual Suffers

That high performer who loved their previous role now dreads coming to work. They’re spending their days doing things that drain them—managing conflicts, conducting performance reviews, facilitating meetings—instead of the work that energized them.

Their skills atrophy because they’re no longer practicing what they were good at. Their passion fades because they’re stuck in a role misaligned with their natural interests.

Eventually, they either leave the organization entirely or become a disengaged leader going through the motions.

The Team Suffers

Remember from our earlier series: managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.

When you promote someone who doesn’t genuinely enjoy leadership, their team inherits a manager who views people development as a burden rather than a calling.

The manager does the minimum required. One-on-ones become checkbox conversations. Coaching becomes criticism. Team culture deteriorates because the leader’s heart isn’t in it.

Your succession planning just created a team engagement problem.

The Organization Suffers

You’ve lost a high-performing individual contributor and gained an underperforming manager. That’s a double loss.

You’ve also sent a signal that advancement means leaving behind the work you love. Your best individual contributors start wondering if staying excellent means getting pushed into roles they don’t want.

And your succession planning process continues identifying the wrong future leaders because the fundamental flaw remains unaddressed.

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What True Leadership Passion Actually Looks Like

Before we can fix succession planning, we need to understand what distinguishes people who will thrive in leadership from those who won’t.

It’s not about charisma, assertiveness, or even current management skills. Those can be developed. The real differentiator is whether someone finds genuine fulfillment in the core activities of leadership itself.

People with authentic leadership passion:

• Genuinely enjoy developing others rather than just achieving personal results. They get more satisfaction from watching team members grow than from their own individual accomplishments.
• Find energy in facilitating collaboration instead of working independently. They’re energized by bringing diverse perspectives together and navigating group dynamics.
• Embrace ambiguity and complexity rather than preferring clear, structured tasks. They’re comfortable making decisions without perfect information and helping others navigate uncertainty.
• Value influence over individual achievement. They measure success by team outcomes and organizational impact rather than personal metrics.
• Seek responsibility for others’ success rather than avoiding it. They view accountability for team performance as opportunity, not burden.

These aren’t skills. These are intrinsic motivations that either energize someone or exhaust them. And that’s what succession planning needs to identify.

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Why Traditional Succession Planning Misses Leadership Passion

Most succession planning processes use tools and criteria that completely miss whether someone will love leading:

Performance Reviews Focus on Individual Results

High performance ratings tell you someone is good at their current job. They don’t tell you whether that person will find joy in a completely different job focused on enabling others rather than individual execution.

Your succession planning identifies top performers, not passionate future leaders.

Competency Models Describe Behaviors, Not Motivations

Leadership competency frameworks list desired behaviors: strategic thinking, communication, decision-making, team building.

But they don’t reveal whether someone is intrinsically motivated to engage in those behaviors consistently. You can teach the behaviors. You can’t teach someone to love doing them.

Your succession planning identifies capable potential leaders, not willing ones.

Potential Assessments Measure Ability, Not Desire

“High potential” programs evaluate cognitive ability, learning agility, and capacity for growth.

All valuable. But none of them answer: “Does this person actually want to lead, or are we projecting our organizational needs onto their career path?”

Your succession planning assumes people want advancement, not that they want leadership specifically.

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The Succession Planning Questions You Should Be Asking

To build a genuine leadership pipeline, succession planning needs to evaluate passion alongside capability:

• Does this person find genuine fulfillment in coaching and developing others? Not just occasionally, but as a core part of their daily work?
• Do they draw energy from facilitating collaboration? Or do they prefer working independently and find group dynamics draining?
• Are they genuinely excited by the prospect of managing people? Or are they pursuing leadership because it seems like the only path to advancement?
• Do they value team success as much as (or more than) individual achievement? Or are they primarily motivated by personal accomplishment?
• Will they embrace the ambiguity and complexity of leadership? Or do they prefer the clarity and structure of individual contributor work?

These questions reveal whether someone will thrive in leadership or quietly resent it. And they’re exactly what most succession planning processes never ask.

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How Careerz Group Workforce Solutions Transforms Succession Planning

At Careerz Group, we help organizations build leadership pipelines filled with people who genuinely want to lead.

The Workforce Edition of the JPTI™ identifies leadership passion before promotion, ensuring your succession planning creates willing, enthusiastic leaders:

1. Leadership Passion Assessment

The JPTI™ measures whether candidates genuinely enjoy the core activities of leadership: coaching, collaboration, complexity navigation, and accountability for team outcomes.

This reveals who will find leadership energizing versus draining, allowing succession planning to focus on authentic future leaders.

2. Individual Contributor Passion Identification

Equally important, the JPTI™ identifies high performers whose passions align with deep individual contribution rather than leadership.

Effective succession planning creates advancement paths for both groups, not just leadership tracks. This prevents losing excellent individual contributors who don’t want to manage.

3. Leadership Style Alignment

The assessment reveals what type of leadership each candidate would find most fulfilling: strategic visionary, operational executor, people developer, change agent.

Sophisticated succession planning matches leadership opportunities to leadership passion types, not just generic “leadership pipeline” thinking.

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The Three-Step Path to Effective Succession Planning

Careerz Group Workforce Solutions helps you build leadership pipelines that actually work:

Step 1: Assess Leadership Passion Early

Use the Workforce Edition of the JPTI™ to evaluate leadership passion across your high-potential population, not just when vacancies emerge.

This creates a genuine pipeline of willing future leaders, not a list of high performers you hope will want management roles. Your succession planning becomes proactive rather than reactive.

Step 2: Create Dual Advancement Tracks

Develop career progression pathways for both leadership and deep individual contribution.

When succession planning offers advancement without mandatory management, you stop losing top talent who don’t want to lead. And you stop forcing unwilling people into leadership roles.

Step 3: Match Leadership Opportunities to Passion Profiles

When leadership positions open, match them to candidates whose leadership passion aligns with what that specific role requires.

Strategic leadership roles go to those passionate about vision and direction. Operational leadership roles go to those passionate about execution and process. Your succession planning creates the right leader-role fit, not just any leader in any role.

 

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What Happens When Succession Planning Gets It Right

When you build leadership pipelines around genuine leadership passion:

• Leadership transitions become smooth because successors are genuinely excited about their new roles, not reluctantly accepting them.
• Team engagement improves because new leaders actually enjoy developing people, not just managing tasks.
• Retention increases because high performers don’t feel forced to choose between staying in roles they love or pursuing advancement they don’t want.
• Leadership quality compounds because passionate leaders develop other passionate leaders, creating a virtuous cycle.
• Organizational agility strengthens because you always have willing, prepared leaders ready to step into critical roles.

That’s succession planning that works. Not because you identified capable people, but because you identified willing ones.

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The Individual Contributor Problem Succession Planning Creates

Here’s a problem most succession planning processes inadvertently create:

When leadership is the only path to advancement, compensation, and recognition, you force a false choice on your best people: accept management roles you don’t want, or plateau.

The brilliant engineer who loves deep technical work faces pressure to become an engineering manager. The exceptional analyst who thrives on complex problem-solving gets pushed toward director roles. The outstanding teacher who finds fulfillment in direct student impact is expected to become an administrator.

Some accept reluctantly. They become mediocre leaders while losing their passion for the work they loved. Your succession planning created a leadership problem and lost an exceptional individual contributor.

Others refuse and leave the organization entirely, seeking companies that value individual contribution. Your succession planning created retention problems.

The solution isn’t better leadership training. It’s succession planning that includes advancement for people who want to remain individual contributors.

Senior individual contributor roles. Principal-level positions. Fellow designations. Master practitioner tracks.

When succession planning offers multiple paths to impact, influence, and compensation, you retain top talent and only develop leaders who genuinely want to lead.

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The Question Every Succession Planning Process Should Answer

Stop asking: “Who are our top performers we should develop for leadership?”

Start asking: “Who genuinely wants to lead, and how do we create advancement for those who don’t?”

That shift in thinking transforms succession planning from a source of organizational problems into a strategic advantage.

Ready to build a leadership pipeline filled with people who actually want to lead?

👉 Book a discovery call to explore how Careerz Group Workforce Solutions redesigns succession planning around leadership passion.

👉 Request a leadership pipeline assessment to identify which of your high performers truly want leadership roles.

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The Bottom Line on Succession Planning

Leadership pipeline failures aren’t about lack of talent. They’re about promoting people who don’t genuinely want to lead.

No amount of leadership development will turn someone into an inspiring leader if they don’t find fulfillment in the core work of leadership itself.

The Workforce Edition of the JPTI™ reveals who will thrive in leadership before you promote them, ensuring your succession planning creates willing, passionate leaders.

Stop assuming your best performers want to manage. Start identifying who genuinely loves leading.

That’s succession planning that builds sustainable leadership pipelines instead of creating leadership problems.