Succession Planning at the Top: Why Mentoring Is the Missing Piece

Most organisations have a succession plan. The document exists, the names are on the list, and the boxes are ticked. But when a Chief Executive departs unexpectedly or a key board member steps down, the plan can quickly collide with reality. Those identified as ready are not quite there. The transition is harder than anticipated. The gap between who is on paper and who is genuinely prepared can be significant.

This is not an unusual story, but a remarkably common one. And it points to a fundamental gap in how most organisations approach succession planning at the senior level.

What Most Succession Plans Get Wrong

The succession planning process in most large organisations is built around identification. Who are the high potentials? Who could step into which role? Who is one, two or three years away from being ready?

These are reasonable questions. The problem is that identifying someone as a successor and actually preparing them to succeed are two entirely different things. Most succession frameworks invest heavily in the former and underinvest significantly in the latter.

A name on a succession list does not make someone ready to lead at Chief Executive or board level. What makes them ready is experience, judgement, and access to the kind of perspective that helps them navigate the specific challenges those roles bring. That is not something a development programme or a performance review can reliably produce on its own.

This is the gap that mentoring fills. And it is a gap that exists across organisations of every size and structure, from large corporates to family businesses navigating family business succession planning, to smaller enterprises working through small business succession planning for the first time.

Why Mentoring Belongs at the Heart of Succession Planning Strategy

A well-designed succession planning strategy does more than identify who might be next. It actively develops the people on that list, in a way that is relevant to the specific demands of the role they are being prepared for.

For leaders preparing to step into a Chief Executive position, that means developing the judgement, the strategic clarity, and the personal resilience that the role requires. For those moving into a board position for the first time, it means building an understanding of governance, of how to exercise influence without line authority, and of how to contribute effectively in an environment that operates very differently from the executive world.

Mentoring addresses all of this in a way that generic development cannot, because it starts from the individual. Their specific context, their specific gaps, their specific challenges. A mentor who has held a comparable role brings something no internal programme can replicate: the perspective of someone who has genuinely navigated the transition the mentee is preparing for.

This is particularly true in the context of CEO succession planning, where the stakes are highest and the margin for error is smallest. A Chief Executive who arrives underprepared does not just affect their own performance. The consequences ripple across the entire organisation. To understand what this kind of targeted preparation looks like, it is worth reading about the mentoring relationship and how it develops over time.

Board Succession Planning and the Governance Dimension

Board succession planning carries its own distinct set of challenges. Boards need to think not just about individual capability but about collective composition, about whether the board as a whole has the right mix of experience, perspective and independence to govern effectively as its membership changes over time.

Mentoring supports this process at the individual level. A director who is being prepared for a more senior board role, or for the chair position, benefits enormously from access to someone who has held that role and understands its specific demands. The transition from non-executive director to chair, for instance, is one that many people underestimate. The responsibilities are different, the relationships require a different kind of management, and the pressure is of a different order entirely.

Mentoring from an experienced former chair is one of the most direct ways to prepare for that transition. It is also one of the most underused. Explore the full range of senior mentoring available through What We Do to understand how Global Mentors Group supports leaders at every stage of this journey.

Succession Planning Best Practices: Where Mentoring Fits

Organisations that approach succession planning best practices seriously tend to share a few characteristics. They plan early, identifying and developing successors well before a transition is imminent. They are honest about the gap between potential and readiness. And they invest in development that is genuinely tailored to the individual and the role.

Mentoring sits naturally within all three of these. It is most effective when it begins well before a transition is required, giving the relationship time to develop and the mentee time to grow into the demands of the role ahead. It is honest by design, because a good mentor will tell a future leader what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. And it is inherently tailored, because the agenda is always set by the individual, not by a curriculum.

For organisations working with succession planning consulting firms or building internal succession frameworks, mentoring is not an alternative to those approaches. It is the human layer that makes them more effective.

A Note on Family and Smaller Business Succession

Family succession planning and business succession planning in smaller organisations carry additional complexity. The emotional stakes are higher. The boundaries between personal and professional are less clearly defined. And the pool of potential successors is often smaller, which means the pressure on each individual is greater.

In this context, mentoring from someone entirely outside the family or the business is particularly valuable. An external mentor brings genuine impartiality, no history, no allegiance, and no stake in the outcome. They can help a successor think clearly about the role they are taking on, the relationships they will need to navigate, and the kind of leader they want to be, free from the weight of internal expectation.

For more on how mentoring supports leaders through significant transitions, including stepping into a Chief Executive role for the first time, visit our blog on CEO mentoring.

FAQs on Succession Planning

1. How early should mentoring begin in the succession planning process?

Ideally at least twelve to eighteen months before a planned transition, and earlier where possible. The mentoring relationship takes time to develop, and the most valuable conversations tend to happen once genuine trust has been established. Starting early means the successor arrives in the role having already worked through many of the challenges they will face.

2. Should the outgoing leader be involved in mentoring the successor?

This requires careful thought. In some situations, a degree of knowledge transfer from an outgoing leader is genuinely useful. In others, particularly where the successor needs space to develop their own approach, an entirely external mentor is more appropriate. The key is that the mentoring relationship remains independent and confidential, free from any obligation to the outgoing leader or the organisation.

3. How does mentoring support succession in a family business differently from a corporate context?

In a family business, the emotional complexity of succession is significantly higher. An external mentor provides something an internal advisor or family member cannot: complete impartiality. They can help the successor navigate the personal dimensions of the transition, the family dynamics, the weight of legacy, and the challenge of establishing their own identity as a leader, in a space that is entirely free from internal politics.

4. What happens when a succession plan changes unexpectedly?

Unplanned transitions, whether through sudden departure, illness, or an unexpected opportunity, are where the absence of genuine development becomes most visible. Organisations that have invested in mentoring their identified successors are significantly better placed to manage these moments, because the development work has already been done rather than beginning at the point of crisis.

5. How does mentoring complement formal succession planning frameworks or consultancy support?

Succession frameworks and consultancy typically address the structural and process dimensions of succession planning. Mentoring addresses the human dimension. The two work best together, with the framework identifying who needs to be developed and mentoring doing the actual development work at an individual level.