Most leaders never plan for this. You can.

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THE ART & SCIENCE OF LEADING SELF
The Power of Personal Succession Planning

My friend, at last week’s Wharton Leadership Conference, I witnessed something remarkable.

Three generations of WSFS CEOs sat on stage, sharing hard-won wisdom about leadership transitions. What struck me wasn't just their individual insights, but how seamlessly their conversation flowed between succession planning, their evolution as leaders, and their approach to talent development. All 3 were internal hires who had been groomed for their roles.

As I listened, I found myself drawing unexpected parallels.

The principles they shared about organizational succession planning weren't just about replacing leaders.

They were about conscious leadership evolution. And that got me thinking about how these insights could support your growth as a leader.

Succession Planning Reimagined 🤔

Traditional succession planning is about preparing the right people to step into critical roles so that progress doesn't stall when someone leaves, retires, or levels up.

But what if you applied this same intentionality to personal leadership development?Every day presents new challenges as the world moves at a faster pace. New complexities emerge. You are either prepared to meet these challenges or you are not.

Your commitment to growth and development—doing the inner work—is how you level up.

This is your personal succession planning.

In business, successful succession planning requires a programmatic approach to building bench strength. The CEOs on that panel emphasized this repeatedly. Well, the same principle applies to your leadership development.

You need a systematic approach to evolving from who you are today into the leader tomorrow will demand.

The Framework Connection 🔁

This is where my Mindset Awareness Competencies framework may be helpful.

I developed this framework in 2020 and later co-authored a piece on it (in its earlier version) that was published through Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. It explains how I approach leadership capacity development because that's what lies at the heart of personal succession planning. The framework operates as interconnected gears because activating one immediately activates the others.

Mindset, as always, is the foundation—the gear you can engage immediately.

This is where you explore the beliefs you hold that orient how you handle situations and interpret what is going on.

As you cultivate your Mindset, you start spinning the Awareness gear. This is where you explore the question: "Who are you as a leader?" Are you resilient? Courageous? Adaptable? Compassionate?

Your answers to these questions typically result in an increased focus on self-leadership and emotional intelligence skills.

The final gear is Competencies.

This refers to the technical training and executing abilities you have gained throughout your career. You see, as you develop clarity around your Mindset and Awareness, how you carry out your Competencies shifts. This shift is driven by the insights you gain about who you are as a leader.

Leaders who use this framework to develop their leadership capacity empower themselves.

It prepares you to meet whatever challenges arise.

Furthermore, the iterative nature of this model ensures your continuous evolution as a leader. Investing in your leadership capacity better positions you to select and develop the leaders who will carry the organization forward. This systematic approach to capacity development is what transforms succession planning from an organizational process into a personal practice.

Your Leadership Evolution ✨

Personal succession planning isn't about replacing yourself. It's about consciously designing your evolution as a leader.

Just as organizations identify critical roles and systematically develop successors, you must identify which aspects of your leadership capacity need evolution. Your personal succession planning requires the same intentional development of all 3 gears:

➡️ Evolving your beliefs about leadership
➡️ Deepening your self-knowledge
➡️ Expanding your competencies to match future demands

This might mean shifting from a mindset focused on individual achievement to one that prioritizes team development. Or developing greater self-awareness about how your leadership style impacts others before stepping into broader organizational responsibilities.

When you approach your development with the same intentionality that organizations bring to succession planning, you create your own leadership pipeline.

You become the leader who can navigate whatever challenges emerge, while simultaneously preparing to pass that wisdom forward.

FROM INSIGHT TO ACTION
Putting It Into Practice

Your Personal Leadership Succession Framework

1. Assess Your Current Leadership Capacity Take inventory of where you are now across all 3 areas of the Mindset Awareness Competencies framework. What beliefs currently drive your leadership? How well do you know yourself as a leader? What competencies do you bring to your role?

2. Identify Your Next-Level Leadership Requirements Based on your current trajectory and emerging challenges in your field, what kind of leader will you need to become? What new mindsets must you develop? What aspects of your self-leadership need strengthening? What new competencies will be required?

3. Design Your Development Plan Create a systematic approach to bridge the gap between who you are now and who you must become. Identify specific experiences, learning opportunities, and practices that will develop each area of your leadership capacity.

DEEPENING YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Resources for You

🔎 Evidence-based insights on leadership transitions (Link)

🔑 How to marry succession planning with leadership development (Link)

📚 Application of the Mindset Awareness Competencies framework to build better leaders (Link)

EXCELLENCE UNBOUNDED
How I Can Help You

High-performing executive teams don’t happen by chance. They happen by design.

Aligned Senior Leaders Are:

✅ 1.9x more likely to achieve above-average financial performance
✅ 2.5x more likely to have satisfied and engaged employees

Aligned Companies Are:

✅ 58% faster revenue growth
✅ 72% more profitable

Misaligned companies underperform in the following ways:

❌ 50% lower ROIC
❌ 18% lower EBITDA
❌ 25% loss of revenue
❌ Reduced productivity
❌ Slower strategic execution

Book a call to learn more about The Executive Alignment Playbook 🚀, an immersive, experiential leadership program.

Realign your leadership team. Accelerate execution. Drive measurable results.

🎤 Speaking Engagements: My mom can attest to the fact that I LOVE to talk. 😂 Now, I put that talent to work delivering talks on Mindset, Courage, Resilience, & Innovation.

A few past clients include KraftHeinz, Amazon Women @ Payments, PAHEi, & the Panamá Chapter of the International Coaching Federation (I delivered this talk in Spanish).

If you are interested in having me speak at your event, please fill out this form.

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD 📢

Until next Sunday,

Shawnette