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Global shifts are rapidly changing the nature of modern leadership. As geopolitical crises, tariff uncertainty, and AI-driven technology transformations demonstrate how quickly established systems can be dismantled and make organizational futures near impossible to predict, boards and CEOs are asking an urgent question:
When we don’t know what tomorrow holds, how can we identify and prepare the right leaders for the future?
Russell Reynolds Associates research shows that leadership succession plans are already falling short. Boards continue to underestimate the effort, costs, and risks that accompany successful succession planning, resulting in less than half of directors believing their CEO succession plans will succeed. Meanwhile, CEO tenures are hitting record lows amid evolving role demands. Organizations are also on the brink of a looming succession crisis in the levels below, with 71% of next generation leaders expressing interest in leaving their employers. Paired with changing employee value propositions and automation-driven collapsing of the traditional career ladder, it’s clear that organizations need to act now to fortify their leadership pipelines.
The stakes are high—but not insurmountable. To truly understand who will succeed in the future, organizations need succession plans that:
- Identify leaders who can both adeptly navigate change and keep their organization steady through the day-to-day
- Get beyond executive personas to understand leaders’ convictions, holistic thinking, coachability, and clarity of purpose behind their aspirations
- Surface whether their leadership teams are committed to evolving the organization, driving transformation, scaling digital fluency, and developing yet-to-be-defined future expertise
- Develop adaptable, cross-functional next generation leaders across every function
So how do we identify and develop leaders that fit this bill? By measuring an executive’s potential—and their ability to fully unlock it.
What is potential realization? A new, future-focused aspect of our leadership assessment and development approach
To help organizations recognize the best predictors of leadership success within our changing business context, we created Leadership Portrait.
This model measures an executive’s readiness to meet immediate challenges, as well as their potential to continue learning and growing in the face of change. This is measured via one’s growth factors—their systems thinking, curiosity and adaptability, drive and resilience, and social intelligence. But these factors, while quite important, only tell half the story. The model also measures a leader’s ability to fully realize their potential by examining their self-knowledge, values and aspirations, and clarity around wider purpose and legacy.
Understood together, these components reveal whether a leader has the ability, desire, and versatility to keep evolving as the landscape transforms around them.
The RRA Leadership Portrait
Traditional thinking treats potential as static; a quality you either have or you don’t. Our research with thousands of executives reveals something more nuanced: potential isn't fixed—it’s dynamic.
The key shift to understand? Making it to the top job is not the realization of potential. As the world grows more complicated, roles will continually change, and the bar will continually reset. As such, potential realization is an ongoing journey that even the most senior executives must contend with as the context and challenges around them change.
Applied to succession planning, Leadership Portrait provides structure for deeper, rigorous conversations around inherent leadership elements that were previously difficult to quantify—giving boards a more robust way to broaden the lens on who has the potential to succeed in the future, while also understanding which leaders have the skills and competencies their organization needs today.
Leadership Portrait can be leveraged to consistently measure entire leadership teams, allowing CEOs and boards to identify talent that will evolve with the organization and creating specific development paths for high potential executives.
For a deeper exploration of the Leadership Portrait model and its robust methodology, please visit: The New Leadership Portrait: Understanding & Unlocking Senior Executive Potential
Leadership Portrait in action: Finding and developing hidden gems in the executive succession pipeline
- Case Study: Leadership Portrait as succession pipeline validation
- Case Study: Inadvertent reinforcement of bad behaviors leads to organizational unrest
- Case Study: The right CEO for a CPG organization’s IPO
- Case Study: Understanding if candidate motivations align with organizational needs
Case Study: Leadership Portrait as succession pipeline validation
After two and a half years in role, the CEO of a financial services organization realized that they needed more from their leadership team to accelerate business performance. The CEO intuitively knew there were leadership gaps in the team, but wanted data to inform any changes required. Additionally, the board chair and CEO recognized it was time to identify which, if any, members of the leadership team had the potential to become the future CEO. RRA was engaged to assess every member of the C-suite, develop a program to improve the team’s overall effectiveness, and identify whether any true successors existed.
Historically, the organization had taken a very technically-focused approach to hiring and leadership. Expertise, intellectual horsepower, and drive were prized over curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. Facing challenging headwinds and an increasingly competitive environment, it was time for a new approach.
We began by working with the CEO and board to develop a full success profile for the next CEO, aligned to the long-term business strategy and anchored in Leadership Portrait principles.
At the beginning of our engagement, half of the members of the leadership team expressed future CEO aspirations. However, our Leadership Portrait assessments surfaced an uncomfortable truth: instead of functioning effectively as a team, the C-suite was a group of relatively siloed thinkers, most of whom did not demonstrate the breadth or executive potential to progress to a CEO role. Few demonstrated the enterprise perspective and contribution required to lift the business performance to the next level. There was one exception—a talented CFO who demonstrated strong capacity for growth; however, this individual needed another five years of development to build readiness for the top job.
The results emboldened the board and CEO to substantially rethink the team’s structure and capability. In addition to constructing development plans for every member of the leadership team, the organization made a significant coaching and executive development investment in the identified long-term potential successor. Additionally, the CEO learned how to more explicitly communicate their expectations for the leadership team, both collectively and individually.
With greater clarity around leadership team responsibilities, a significantly improved structure, and an ongoing uplift in individual and team capabilities, the organization is now making significant strides in terms of market growth.
Case Study: Inadvertent reinforcement of bad behaviors leads to organizational unrest
When evaluating whether to promote a high-performing functional leader to an executive role, a large multi-national organization was shocked to learn that, while this leader achieved overwhelmingly positive performance, their relationships and people leadership were not as strong as they initially appeared.
Behaviors that impeded collaboration, fostered siloed thinking, and undermined psychological safety painted a stark contrast between a strong track record of results and a lack of followership among colleagues. While the leadership gap was clear, the potential for this leader to evolve and grow was top of mind for the company. The company engaged RRA to provide insights into this question.
Our evaluation focusing on two critical components:
- Self-awareness: The ability to recognize gaps between current behaviors and desired outcomes.
- Self-regulation: The capacity to address and adapt behaviors once gaps are identified.
The assessment process revealed that while the leader demonstrated strong self-awareness—recognizing the interpersonal friction their approach caused amongst colleagues—they struggled with self-regulation, leading them to dismiss valid feedback on said approach. Both the leader and the organization recognized that, to some extent, these behaviors had been reinforced because their results appeared to justify the methods used.
Successful change requires both recognition of the problem and a willingness to take actionable steps toward improvement. For this leader, the lack of meaningful feedback throughout an otherwise successful career had reinforced a belief that current behaviors were effective. We emphasized the importance of candid conversations with the CEO and leadership team to address these gaps and create a pathway for growth. RRA provided strategies for fostering their growth, including structured coaching, feedback mechanisms, and opportunities to demonstrate behavioral change.
Case Study: The right CEO for a CPG organization’s IPO
As a consumer packaged goods organization prepared for an IPO, its parent company needed a new CEO who could shepherd the business through massive change, keeping investors and stakeholders confident in their new direction.
Our client engaged us to assess two internal and one external CEO candidate. Via the Leadership Portrait model, RRA uncovered that, while both internal candidates had the requisite financial acumen and capabilities, only one possessed the necessary social intelligence to navigate this complex environment. Interestingly, the candidate who fell short was more tenured and vocally interested in the role. However, given the stakes around this transaction, this gap in a key growth factor was insurmountable.
The stand-out candidate scored highly across all growth factors and potential realization, demonstrating high levels of self-knowledge and clear views on their intended legacy and impact, which were deeply aligned with the organization’s mission. While they needed a few more years of exposure to be ready for the top job, their high potential realization scores indicated to the organization that this leader was worth continuing to invest in as a future CEO.
While we ultimately recommended that the organization pursue the external candidate, the board now has a specific development plan for the high potential internal leader, who will be intentionally coached within the organization’s succession program for the next three to five years. Ideally, this focused development plan will demonstrate the organization’s commitment to this executive—and dedicated leaders overall—retaining them until they’re ready for the CEO position.
Case Study: Understanding if candidate motivations align with organizational needs
When a publicly-listed MedTech organization’s CEO told their board that they were planning to retire in the next year, RRA was engaged to help establish a CEO succession process. After identifying a few high-performing internal leaders, our client wanted help understanding whether any were ready for the top job.
Given how quickly the MedTech industry is (and will be) changing, the board wanted a CEO who was both operationally strong and mission-oriented, able to guide the entire organization through ongoing transformation.
The immediate frontrunner was a successful second-in-command who indexed highly on drive and ambition, expressing a strong desire for more power. It became clear that, while this leader demonstrated a firm grasp on the harder skills and operational competencies, they needed to develop their self-knowledge, personal values, and vision for their legacy before being ready to lead a mission-driven public company. These elements of potential realization were both necessary for the business’ mission-driven culture and for maintaining resilience in the face of an extremely difficult business environment.
Through executive coaching, rigorous development conversations, and intensive master classes focused on purpose-driven leadership, this leader developed a stronger sense of their personal mission and desired impact, giving the board confidence that they were ready to lead the organization forward.
Moments of Truth: Digging deeper to get succession right
Organizations spending billions on leadership succession often miss this crucial insight: you aren’t just trying to understand who can lead today; you need to know who can continually flex and grow in a landscape of perpetual change.
To identify and develop these future-fit leaders, organizations need succession pipelines that surface executives with the capacity for intellectual agility and emotional growth. These leaders display constant curiosity about the implications of major world changes, bring maturity and courage to their responses, and adapt their organization’s strategy without disrupting the core mission or straying from their personal values.
While these elements may not be obvious in a passing interaction or a 30-minute Zoom, they are crucial to thriving in an unknown future—one that requires leaders who are deeply connected to the “why” behind their actions and decisions; who take an honest, insightful approach to their own growth path; and who understand the legacy and impact their leadership will leave behind.
Authors
David Lange leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Global Development capability. He is based in Chicago.
Erin Zolna leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Global Assessment capability. She is based in New York.
Contributors
Avani Arora is a senior member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Strategy & Excellence team. She is based in Chicago.
Joey Berk is a member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Assessment & Development capability. He is based in Chicago.
Tobias Bothe-Hutschenreuter is a member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Assessment & Development capability. He is based in Frankfurt.
Leah Christianson is a member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Center for Leadership Insight. She is based in San Francisco.
Gabrielle Lieberman is a senior member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Center for Leadership Insight. She is based in Chicago.
Peter Pickus leads Russell Reynolds Associates’ Assessment & Development Knowledge team. He is based in North Carolina.
Scott Smith is a member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Assessment & Development capability. He is based in Dallas.
Aimee Williamson is a senior member of Russell Reynolds Associates’ Assessment & Development capability. She is based in Sydney.
Stay tuned for our next Succession Stories installment, focused on developing high potential executives.
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