An Exclusive Interview With Christine Mayfield

Dr. Christine Mayfield has over 20 years of consulting experience in multiple industries, including financial services, healthcare, retail, hospitality, transportation, and media.  Her areas of focus are leadership assessment and development, organizational surveys, and employee selection processes. 

Why do you think succession planning often gets deprioritized, even in organizations that value long-term strategy?

It often gets deprioritized because it’s complex—it requires quite an investment, and yet the roles are still getting filled. The roles themselves are also changing very quickly. With restructuring, redefining positions, and a very fluid talent pool, people are in and out of organizations faster than they used to be. That all adds to the dynamic nature of it, which makes it very challenging. It can feel like a moving target sometimes.

Whether there’s a formal succession planning process or not, roles are still getting filled, and that makes it easy for the process to get deprioritized. It requires a lot of information gathering, and it means getting busy leaders together to have real conversations. And it requires candor—which is something that can be difficult for people to prioritize.

If no one is clearly responsible for it, it can easily go by the wayside. There has to be someone dedicated to making it happen. It’s a big deal, and it requires a lot of effort. Sometimes it’s just really difficult to initially get your arms and your mind around it, so it gets put off.

In your experience, how does succession planning intersect with legacy? How do leaders grapple with the idea of being replaced?

I think many leaders, as they’re moving on and having someone fill their role, are also moving on to another role themselves. So they may be thinking less about legacy and more about just leaving the organization in good hands so they can move on to the next thing.

I think when people are a little closer to retirement—or at least beginning to think about it—that’s when legacy really comes into play. When leaders start thinking about their successor, they’re also thinking about the legacy they’re leaving behind: the legacy of their leadership style, their character, and how they’ll be remembered by the organization.

They’re thinking about their business accomplishments, which are certainly part of their legacy. But for many great leaders, a very important part of that legacy is the people they’ve developed over time. So when they’re thinking about their final successor, they’re often focused on how they’ve developed others and how to bring the right person into the role—not just to carry on what they’ve done, but to take the organization into the future.

At that point, legacy becomes a big deal. And having a great successor—there’s nothing better.

Have you ever seen a succession plan unintentionally reinforce bias or inequity? What can organizations do to avoid that trap?

This is a really important question. I think it happens all the time, so I don’t want to give a specific example—but it’s very difficult for it not to happen. The people making decisions about successors are who they are, and when they’re looking at who’s coming next, they can’t help but be shaped by their own mold. So yes, it does happen.

In order for it not to happen, you have to be very intentional—unless you have an amazing culture with deep reverence for diversity and equity, where it happens naturally. When you’re thinking about replacing people higher up in the organization, identifying their successors can be very difficult. It requires broadening where you’re looking to find the right people.

If you’re looking externally, you have to expand your labor pool and your search—and that requires a real investment. Internally, it’s the same. You might need to look deeper into the organization and bring forward people who are right for the future. And when you’re already looking at people further along in their careers, the organization needs a plan for how it’s going to create more diversity.

That could mean bringing in someone who’s an AI expert into a company that’s low on technology, or bringing in a woman or a person of color who looks at the top ranks and thinks, “There aren’t many people here who look like me—why would I want to work here?” The organization has to be able to convince them. And they need a genuine plan for how they want to improve on that front—and why they believe it’s a benefit to the organization.

I think that’s really important. But honestly, the best thing organizations can do to avoid that trap is to begin much lower in the ranks—broaden the pool, broaden the experience, the background, the ethnicity, and everything else people bring to the table. When they do that, they’re developing people and bringing them up through the organization, so they’re available for those roles when they come up.

It has to be deliberate. You have to be willing to invest, and sometimes make tough calls that aren’t going to be popular with everyone—because of who you’re advancing into roles. And you have to help those people feel like they belong in an organization that, right now, might not look much like they do.

Can you share an example from your work where succession planning was done really well – or where it went off track? What made the difference?

Well, I’ve worked with one client who was very, very good at succession planning. Without naming them, I’d say they’re always thinking about it. For them, it starts with recruiting—they’ll bring in talent even if they don’t have a position open, simply because they see great potential for the organization. Succession planning is always on their minds.

Companies that do this well are also constantly thinking about developing people. In this case, every leader is held to a standard of finding stretch opportunities for others and giving them visibility across the organization, so that good talent is seen and recognized. They’re always thinking about who will fill their role when they leave, or who will fill other seats on their team, so they can help advance people into the next step in their careers.

One reason they do this so well is that they’re willing to share talent. They make their talent known across the organization, they calibrate together on what good talent looks like, and they’re open to moving people around. Some leaders are better at this than others, but in general, people who are considered growth spots are highly valued. People move in and out of different areas often. Strategy, for example, is a great area for this—people learn a lot about the organization and where it’s headed, and then they can go out and have impact in other parts of the business.

They plan for this, they’re expected to do it, and they’re open about it. There’s also a lot of candor about talent. They hold calibration sessions where, if you want to advocate for someone’s promotion, you have to explain why. It’s not just one person’s opinion—they’ll ask others, Do you think this person is ready for the next level?

They’re always on the hunt for who’s going to be next, and they’re open about it. They’re also very dedicated to the value of diversity. If someone isn’t doing well in that area, people notice, they talk about it, and they try to do better.

What’s a question leaders should be asking themselves – but often don’t – when thinking about who will lead after them?

That’s a little bit of a tough one. I think, first of all, they have to ask themselves: “Where have I truly succeeded—and where could I have done better?”

But I think the bigger question is: “Where is the organization going, and who is going to be best prepared to lead it there?”

And also: “How do I equip that person to really come in, be ready, be supported, and be set up for success—well in advance of when they would actually need to step in?”

What are some practical steps leaders can take today to start building a succession-ready team?

Number one is: you have to focus on it. But I think the first practical step is really knowing your own team. Know their strengths, know where they need to develop, know what their career goals are, and what they’d be willing to do to get to the next level. Really know your people.

And sometimes, even if you think you know your team, I think you almost have to record it—jot down notes on what you know about each person so you can start to see where the gaps are.

The second step is similar, but it’s about knowing the talent around you—not just your own team. It’s important to recognize when someone is ready to move to the next level and doesn’t want to stay in their current role. You have to prepare for that, because if you overlook it, they might leave the organization. So knowing the up-and-comers elsewhere is a very practical step. You can learn about the talent around you.

And then, I think another practical step is creating some kind of structure around all of this. It can’t just happen organically. If you have a structure—a way to record what you know, a plan for how you’re going to talk to people, and a sense of what information you’re missing—then you can start to fill in those gaps.

It sounds easy, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Still, it’s hard to do anything if you don’t have that foundation in place.

Any final words for our readers?