The Metiss Group's Blog

If your direct reports are doing the same job, with the same responsibilities, two years from now, you have not done your job as a leader. Your job is to grow your direct reports and prepare them for added responsibilities or to be moved on. Poor leaders fail to groom their direct reports because they don’t have a succession plan for the activities currently being performed.

What if your direct report suddenly leaves? What is your succession plan? Often leaders neglect this important, not urgent task. Part of your plan for each direct report’s succession should be to have all key job functions documented. Don’t have time? Make it the direct report’s responsibility (maybe one of their quarterly goals) to create the documentation.

Knowing you have a plan should something happen to your direct reports will allow you to further empower them to grow and succeed in their current role or a new one (and allow you to sleep better at night).

This entry was posted on March 23, 2012 at 6:25 pm and is filed under Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.