How to plan for leadership changes

Top Tips

• Design succession around context, not just role descriptions: Leadership effectiveness is context-dependent – will the new leader fit in with your school culture, your governance structure (e.g. proprietor, group, national body, parent governance) or be able to meet community expectations? This context needs to be made very clear from the start. Therefore, avoid generic job descriptions as the main tool. Instead, define the key relationships and cultural expectations. A technically strong leader can still fail if they misread the context. This may also require rethinking the role itself, not simply replacing like-for-like. Leadership transitions provide an opportunity to reconsider how the work is organised and what the school needs next. Succession planning should also reflect where the school is going next, not just where it is now. The capabilities required in future leadership may differ from those that have been successful in the past.
• Protect organisational memory (the invisible asset in your school): List the 5 things that must continue without interruption. Focus on the strategic direction and vision of your school: where are you in your strategic plan, what are the next steps? It is also important to be clear, if your school is part of a group, what must remain consistent across schools, what should remain locally owned and how knowledge moves between schools.  Ask: Who holds the memory — the school or the system? Prioritise the roles and functions that are most critical to sustaining learning and teaching. Not all roles carry equal risk, and effective succession planning focuses attention where disruption would have the greatest impact.
• Make succession planning an ongoing organisational routine, not a one-off exercise: Succession planning should not sit as a document to be used only when someone leaves. It should be part of how the school operates — regularly reviewed, updated, and discussed. Build in annual or biannual review points to revisit key roles, update knowledge, and reassess readiness. The strongest schools treat succession as a continuous process, not an event.
• Plan for different transition scenarios: Consider both planned and unexpected departures. Identify who would step in immediately, what interim arrangements would be needed, and how longer-term succession would be managed. Effective plans prepare for both continuity and uncertainty.
• Build distributed leadership capacity: Avoid over-reliance on a single “strong leader” and, instead, develop leadership as a system, not a person. Do this by delegating real responsibility (not just tasks), rotating leadership roles (e.g. leading reviews, projects) so that the team get experience of leadership across your school system. Consider how you are creating middle leadership depth. If only one person understands something, it’s a risk. Also ensure that for every critical responsibility there is more than one person who understands it. No programme should depend on a single individual.
  • Create overlap between leaders, wherever possible: The biggest loss happens at the moment of handover. Build in shadowing, joint decision-making, and gradual transfer of responsibility — not just information. Incoming leaders should step into a living system they already understand, not a vacuum.
  • Grow your own leaders (internal pipelines matter): Identify potential successors early and make this explicit. Map the skills required for key roles and assess where current staff sit against these. Then create deliberate development pathways — including stretch assignments, shadowing, and targeted training — to close gaps over time. Internal candidates already understand the terrain, not just the structure, but they still need structured preparation to be ready. Clear development pathways also help retain high-potential staff, as they can see future opportunities within the organisation.
  • Assess readiness, not just potential: Identify not only who has potential, but how ready they are to step into key roles. Use evidence from performance, experience, and demonstrated leadership behaviours to understand who could step in now, soon, or with further development.
  • Invest in coaching and mentoring (especially early-stage leaders): New leaders often fail due to lack of contextual knowledge and/or insufficient support. Provide structured mentoring (ideally context-specific), regular coaching for the first 1–2 years and linking people up with experienced peers. This is critical for roles like IB Coordinators, where complexity is high but often underestimated.
  • Be transparent about succession and development: Where appropriate, make the process visible. Clear communication about how leadership development works, what pathways exist, and how decisions are made builds trust and helps staff see a future for themselves within the organisation.
  • Plan for diversity in leadership: Leadership pipelines often unintentionally reproduce sameness, and research highlights underrepresentation of diverse leaders. We should actively identify and support underrepresented talent and provide targeted mentoring and opportunities. Succession planning is also about who gets access to leadership.
• Review and evaluate your succession approach: Regularly review how effectively your succession planning is working. Are internal candidates ready when needed? Are transitions smooth? Use this to refine your approach over time, rather than treating succession planning as complete once a plan is written.

Succession planning is not about people — it is about preserving clarity, coherence, and momentum. When done well leadership change is manageable and the strategic direction of the school is sustained. When done poorly, schools quietly lose memory and end up relearning the same lessons repeatedly.

It could be said that the strongest schools are always in ‘succession mode’ — not because change is imminent, but because learning, development, and knowledge-sharing are part of how they operate every day. Effective succession planning ensures that there is always a ready pipeline of talent, rather than a last-minute search for replacements.