How Do I Build a Bench of Future Leaders?
Nine in Ten Organizations Are One Key Resignation Away from a Crisis. Here’s How to Make Sure Yours Isn’t One of Them.
A Number That Should Make Every Leader Uncomfortable
Only 11% of organizations report having a strong leadership pipeline. That statistic comes from a 2026 leadership skills gap report that has been circulating through CHRO circles for the past several weeks, and it deserves far more attention than it is getting outside HR departments. Nine in ten organizations are, right now, operating with a management bench that is too thin, too underprepared, or too dependent on a small number of irreplaceable individuals to absorb any significant disruption.
The DSG Global Workforce Power Index, based on a survey of more than 300 HR leaders conducted with The Harris Poll, found that two-thirds of respondents cited succession planning as a top pain point, followed closely by leadership pipeline development. And DDI’s 2025 Global Leadership Forecast — one of the largest leadership studies ever conducted, spanning 2,185 HR professionals and 10,796 leaders — confirms the urgency: 77% of CHROs lack confidence in their bench strength for critical roles. Leadership bench strength is at its lowest point in a decade.
Here is what that means in practical terms. If your top performer, your best manager, or your most irreplaceable senior leader resigned tomorrow, do you have someone ready to step in — not just to fill the seat, but to carry the culture, maintain the customer experience, and lead the team through the transition? For most organizations, the honest answer is no. And the time to build the bench is not after the resignation letter lands on your desk.
Why This Crisis Is Getting Worse, Not Better
The research identifies several forces converging to make the pipeline problem worse precisely when it needs to get better.
First, the AI-driven elimination of entry-level and middle management roles — the very stages where future senior leaders develop their judgment, their people skills, and their understanding of the business from the ground up — is creating a structural pipeline gap. As Val Grubb’s analysis put it sharply: “Organizations eliminating middle management and entry-level leadership roles to cut costs are simultaneously eliminating the development stages where future senior leaders learn to lead. The cost savings show up on the income statement immediately. The pipeline damage shows up three to five years later.”
Second, as I wrote about in my blog on accidental managers and the lack of leadership training, the most common response to a leadership vacancy is still promotion based on technical performance rather than demonstrated leadership potential. We take the best salesperson and make them the sales manager. We take the best technician and give them a team. Then we are surprised when they struggle — not because they are not talented, but because nobody ever taught them how to lead, and nobody identified or developed that capacity in them before the moment of need.
Third, DDI’s forecast found that 71% of leaders are under increased stress, with 40% considering leaving their roles. This is not a future risk. It is a present one. The leaders who are closest to burnout are often the same ones whose institutional knowledge and relationship capital are most irreplaceable. The bench that does not exist today becomes the crisis that arrives tomorrow.
“When your company says you want your employees to be leaders, what that really means is that you want their emotional commitment to your vision. A leader’s emotional commitment is about taking on the company success as a personal crusade.” — Stan Slap
Who You’re Actually Looking For
Before you can build a bench, you have to know what you are looking for. And here is where most organizations make their first mistake: they identify future leaders primarily based on current performance. The best performer in the role becomes the candidate for the role above it. But as our blog Identifying and Developing Great Leaders and our piece on 7 Key Traits That Set Emerging Leaders Apart both make clear, performance in a current role is only one signal — and often not the most important one.
The traits that actually predict leadership success are different from the traits that predict individual contribution. Future leaders demonstrate them even when they are not yet in a leadership role. They show up in how a person responds to ambiguity, how they handle setbacks, how they treat colleagues who are struggling, and whether they instinctively ask “how can I help?” rather than waiting to be directed.
What to Look For
Emotional intelligence is the first filter. Future leaders can manage their own reactions under pressure and read the emotional state of the people around them. They respond rather than react. This is the quality that most directly predicts whether a person will be able to lead a team through difficulty — and most directly predicts leadership failure when it is absent.
Leadership tendencies while still on the team. Even without a title, future leaders support colleagues, take initiative on problems that are not strictly their responsibility, and naturally organize the energy of the people around them toward a goal. They do not wait to be asked.
A challenger mindset. As our Identifying and Developing Great Leaders blog notes, future leaders do not subscribe to the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality. They are not afraid to propose new solutions. They are curious about why things work the way they do, and they bring ideas rather than just observations.
Team before self. The people on your bench are the ones who contribute positively to group dynamics, offer their colleagues a safe space to share ideas, and do not hoard credit. They genuinely believe the team’s success matters more than their individual recognition.
How to Actually Build the Bench
Identifying potential is the first step. What most organizations miss is everything that comes after it. The Noomii leadership pipeline crisis analysis, drawn from assessments across 200+ enterprise clients between 2023 and 2026, found the same pattern everywhere: organizations identify high potentials based on current performance, then fail to provide the experiences, coaching, or stretch assignments required to develop executive judgment. The result is leaders who think like departmental contributors even when seated at the executive table.
Step 1: Make the Bench Visible
Succession planning should not be an annual HR exercise. It should be a living document that every senior leader knows, discusses, and actively tends to. For each critical role in your organization, there should be a named individual — or ideally two — who is being intentionally developed for that responsibility. Not identified. Developed. There is a significant difference. When the bench is visible, it drives deliberate action. When it is hidden in an HR spreadsheet, nothing happens.
Step 2: Give Them Experiences, Not Just Training
The research from DDI, McKinsey, and our own work at The DiJulius Group is consistent on this: leadership development does not happen primarily in programs. It happens in experiences — in stretch assignments, cross-functional projects, client-facing responsibilities, and the real-time coaching that follows them.
This is exactly why we built the Customer Experience Executive Academy (CXEA) — a 12-month intensive program designed to develop leaders through real work, real accountability, and the kind of structured learning that translates immediately back into their organizations. One of our clients, NewDay USA, sends its CEO’s personally selected high-potential leaders through the CXEA each year. As we wrote about in How One Company Attracts the Top 1%, that investment in leadership development has become one of NewDay’s most powerful tools for both attracting and retaining top talent.
Step 3: Teach Them What Leadership Actually Requires
Technical competence is not leadership competence. The person who is exceptional at their craft needs to be taught — explicitly, not assumed — what it means to hold accountability for a team’s performance, to have the difficult conversations, to maintain culture under pressure, and to represent the organization’s values in every decision they make. This is trainable. But only if the training happens before the title arrives.
This is the core commitment behind our free leadership development webinars hosted by John DiJulius and Dave Murray — accessible to organizations at every stage, covering the leadership behaviors and frameworks that separate managers who struggle from leaders who transform teams.
Step 4: Build the Development Into Your Culture, Not Just Your Programs
The organizations with the strongest benches are not the ones with the most expensive training programs. They are the ones where developing the next generation of leaders is part of how every existing leader spends their time, every week. Where mentoring is expected, not optional. Where high-potential team members are given real projects with real stakes and real debrief conversations afterward. Where the question “who is ready to step into your role if you left tomorrow?” is asked regularly and answered honestly.
The T.E.E.M. framework builds this into every stage of the employee journey. Not just for the broader team, but specifically for the high-potential individuals whose development trajectory should be more intentional, more structured, and more visible to leadership than the standard track.
The Hidden Cost of Waiting
Companies with strong leadership bench strength achieve 18% higher revenue growth than those without, according to 2026 leadership pipeline statistics. That premium is not because leadership development is magic. It is because organizations with a strong bench can execute faster, transition leadership without cultural disruption, and retain the talented people below the leadership tier who can see a future for themselves within the organization.
The cost of not building the bench is also compounding. Every leader who leaves without a ready successor means an external search — expensive, slow, and culturally disruptive. Every “accidental manager” promoted without development drives up turnover in the team below them. As our blog makes clear, lack of leadership training is the reason one in three employees quit — not because they are leaving the company, but because they are leaving the manager.
The bench does not build itself. And the cost of not building it is paid by every customer interaction handled by an underprepared manager, every talented team member who left because they could not see a path to growth, and every leadership vacuum filled by someone who was ready in title but not in capacity.
“A good customer experience starts with a good employee experience. The CX will never be better than the EX.” — John DiJulius
Start Building the Bench Before You Need It
The organizations that get this right are not the ones with the most sophisticated succession planning software. They are the ones where a leader asks, in a real conversation this week: “Who on our team is ready to lead — and what are we doing right now to make them more ready?” That question, asked honestly and answered with intention, is the beginning of the bench.
Ready to Start Building Your Leadership Bench?
My team works with organizations to identify high-potential leaders, build the development systems that grow them, and create the culture where great leadership is expected rather than accidental. Let’s start the conversation.
→ Schedule a Complimentary Strategy Call — Let’s assess your current bench and build the plan to strengthen it
→ Join the Customer Experience Executive Academy (CXEA) — The program NewDay USA uses to develop its next generation of leaders every year
→ Read: Identifying and Developing Great Leaders — What to look for before you put someone in a leadership role
→ Read: 7 Key Traits That Set Emerging Leaders Apart — The signals that show up before the title does
→ Read: Lack of Leadership Training Is the Reason 1 in 3 Employees Quit — The cost of the accidental manager — and how to avoid it
→ Watch a Free Leadership Webinar — Live and on-demand sessions with John DiJulius and Dave Murray
→ Book John as a Keynote Speaker — Bring the future leaders conversation to your next leadership event
