So we are doing succession planning. We have all those successors lined up and we have assessed their readiness level. But do we tell them or not?
Its the old problem of how much do we tell the employees? There are two bad scenarios
- You tell an employee that it is lined up as a successor for another job. Everything is great but the employee starts to underperform. Its so certain that promotion is coming so it has no energy to do its best anymore.
- You dont tell it and end up loosing it as it does not see any future and goes somewhere else.
Which one to choose? It all depends on how you run the company. Do you have an open culture where everyone knows whats expected of them and you have clear goals? If you decide not to tell, make sure you have other rewards. Give feedback (good and bad), make sure the employees knows that they are not just worker ants. If you do tell, make sure you give feedback if it is loosing energy. The person you decided was fit for advancement must also be fit to receive feedback (good and bad).
Whats really important whatever you do is to make sure you have given the matter much thought and decided what to do and how to handle the downside of that decision.
