The real cost of a leadership vacancy shows up weeks or months after the leader leaves, once it becomes clear no one is ready to step into the role.
Building a leadership bench means developing enough management depth that growth, turnover, and organizational changes do not leave your company scrambling. Yet many organizations still approach succession reactively. SHRM reports that only 21 percent of HR professionals have a formal succession plan, while 56 percent have no succession plan at all.1
Approaching succession requires more than identifying internal high performers. It means knowing which leadership capabilities you will need, where the gaps are, and when an external search can strengthen the pipeline.
Manager and director searches can both support that effort, but they solve different problems.
Build Leadership Depth Before You Need It
Succession planning often gets associated with the CEO or other C-suite positions. In practice, leadership continuity also depends on the managers and directors who keep teams operating and turn company strategy into execution.
Waiting until a leader resigns or gets promoted puts the organization under pressure to fill the role quickly. That can lead to a narrower candidate pool, rushed interviews, or promoting someone simply because they are available.
A stronger approach starts by looking ahead.
1. Identify the roles that would create the biggest disruption.
Start with the positions where a vacancy would immediately affect your team's performance, customers, or ability to execute. Ask:
- Which managers are responsible for critical teams or processes?
- Which directors oversee functions tied directly to growth?
- Where would a leadership departure leave no obvious successor?
- Which roles will become more important as the company expands?
2. Separate internal development from external recruiting.
Your strongest future leader may already be on the team. Give internal candidates opportunities to take on larger responsibilities and determine where development can close a gap.
At the same time, don't assume that a high-performing employee is automatically prepared for the next level. Gallup found that only 32 percent of employees hoping to move into a new role within the next year strongly agreed that they had the skills needed to excel in that role.2
Development and recruiting should work together. Build the people you already have while staying open to the experience and capabilities that may need to come from outside.
Manager and Director Searches Solve Different Problems
A manager and a director may both be considered mid-level leaders, but the organization usually needs something different from each.
A manager search is often about strengthening execution at the team level. A director search tends to address broader functional leadership and organizational direction.
1. Manager searches strengthen day-to-day leadership.
Managers are close to the work. They lead people, monitor performance, resolve operational issues, and make sure plans get carried out.
That proximity gives the role an outsized effect on team performance. Gallup's analysis of 183,806 teams found that managers account for 70 percent of the variance in team-level employee engagement. The most-engaged teams were also 23 percent more profitable and 14 percent more productive based on production records or evaluations than teams in the bottom engagement quartile.3
A strong individual contributor isn't automatically a strong manager. A manager search should weigh leadership ability, coaching skills, and the ability to create consistent performance alongside technical expertise.
2. Director searches add functional depth.
Directors typically operate at a much higher level. They may oversee multiple teams, manage larger budgets, work across departments, and help translate broader company goals into functional strategy.
That means a director search can be especially valuable when the organization has capable managers but lacks someone who can connect their work to larger business objectives.
The question becomes less about whether someone can manage a team and more about whether they can lead through other leaders, which is exactly the distinction a manager search and a director search are each built to answer.
Read more: Hiring a CEO: A Guide to Finding Your Company's Next Leader
Make Bench-Building an Active Process
Once you know where the gaps are, the next step is to stop treating succession as something that happens only when a position opens.
1. Map future leadership needs.
Look at where the company expects to be in the next two to three years.
Growth, new locations, acquisitions, new products, and organizational restructuring can all create leadership requirements before a formal position exists.
A company preparing to double the size of a function may need to start looking for its next layer of leadership well before the org chart officially changes.
2. Keep conversations going with strong candidates.
This is where proactive recruiting becomes useful.
The strongest manager or director for your organization may not be looking for a new role today. If you wait until the position opens, you are limiting your search to whoever happens to be available at that moment.
Building relationships earlier gives your organization more options when the timing eventually becomes right.
3. Create a pipeline instead of a one-time shortlist.
A leadership bench is an ongoing understanding of who could potentially strengthen the organization and where each person might fit.
That means keeping track of candidates who have the right experience, leadership style, and career goals.
At Journey Search Partners, Access, one of our PATH principles, supports this approach by reaching candidates before they are actively on the market. Instead of starting from zero when a manager or director leaves, companies can build relationships with potential leaders before the need becomes urgent.
Read more: Partnering With a Recruitment Agency to Hire: What to Expect
Turn succession planning into a hiring strategy.
Building a leadership bench gives your organization more control over its next leadership move. You can develop internal talent where it makes sense, recruit externally where the capability is missing, and begin conversations before a vacancy forces the issue.
Most importantly, manager and director searches should reflect what the organization will need next.
If you're planning for future leadership needs or facing a gap in your management team, contact Journey Search Partners today for a Direct Hire or Executive Recruiting search.
References
- Pitter, Prudence. “Own the Future: How HR Can Add Value to the Succession Planning Process.” SHRM, 5 Apr. 2024, https://www.shrm.org/executive-network/insights/people-strategy/own-future-hr-add-value-succession-planning-spring-2024
- Tatel, Corey and Mulherin, Megan. “Addressing the Barriers Blocking Employee Development.” Gallup, 21 Jul. 2025, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/692642/addressing-barriers-blocking-employee-development.aspx
- "Gallup's Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th Edition." Gallup, 2024, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/321725/gallup-q12-meta-analysis-report.aspx
