Mentoring as a tool for succession and developing future leaders

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What happens when a key person in the organization leaves — for retirement, to a competitor, or to another department? Who takes over their knowledge, responsibilities and relationships? Is it easy to find someone ready to step into a key role?

Succession is often thought of mainly as filling the most senior positions. In practice, it is a much broader process. It’s about the organization developing, early enough, the people who may take on new roles and responsibility in the future.

One of the tools that effectively supports this process is mentoring. A well-designed mentoring program connects people developing toward leadership roles with more experienced employees. This ensures knowledge does not remain only in the heads of current leaders, and future managers can learn not only from theory but also from the real experiences of others.

In brief

• Mentoring enables the transfer of knowledge and practical experience from current leaders to future ones, reducing the risk of losing key competencies.
• A mentoring program supports preparing successors, but it does not replace succession planning or competency analysis.
• Good matching and separating the mentor’s role from that of the supervisor increase the mentee’s openness and the effectiveness of development.

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• The Mentiway platform helps organizations centralize and automate mentoring programs: it provides recruitment, pair matching, Session Room, activity monitoring and reporting. The application supports scalability and continuity of the process. Contact Mentiway

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• Read related articles:
  • Mentoring and talent development in a company — how to support high-potential employees?
  • Mentoring in companies worldwide: case studies and outcomes of mentoring programs
  • Mentoring program in a company — how to design, implement and develop it? A practical HR guide

What is succession in an organization?

Succession is the planning of who may take on specific roles and responsibilities in the organization in the future. It does not have to concern only the position of a CEO or a board member. It can also include key managers, experts and other roles whose sudden loss of competence would be a problem for the organization.

Well-planned succession should not begin at the moment a position has just become vacant. Its essence is preparing the organization in advance for the change.

This means, among other things, identifying potential successors, developing their competencies, understanding their aspirations and providing them with experiences that will be needed in future roles. This is precisely where mentoring can become an important element of the broader process.

Why can mentoring support succession?

A promotion to a managerial position is not just about gaining another portion of knowledge. A person moving from a specialist role to a leadership role begins to operate in a completely different context.

They must learn, among other things, to delegate tasks, provide feedback, make decisions, build relationships with the team and handle responsibilities they did not have before. Such competencies are difficult to develop solely through training.

Mentoring, on the other hand, offers the opportunity to learn from someone who has experience in a similar role. An aspiring leader, whether female or male, can talk with a mentor about real situations, ask questions about decisions they face, analyze their own challenges and compare their ideas with the mentor’s experience.

This does not, of course, mean that a mentor should “raise their own successor.” Their role is primarily to support the mentee’s development, share experience and help them draw independent conclusions.

However, mentoring should not be synonymous with succession

This is an important distinction.

Mentoring can support succession, but by itself it is not a succession plan.

A mentoring program will not answer all questions related to filling key positions. It will not replace competency analysis, workforce planning, or decisions about organizational structure. However, it can be one element of the process of preparing talent for future roles.

This is especially important when an organization wants to develop an internal pool of people who may assume greater responsibility in the future.

From “Who can be promoted?” to “What does this person need to be ready?”

Simply identifying a potential successor is only the beginning. If the company knows that a person could assume a leadership role in the future, the next question should be:

What does the person need to be ready for this role?

It may turn out that they have very strong expert competencies but need development in people management. Or they may manage a team well but require broader business experience. Someone else might need to learn more about other parts of the organization or develop decision‑making skills under greater uncertainty.

Mentoring enables translating the general phrase “developing a future leader” into more concrete objectives.

A mentee can work, among other things, on:

• leadership skills,
• communication and providing feedback,
• decision‑making,
• delegating responsibility,
• building relationships and influence,
• managing difficult situations,
• preparing to take on a new role,
• a better understanding of one’s strengths and development areas.

Not all of these objectives need to appear in a single program. They should arise from the actual needs of participants and the organization.

Mentor as a source of experience that cannot be found in a textbook

One of the greatest values of mentoring in the context of succession is the opportunity to draw on other people’s experience. A future leader can read a book about team management. They can take part in feedback training. They can learn decision‑making models.

Only a conversation with someone who has been in a similar situation allows you to ask:

“What did you do when your best employee wanted to leave?”; “How did you handle a situation in which you had to make an unpopular decision?”; “What would you do differently if you had to make that decision again?”.

It is precisely this context that is one of mentoring’s values. A mentor does not convey knowledge only. They also share experiences that help the mentee better understand the consequences of different decisions.

Mentoring helps transfer organizational knowledge

Succession is not only about the future leader’s competencies. It is also the risk of losing knowledge, relationships and context.

An experienced manager can, over years, accumulate knowledge that is not recorded in any procedure. They know how the organization works, why certain decisions were made, whom it is worth consulting on specific topics, and which solutions proved effective in the past.

Not everything can be handed over in a single meeting or as part of a formal handover. Mentoring can create space for a more systematic exchange of that experience. That does not mean, however, that the mentor should try to ‘copy’ themselves into the mentee. A future leader should develop their own way of working.

It is rather about one person’s experience becoming a starting point for the development of another.

Succession is not only the board. Mentoring can operate on a much broader scale

In organizations we often think about succession in the context of the most senior positions. Yet a similar challenge can affect almost any area where knowledge and responsibility are concentrated in the hands of a few people.

Mentoring can therefore support the development of:

• future managers – people preparing for their first leadership role,
• first-line leaders – people who are beginning to manage teams,
• senior managers – people preparing for greater responsibility,
• experts – who may in the future take on key technical or leadership roles,
• talents – people with the potential for further development within the organization.

In this sense, mentoring can be part of a broader talent management and career-path planning. More about how mentoring can support the development of high-potential individuals, we wrote in an article on mentoring and talent development within the company.

How to combine mentoring with a succession program?

There is no single model that will work in every organization. It is worth starting with a combination of three elements: the organization’s needs, participants’ potential and mentors’ experience.

First, the organization should determine which roles and competencies will be particularly important in the future. Only then can it consider who should be developed and what mentoring goals will be appropriate for those people.

For example, if an organization is preparing a group of future managers, the program can pair people developing leadership competencies with experienced managers. The goals of individual mentees do not have to be identical. One person may work on delegation, another on communication, and another on building influence. That way the program does not become just another training for the whole group. Each person can work on what they actually need.

Good matching is particularly important

If mentoring is to support the development of future leaders, random pairing can reduce its value. However, the aim is not to find two people with identical experience.

It may be more important to match based on development goals, competencies, experience, or the areas in which a mentor can actually add value. In larger programs it’s also worth taking into account additional criteria such as organizational structure, reporting relationships, or potential conflicts of interest.

About how such a process might look, you can read more in the article on matching mentors and mentees.

Should the mentor be the mentee’s direct supervisor?

In most cases it’s advisable to separate these roles.

The relationship with a direct supervisor is different in nature from a mentoring relationship. A supervisor is responsible for results, tasks and assessing an employee’s work. A mentor, on the other hand, should have room for a more open conversation about development, ambitions, challenges and possible ways forward.

This is especially important in succession programmes. If a mentee knows that every conversation could affect their performance review, they may be less willing to speak openly about their difficulties or concerns related to a future role.

Therefore the mentor does not have to be the person who formally decides on the mentee’s promotion. Sometimes greater value lies in someone who can offer an independent perspective.

Succession should not mean: “we have chosen a successor”

It’s also worth being mindful of one risk. If an organisation labels someone a “future leader” too early, it can unnecessarily close off that person’s development path.

Mentoring should therefore support readiness for a future role, rather than assume in advance that a particular person will definitely take a specific position. It’s a subtle but important difference.

You can say: “We want to help you prepare for greater responsibility” instead of: “In three years you will be managing this department.”

The first approach leaves room for development, changing ambitions and the organisation’s evolving needs.

How do you measure the effects of mentoring in the succession process?

Here too it’s worth going beyond the simple number of participants and the number of meetings held.

If the program’s aim is to prepare future leaders, you may observe, among other things:

• the achievement of individual development goals,
• the development of specific competencies,
• participants’ readiness to take on new responsibilities,
• promotions and role changes,
• the development of the internal talent pool,
• participant retention,
• participants’ experience of the program,
• an assessment of the quality of mentor–mentee matching.

However, it is important not to automatically attribute every promotion or role change solely to mentoring.

Many factors influence career development: experience, performance, availability of positions, managerial decisions, the organization’s situation, and the activities of other development programs. Therefore, it is more accurate to say that mentoring can support readiness for the next stage of a career, than that ‘mentoring causes promotions’.

We wrote more about measuring the outcomes of mentoring programs in an article on measuring mentoring effectiveness – see how to measure mentoring program KPIs!

Mentoring as an element of a larger development system

Mentoring can deliver the greatest value when it does not operate in isolation from other HR processes.

It can be connected with:

• talent programs,
• succession planning,
• leadership development,
• career paths,
• onboarding,
• programs for high potentials,
• competency development,
• knowledge transfer.

Mentoring then stops being a single initiative that the organization runs once a year. It becomes one element of a broader employee development system.

How does Mentiway support mentoring programs?

At Mentiway we help organizations run mentoring programs from start to finish: from recruiting participants and matching mentors and mentees, through organizing sessions and working on goals, to monitoring and reporting on the program.

This is especially important in larger programs, where it’s difficult to manage everything manually. The platform can also support programs aimed at specific development groups — for example, future leaders, talents, or people preparing for new roles.

In such cases, technology does not replace the development process or the mentoring relationship. Instead, it helps the organization create the right conditions for them.

Mentoring can prepare an organization for change

Succession is largely change management for a change that has yet to happen. We don’t know exactly when a vacancy will occur. We don’t always know who, in a few years’ time, will want to take on a specific role. We also cannot predict all the competencies the organization will need in the future.

However, we can develop people earlier who have the potential to take on greater responsibility. This is precisely where mentoring can be a valuable tool.

It does not guarantee that every mentee will become a leader. It does not replace succession planning. It does not provide a simple recipe for promotion. However, it can help the organization create an environment in which future leaders develop competencies, draw on others’ experience, and better understand what the next stage of their career requires.

FAQ: mentoring, succession and the development of future leaders

Can mentoring be part of succession planning?

Yes. Mentoring can support the development of people being prepared for future roles, the transfer of knowledge, and the development of competencies needed at subsequent stages of a career. However, it should be one element of a broader succession process, not a substitute.

Should every participant in a succession program have a mentor?

It’s not necessary. It’s worth first identifying the needs of the organization and the participants and determining in which areas mentoring can genuinely add value.

Should a mentor be the mentee’s future manager?

Not necessarily. In many cases it can be more beneficial to separate the mentoring relationship from the formal manager-employee relationship. This gives the mentee more space for open discussion about their challenges and development plans.

Can mentoring help prepare future leaders?

Yes. It can support the development of leadership competencies, decision-making, communication, building influence, delegation, and preparation for greater responsibility. The scope of the work should depend on the specific person’s goals.

Does mentoring guarantee a promotion?

No. Mentoring can support development and preparation for subsequent roles, but promotion depends on many factors. Therefore, a mentoring program should not be treated as a promise of appointment to a specific position.