A podcast from Resonance Leadership Advisory
SuccessionHanding over, stepping up and building the leadership bench
Every company, family and country eventually faces the same moment: someone has to let go, someone has to step up, and everyone else decides whether to follow.
Succession is about that moment inside organisations. We talk to the people who stood in it and the people who stood beside them: chief executives and chairs, the leaders who stepped up and the boards that chose them, founders and heirs, and the people whose job is to have the next leader ready. What they planned, what actually happened, and what they’d do differently – so you can learn from them, and get your next one right.
For the people responsible for who leads next – CHROs, people leaders, CEOs and boards. Now and then we go further afield, to family businesses, sport and public life, and bring the lesson back to the organisation.
Three moments we keep coming back to
- Handing over – knowing when to go, choosing who’s next, and what it costs when the person at the top won’t leave.
- Stepping up – the first months in a bigger role, following a legend, and what nobody told you.
- Building the leadership bench – the internal candidate who lost, the successor nobody prepared, and what “ready” actually means.
The first episodes
The conversations are being recorded now.
Every episode will carry the full conversation in writing, so you can read it as well as hear it, and quote it without going hunting for the timestamp.
Your host
David Joshua built his first career in banking, reporting to international banking CEOs, before founding Resonance Leadership Advisory, which helps organisations get their next leaders ready. He is associate faculty at Henley Business School and a Penguin-published author.
Come on the show.
If you’ve handed over, taken over, or built the bench that made someone ready, we’d like to hear it. Pick whichever of these you have something to say about, and we’ll build the conversation around it.
- The best or worst handover you’ve seen up close, and what made the difference
- The moment you stepped into someone else’s shoes, and what nobody told you
- Why the people at the top find it hardest to leave, and what it costs when they stay
- What actually works in getting the next leader ready, and the mistakes everyone keeps repeating
- A controversial opinion about succession you’d defend in public
You don’t have to be in business. Some of the sharpest lessons come from family firms, schools, sport and public life.
Recorded online, on video, at a time that suits you.
One email per episode.
The argument from each conversation, written out – and what it means for the leaders you’re building. A two-minute read for when you haven’t got forty minutes.