How to Validate Success Profiles for Succession Planning

As the battle for top talent intensifies, organizations need to prioritize succession planning to maintain a competitive edge. Validating success profiles is a vital part of this process, ensuring that potential leaders are well-equipped to meet the organization’s needs. But what exactly are success profiles, and why do they need to be validated?

What Are Success Profiles?

Success profiles are comprehensive descriptions of the competencies, skills, behaviors, and attributes required for success in a specific role. They act as a blueprint for identifying, developing, and assessing potential leaders within an organization. Success profiles help ensure that the individuals being considered for succession possess the necessary qualities to thrive in their roles.

What Does it Mean to Validate Success Profiles?

Validating a success profile means assessing and confirming that the profile accurately represents the essential skills, competencies, and attributes required for a specific role. This process involves ensuring that the criteria outlined in the profile align with the actual demands and expectations of the position. Validation typically includes:

• Gathering input from various stakeholders.
• Analyzing job performance data.
• If necessary, revising the profile to better match the true requirements of the role.

Why Is It Important to Validate Success Profiles?

In addition to creating success profiles, validating success profiles is a crucial step to ensure that individuals selected based on the success profile are well-equipped to succeed in their roles. This process helps in avoiding the pitfalls of missing important competencies and eliminating biases that can arise from individual perspectives.

How to Validate Success Profiles

One of the most effective ways to validate success profiles is by assessing their impact on business activity. This involves gathering feedback from multiple perspectives within the organization to ensure the success profile is comprehensive and accurate. By integrating diverse insights, organizations can better measure how well the profile supports business goals and outcomes. Here’s how to do it effectively:

1. Generate a list of feedback providers

Start by identifying individuals who can offer valuable insights into the role. These may include supervisors, direct reports, colleagues, past incumbents, and members of other teams who frequently interact with the role. Select between four and eight people from different sources to ensure diverse perspectives.

2. Collect and analyze feedback

Ask these individuals to provide feedback on the competencies they believe to be critical for success in the role. To ensure consistency and objectivity, consider using a competency framework to help standardize responses. A competency framework is a structured model that defines the specific skills, behaviors, and attributes required for individuals to perform successfully in their roles within an organization. It serves as a standardized guideline to ensure that all employees are evaluated and developed according to consistent criteria. Consider using SIGMA’s Leadership Competency Framework, which outlines 50 significant skills and abilities that can be tailored to meet the needs of various roles across industries and organizations.

Once feedback has been collected, look for competencies mentioned by multiple people and consider adding them to the role’s list of essential competencies if they are not already included. If a competency needs to be eliminated to make room for a new one, revisit previous decisions and adjust based on the new information.

3. Utilize additional resources

To validate success profiles effectively, consider using resources like job descriptions and O*NET. Here’s how these resources contribute to a robust validation process:

• Job descriptions: Compare the feedback and identified competencies with existing job descriptions to ensure alignment with the role’s stated responsibilities and expectations. This step helps verify that the competencies identified through feedback are relevant to the actual job requirements.
• O*NET: The Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database is a valuable resource for benchmarking against industry standards. It provides comprehensive information about the skills, knowledge, and abilities required for various occupations. UsingO*NET, validate that the competencies included in the success profile are consistent with those recognized as essential across the industry.

4. Finalize the success profile

Once feedback is collected, compile the success profile and send it to the current role incumbent for review. Ensure the incumbent agrees that the profile accurately reflects the role’s requirements and future expectations. Address any questions or concerns through a meeting with the incumbent and the Succession Advisory Team (SAT) to resolve disagreements.

The Benefits of Validating Success Profiles

Validating success profiles is an important step toward creating robust succession and talent development processes. This comprehensive validation ensures that success profiles are accurate, relevant, and aligned with the strategic needs of the organization. Validating success profiles helps to:

Ensure accuracy and relevance: Validating success profiles ensures they accurately reflect the competencies needed for the role, providing a clear and realistic picture of what is required for success.^1,2

Reduce bias and subjectivity: By gathering input from multiple sources and perspectives, the risk of bias influencing the success profile is minimized,³ leading to a more balanced and objective assessment.⁴

Improve the succession plan: By rigorously validating success profiles, organizations can accurately identify and develop individuals who possess the critical skills and competencies required for leadership roles. Ultimately, validated success profiles contribute to a more resilient and adaptable leadership pipeline, capable of navigating challenges and driving sustained success.⁵

Enhance organizational performance: Aligning competencies with business needs through validated success profiles contributes to better performance and more effective leadership. By ensuring that the skills and attributes of potential leaders are directly linked to the strategic objectives of the organization, validated success profiles enable leaders to perform their roles more efficiently and effectively. This alignment leads to improved decision-making, increased productivity, and a stronger ability to achieve business goals.⁶

Ready to Get Started?

If you’re interested in developing and validating success profiles for your organization, our expert team can guide you through the process. Contact us today to learn more about our succession planning services and how we can help you achieve your leadership development goals.

¹ Campion, M. A., Fink, A. A., Ruggeberg, B. J., Carr, L., Phillips, G. M., & Odman, R. B. (2011). Doing competencies well: Best practices in competency modeling. Personnel Psychology, 64(1), 225-262.

² Shippmann, J. S., Ash, R. A., Batjtsta, M., Carr, L., Eyde, L. D., Hesketh, B., & Sanchez, J. I. (2000). The practice of competency modeling. Personnel Psychology, 53(3), 703-740.

³ London, M., & Smither, J. W. (1995). Can multi-source feedback change perceptions of goal accomplishment, self-evaluations, and performance-related outcomes? Personnel Psychology, 48(4), 803-839.

⁴ Bracken, D. W., Timmreck, C. W., & Church, A. H. (2001). The Handbook of Multisource Feedback. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

⁵ Rothwell, W. J. (2010). Effective Succession Planning: Ensuring Leadership Continuity and Building Talent from Within. New York: AMACOM.

⁶ Spencer, L. M., & Spencer, S. M. (1993). Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance. New York: John Wiley & Sons.