Succession planning is usually framed as: Identify critical roles, map the bench, and make sure there is always a ready‑now and ready‑soon successor in the pipeline. It is sold as ensuring continuity and reassures stakeholders that the organization’s future is in safe hands. Yet the research and lived experience behind “One Step Forward Two Steps Black: Navigating Anti‑Black Workplace Culture” reveal a harder truth: Traditional succession practices often do something else as well—they quietly lock in racial inequality.
In the book, Black professionals met all the criteria yet were repeatedly overlooked for progression. They saw junior White colleagues fast‑tracked into high‑profile stretch roles, while their own careers shifted from the slow lane into reverse. The implication is stark: If we do not fundamentally rethink succession, we will not shift the racial make‑up of leadership, no matter how many development programs we run.
Potential often is treated as a fixed, almost intuitive quality that leaders can “spot” in people who remind them of themselves. In “One Step Forward Two Steps Black,” Black employees described talent reviews where their performance was praised, but their “fit” or “readiness” for leadership was quietly questioned. The criteria used were often vague—“gravitas,” “executive presence,” “cultural fit”—and almost never interrogated for bias.
This creates a self‑perpetuating loop: A narrow, largely White leadership circle keeps picking people who look and feel like them, leaving Black and other racialized colleagues out of the “high‑potential” pool and then uses that skewed pipeline to justify why the succession slate is not diverse. This is not just unfair; it is a profound leadership risk. Organizations that rely on narrow, homogeneous pipelines limit their capacity to understand diverse markets, anticipate emerging risks, and innovate under pressure. What we often call “merit” is heavily shaped by who has historically been given opportunities to demonstrate it.
The Most Powerful, But Underused, Tool in Tackling Racial Inequality
One of the most powerful—and underused—tools in tackling racial inequality in succession planning is rigorous, disaggregated data. Black professionals in my research could see the patterns long before the organization did: who moved into first‑line management, who secured interim leadership assignments, whose career seemed to glide upward without explanation.
To make succession planning credible, organizations need to:
- Routinely track promotions, lateral moves, and acting‑up opportunities by race, gender, and other characteristics, and probe any gaps.
- Scrutinize who is listed in succession plans and talent pools against the diversity of the wider workforce and candidate base.
- Interrogate the “squeeze points” in middle management to see which groups consistently fail to progress and why.
In “One Step Forward Two Steps Black,” participants frequently described a “sticky floor”—they could see opportunities but were never chosen. Data allows us to move beyond individual stories to structural diagnosis: The problem is access to development, visibility to decision‑makers, biased assessments, or all three. Race must become a standard lens in succession analysis, not an occasional add‑on when a crisis hits or a report is published.
Too often, the response to racial inequality in leadership pipelines is to send under‑represented employees to more courses: confidence workshops, generic leadership programs, “readiness” bootcamps. The implicit message is that the individuals need fixing, not the system—a classic deficit model.
The research behind “One Step Forward Two Steps Black” suggests a different starting point: Interrogate and redesign the criteria themselves. Practical moves include translating vague concepts such as “gravitas” or “fit” into specific, observable behaviors, then testing whether these inadvertently favor certain cultural styles and using structured assessment methods (behavioral interviews, simulations, multi‑rater feedback) instead of informal “gut feel” conversations.
Several Black participants were told they needed to be “more visible” or “more strategic” without any support to achieve this. Meanwhile, informal sponsorship propelled others forward based on potential rather than evidence.
One of the clearest differences between those who progress and those who don’t is access to sponsors. Black professionals often find themselves over‑mentored and under‑sponsored: receiving advice and encouragement but few opportunities for promotion.
Strengthening Succession Pipelines
Succession pipelines can be strengthened by tracking who gets the most visible, career‑making assignments by demographic group, putting structured sponsorship in place for under‑represented talent, and holding sponsors to account for real outcomes, such as under-represented protégés being put forward for stretch roles and included on succession slates.
To align succession with equity:
- Review talent and succession processes end‑to‑end with progression targets and key performance indicators (KPIs) for Black and ethnically diverse staff.
- Create transparent paths that don’t punish non‑linear careers.
- Overhaul performance, reward, and pay systems to remove bias and close ethnicity gaps.
- Implement Positive Action programs with clear metrics, senior accountability, and an explicit focus on structural racism.
- Recognize that there are both formal and informal routes to progression; organizations need to track the outcomes of both—who benefits from each route, and who is consistently left behind.
Ultimately, succession is a governance question about who decides the future shape of leadership and on what terms. Anti‑Blackness in the workplace is not an aberration but a system, maintained by everyday culture and unexamined practices. Succession is one of the places where that system can either be reproduced or redesigned.
Practical moves include holding senior leaders to account by:
- Requiring succession plans to match workforce and market diversity with clear timelines.
- Building explicit discussion of racial disparities and follow‑through actions into talent reviews.
- Tying executives’ objectives and incentives to measurable progress on diversifying the leadership pipeline.
Rethinking succession planning to tackle racial inequality is not a one‑off project or a single leadership program. It is an ongoing discipline: examining who rises, who stalls, and who never even makes it onto the radar—and then changing the conditions that produce those patterns. When organizations are willing to redesign criteria, processes, sponsorship, talent systems, and governance with racial equity in mind, succession planning becomes more than a continuity tool. It becomes a lever for building leadership teams that genuinely reflect the talent, perspectives, and communities on which the organization’s future depends.
