From Appointment to Effectiveness: Why Leadership Transitions Need More Deliberate Support

Organisations invest considerable time and resources in selecting, developing and preparing their leaders. Succession planning identifies potential successors. Leadership development builds capability. Executive search and assessment support important appointment decisions. Onboarding helps leaders understand the organisation, its priorities and the practicalities of a new role.

All of these activities are important. However, one part of the leadership lifecycle can receive less deliberate attention: the period between being appointed to a role and becoming effective within its new context.

This is the leadership transition.

It is not simply the process of starting a new job. It is the period in which a leader adapts to a changed mandate, establishes the relationships and credibility needed to deliver it, and works out how to apply their existing capability within a different environment.

Appointment and effectiveness are different

Research suggests that executive transitions can be more difficult than organisations might assume. McKinsey's review of executive-transition research found that, two years after a transition, between 27% and 46% were regarded as failures or disappointments.

That range should not be interpreted as a universal failure rate. It draws on different studies and definitions. What it does indicate is that appointment alone is not a reliable measure of whether a transition will ultimately succeed.

The same McKinsey research found that issues relating to organisational politics, culture and people featured in 68% of transitions that struggled. It also reported that only 29% of US leaders and 32% of leaders globally felt their organisations appropriately supported new leaders.

These findings are worth considering because the executives involved were not necessarily inexperienced or lacking in capability. They had typically demonstrated success in previous roles.

One pattern I have observed throughout my own work is that, as leadership responsibility increases, the nature of leadership changes.

Experience and expertise remain valuable, but broader responsibility may require greater organisational perspective, more complex stakeholder management and judgement in situations where there is no obvious answer. Visibility and scrutiny increase, while decisions increasingly carry consequences beyond the leader's immediate area of expertise.

The leader is therefore doing two things at once: performing in the new role while working out what the new role requires of them.

A capable leader can struggle during a transition without becoming a poor leader. Equally, someone who has been highly effective in one environment may need to change how they lead in another.

Onboarding and leadership integration are not identical

Onboarding plays an essential role in helping someone enter a new position or organisation. A well-designed process can provide information about strategy, structures, priorities, systems, people and ways of working.

Leadership integration addresses a related but different question: how does the leader become effective within the environment they have entered?

At senior levels, this can involve interpreting and clarifying the mandate, establishing credibility, understanding formal and informal stakeholder expectations, building productive relationships and making decisions within the context of the organisation's culture and history. It may also require the leader to recognise which aspects of their established approach remain effective and which need to evolve.

Senior roles rarely come with a complete set of instructions. They are more likely to involve ambiguity, competing expectations and complex organisational relationships.

Understanding how the organisation works is therefore only part of the transition. The leader also needs to understand how they need to work within it.

Leadership integration should not replace onboarding, executive coaching, leadership development or succession planning. It connects those activities to the reality of the role the leader is now performing.

Internal promotions are transitions too

Leadership transition is often associated with executives joining from outside an organisation. This can overlook an equally important group: leaders promoted internally.

An internal candidate may already understand the organisation, its culture, systems and people. That familiarity is valuable, but it should not be confused with readiness for a different leadership context.

A promotion can fundamentally change the relationships surrounding a leader. Former peers may become direct reports. Functional responsibility may expand into a broader organisational mandate. Established relationships may need to operate on a different basis, and decisions may now affect areas and people that previously sat outside the leader's authority.

Research also suggests that familiarity with the organisation does not remove these challenges. McKinsey found, for example, that implementing material cultural change was considered difficult by 79% of external hires and 69% of internal hires.

Internal promotion can therefore reduce some aspects of transition while intensifying others. Knowing the organisation does not remove the need to adapt when authority, visibility, relationships and expectations change.

For HR and succession leaders, there is a useful distinction here: preparing someone to be ready for promotion and supporting them after they assume the responsibility are related, but different, activities.

The transition is not defined by 90 days

The first 90 days have become a familiar framework for thinking about leadership transitions. There is value in creating early structure, clarifying priorities and building momentum. The risk is treating the calendar as the definition of the transition.

McKinsey reports that 92% of external hires and 72% of internal hires in the research it reviewed took more than 90 days to reach full productivity. Furthermore, 62% of external hires and 25% of internal hires said it took at least six months to have a real impact.

This does not mean leaders should delay action, nor that the first 90 days are unimportant. It suggests that the pace and focus of a transition should reflect the complexity of the mandate and organisational context rather than an arbitrary deadline.

A leader entering a stable business with a clear mandate may integrate relatively quickly. Another stepping into transformation, restructuring, rapid growth or a difficult succession may require considerably longer to understand the situation, align stakeholders and establish the conditions for sustainable performance.

The first 90 days may help establish direction. They do not necessarily mark the point at which a leader has become fully effective.

What should organisations examine?

There is no single transition model that will suit every leader or organisation. The demands of a transition depend on the role, the individual, the organisation and the circumstances surrounding the appointment.

There are, however, several questions worth considering when leadership responsibility changes significantly:

• Is there shared clarity about what the leader has actually been appointed to achieve?

• Are expectations aligned between the leader, their manager, the board and other important stakeholders?

• What authority does the leader have, both formally and in practice?

• Which relationships will most influence the leader's ability to deliver?

• What aspects of the leader's established approach will continue to serve them, and what may need to evolve?

• Where is early action required, and where would greater understanding be more valuable than immediate intervention?

• Does the team understand what is changing, what is not changing and why?

• What would indicate that the leader is becoming effective in the new context?

  
  

These questions do not replace established HR practices. They help connect leadership development, succession, selection and onboarding with sustained effectiveness after the appointment has been made.

Making transition part of the leadership lifecycle

For HR, the opportunity is to consider leadership transition as part of the wider leadership lifecycle rather than as an isolated event following appointment.

Leadership development → Succession → Selection → Onboarding → Leadership integration → Sustained effectiveness

Each stage addresses a different need.

Leadership development builds capability for greater responsibility. Succession planning considers who may be ready to take that responsibility. Selection determines who will be appointed. Onboarding helps the individual enter the role and, where relevant, the organisation.

Leadership transition focuses on what happens as that individual adapts to the reality of the new mandate.

This is a useful distinction because it acknowledges the value of established leadership and talent practices while drawing attention to a point at which their benefits do not automatically translate into effectiveness: the period when responsibility, context and expectations change.

Organisations already invest significantly in identifying and developing capable leaders. Paying deliberate attention to what happens after responsibility changes can help protect that investment and create better conditions for leaders to become effective in the roles they have been selected to perform.

This perspective sits at the heart of our work at Consut For Growth. We support organisations and senior leaders through executive transitions, expanded mandates and organisational change, with particular attention to what happens between appointment and sustained leadership effectiveness.