Published in Career Advice

Jonathan

The Effective Project Manager

August 10, 2025

Why You Should Train Your Successor

Stuck in your role while others get promoted? Discover the counterintuitive strategy that gets managers promoted 2.4x faster: developing your replacement.

Hint: The benefits for you are massive.

A manager, let's call her Sarah, worked 60-hour weeks for three years straight. She answered every urgent email, handled every client crisis, and made every important decision herself. When promotion time came, leadership passed her over.

Why? "We can't afford to lose you in your current role," they said. "No one else knows how to do what you do." Meanwhile, a colleague who delegated effectively and trained her team got promoted to director.

Sarah had built a prison by making herself irreplaceable.

Sarah isn't alone.

A 2023 study of 847 middle managers across Fortune 500 companies revealed a startling pattern: managers who actively developed successors were promoted 2.4x faster than those who didn't. Yet 68% of managers admitted they avoided training others, fearing it would make them expendable.

The irony? The very behavior they thought protected their jobs was the barrier preventing their advancement. They fall into what I call the "indispensability trap," where their very competence becomes their career ceiling.

The Hidden Cost of Being Irreplaceable

Most managers fear the same trap: "If I train someone to do my job, they'll replace me." This fear creates a vicious cycle that destroys careers more effectively than any external threat.

First, you become overwhelmed with tasks only you can handle. Your days fill with urgent-but-routine decisions that could be delegated. You spend time approving expense reports instead of developing strategy. You attend every meeting because "no one else understands the context." Your calendar becomes a monument to micromanagement.

Then, you miss strategic opportunities that lead to advancement. While you're trapped in operational work, your peers are building relationships with senior leadership, spearheading innovation projects, and positioning themselves as strategic thinkers. They're visible for the right reason while you're invisible despite working twice as hard.

Finally, you watch others advance while you remain trapped. The promotion you've been working toward for years goes to someone who seems to work less but accomplish more. Leadership justifies their decision with devastating logic: they can't risk moving you because you're the only one who knows how to do your current job.

This isn't recognition. It's career death by indispensability.

The Strategic Power of Succession Planning

Break this cycle by developing your successor, and three powerful transformations happen that directly accelerate your career:

First, you gain strategic time. When someone else handles your routine decisions and daily operations, you focus on high-impact work that showcases your leadership potential. Instead of reviewing every deliverable, you're designing new systems. Instead of fighting fires, you're preventing them. You start thinking like your boss instead of just executing tasks.

This shift is visible to leadership and they see you operating at the next level.

Second, you demonstrate executive readiness. Senior leaders don't just manage tasks; they multiply talent.

Let me say that again.

Senior leaders don't just manage tasks; they multiply talent.

When you develop others, you prove you can scale beyond your individual contributions. Each unit of your time gets you a greater result.

You show that your impact isn't limited to your personal output but extends to the growth and success of others. This signals you're ready for roles where developing people is the primary responsibility.

Third, you create organizational resilience. When you develop others, you improve the ability of your whole company to endure difficulties. Your team continues performing when you're away, sick, or promoted. Projects don't stall when you take vacation. Client relationships don't depend on your personal involvement. Leadership notices this stability and trusts you with more critical initiatives because they know your systems will survive your success.

But perhaps most importantly, you transform from a task executor to a force multiplier. The exact transformation leadership looks for when considering promotions.

Confronting Your Fears: The Mental Shift

Before diving into tactics, you must address the psychological barriers that keep most managers trapped in operational work.

Fear: "What if they surpass me?" Reframe: Celebrate it.

Leaders who develop high performers become known as talent magnets. Organizations promote these people to roles where they can develop even more talent. Your reputation becomes "the person who creates leaders," not "the person who hoards knowledge." When your protégé gets promoted, you get credit for their development. When they succeed in their new role, they remember who prepared them and they become advocates for your advancement.

Fear: "What if I lose control?" Reframe: You gain influence.

Control is an illusion that exhausts you. Influence is a force multiplier that elevates you. When people succeed because of your mentorship, they become advocates for your leadership throughout the organization. They carry your methods, values, and thinking into new areas. Your influence expands beyond your direct reports to their teams, their projects, and their decisions.

Fear: "What if they make mistakes?" Reframe: Mistakes create learning.

Perfect execution isn't the goal. Developing capability is. When someone makes a mistake under your guidance, you both learn. They learn how to handle challenges independently, and you learn how to coach more effectively. These mistakes happen while you're there to guide recovery, not after you've been promoted and left them unprepared.

Fear: "What if leadership thinks I'm not needed?" Reframe: They'll think you're ready.

Organizations don't promote people they can't replace; they promote people who have already replaced themselves. When you develop someone capable of handling your current responsibilities, leadership sees you as ready for bigger challenges.

"But My Company Doesn't Reward This": Navigating Toxic Cultures

Let's address the elephant in the room: what if you work somewhere that punishes collaboration and rewards hoarding? Here are three strategies for toxic environments:

Strategy 1: The Stealth Approach Don't announce you're developing a successor. Frame it as "cross-training for business continuity" or "building redundancy for client service." When leadership asks why you're teaching others, emphasize risk mitigation: "I want to ensure we're covered if I'm sick or on vacation." Most toxic cultures understand fear-based justifications even when they don't value growth-based ones.

Strategy 2: The Documentation Defense Create extensive documentation as you teach. When questioned, position this as "process improvement" rather than succession planning. Say: "I'm standardizing our procedures to reduce errors and improve efficiency." This protects both you and your trainee while building the knowledge base you need.

Strategy 3: The External Positioning Play If internal advancement seems impossible, use your succession development to build external credibility. Document your team's improved performance metrics. Share (appropriate) success stories on LinkedIn. When you interview elsewhere, you'll have concrete evidence of leadership capability that most candidates lack.

The Reality Check: If your organization actively punishes people for developing others, that's not a place where you want to build a career anyway. Use your succession planning skills to make yourself more attractive to employers who value leadership—then leave for a company that deserves your talent.

Warning Signs Your Culture May Be Too Toxic:

  • Leadership explicitly discourages knowledge sharing

  • People are punished for team members' mistakes, even during learning

  • Promotions consistently go to people who isolate rather than collaborate

  • Cross-training is seen as a threat rather than a business necessity

If you see these patterns, focus on Strategy 3: build your external reputation while planning your exit.

The Succession Development System: Your 90-Day Action Plan

Success requires more than good intentions. You need a systematic approach that creates measurable progress.

So let’s create one.

Week 1-2: Foundation Building

Identify your successor candidate. Look beyond obvious choices. The best successors aren't necessarily your highest performers—they're people who combine capability with growth mindset. Choose someone who asks thoughtful questions rather than just following orders, takes ownership of mistakes instead of making excuses, and earns respect from peers through collaboration rather than competition.

Conduct a responsibility audit. List everything you do weekly, from strategic decisions to routine approvals. Categorize each item: "Only I can do this," "I should do this," and "Someone else could learn this."

Be honest; most items in the first category belong in the third.

Map the learning curve. For each delegatable responsibility, estimate how long someone would need to become competent. Circle items that could be learned within 90 days. These become your starting point.

Week 3-6: Knowledge Transfer

Start immediately with one major process. Schedule 30 minutes this week to explain something significant. Don't just cover the steps; explain the reasoning behind decisions. Share the context that led to current procedures. Discuss what could go wrong and how to recognize early warning signs.

Create decision frameworks, not just procedures. Instead of saying "Do A, then B, then C," explain "When you see X situation, consider Y factors, then choose between Z options." This develops judgment, not just task completion.

Document as you transfer. Build a simple knowledge base or standard operating procedures as you teach. This serves two purposes: it reinforces the learning for your successor and creates organizational knowledge that survives both of you.

Week 7-10: Practical Application

Assign stretch projects strategically. Give them something slightly beyond their current comfort zone. Let them lead the next team meeting, own a client deliverable, or manage a small project end-to-end. Provide the authority needed to succeed, not just the responsibility.

Establish coaching rhythms. Schedule regular check-ins focused on development, not just status updates. Ask "What's challenging you?" and "What would you do differently?" more than "What's your progress?"

Practice progressive delegation. Start with decisions that have low risk and high learning value. Gradually increase both as their confidence and competence grow.

Week 11-12: Independence Building

Create safe failure opportunities. Let them handle situations where mistakes are recoverable and learning is high. When they stumble, resist the urge to take over. Ask "What would you do differently?" and guide them to solutions rather than providing answers.

Build their network. Introduce them to people they'll need to work with independently. Include them in meetings where they can observe decision-making processes and stakeholder dynamics.

Establish success metrics. Define what "ready" looks like in concrete terms. This creates accountability for both of you and provides clear evidence of progress to leadership.

Beyond Delegation: Building Organizational Influence

Developing your successor isn't just about task transfer.

Create multiplier effects. Teach your successor to develop others. When they learn to delegate and coach, your influence extends to their team members. You become the origin point of leadership development that spreads throughout the organization.

Document institutional knowledge. Capture not just what you do, but why decisions were made, what alternatives were considered, and what lessons were learned. This creates organizational memory that outlasts individual careers and positions you as someone who builds enduring value.

Build succession culture. Make development visible. Share success stories when team members grow into new roles. Celebrate others who develop their successors. Create an environment where succession planning becomes a competitive advantage, not a threat.

The Compound Returns of Leadership Development

The benefits of developing your successor compound over time in ways that transform your entire career trajectory.

Immediate returns: You gain time for strategic work, reduce stress from operational overload, and demonstrate leadership readiness to your superiors.

Medium-term returns: Your reputation as a developer of talent attracts high-potential people to your team. Senior leadership begins involving you in succession planning discussions for other roles. You become known as someone who builds organizational capability.

Long-term returns: Your former successors become advocates throughout the organization. They carry your leadership methods and thinking into new areas. Some may eventually become your peers or even your superiors. And they remember who invested in their development.

This isn't just career strategy; it's legacy building.

Your Next Action: Start Today

Your advancement depends on making yourself promotable, not indispensable. The leaders who advance fastest understand this truth: your legacy isn't what you accomplish personally—it's who you empower to accomplish great things after you move forward.

Don't wait for the perfect moment or the perfect candidate. Start with someone who shows potential and one process you can begin transferring this week. Schedule 30 minutes to explain something you normally do alone. Ask them to prepare questions and come ready to learn.

The prison of indispensability has only one key: the willingness to make others capable of what you do today. Use it, and discover that developing your successor isn't just the right thing to do—it's the smartest career move you'll ever make.