Career Development and Succession Planning Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Talent Managers, HR Business Partners and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-TPM-052

Before you join: Participants should have practical experience in HR, learning and development, workforce planning or people management.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Career development and succession planning often fail because they are treated as annual HR processes rather than operating disciplines. Employees receive vague career messages, managers avoid development conversations, and leadership teams discover successor gaps only when a critical role becomes vacant. The result is avoidable turnover, stalled internal mobility, weak bench strength and rushed external hiring for roles that require organisational knowledge.

This course equips HR and talent professionals to build practical career development and succession systems linked to business priorities, workforce plans and performance management. Participants learn how to define career architectures, identify critical roles, assess successor readiness, run calibrated talent reviews and create development actions for high-potential and pivotal-role employees. The course addresses common decisions such as whether a role needs one successor or a succession pool, how to distinguish performance from potential, and how to manage succession data fairly and confidentially.

Teaching combines short instructor briefings with cases from banking, public services, NGOs and multinational organisations. Participants work with career pathways, nine-box talent data, role-risk scenarios and successor profiles, then test their decisions through talent-review simulations and structured peer discussion. Each participant leaves with a career development and succession planning toolkit containing reusable templates, governance checklists and an implementation plan for their own organisation.

The course is designed for HR practitioners, talent managers, HR business partners and leaders responsible for building internal pipelines. It is particularly useful where organisations are formalising talent processes, preparing for retirement risk, improving internal mobility or strengthening leadership continuity.

What you will be able to do

  • Design career architectures using job families, career levels and progression criteria
  • Conduct structured career conversations using aspiration, ability and opportunity evidence
  • Differentiate performance, potential and readiness within a calibrated talent review
  • Identify critical roles using business impact, scarcity and vacancy-risk criteria
  • Create successor slates with readiness categories and targeted development actions
  • Apply the nine-box grid to support consistent talent segmentation decisions
  • Build individual development plans using 70-20-10 development methods
  • Produce a succession governance plan with metrics, roles and review cycles

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Lead career conversations with clearer questions, evidence and follow-through actions
  • Make defensible distinctions between strong performance, future potential and readiness
  • Create credible successor plans for critical and leadership roles
  • Facilitate talent reviews without allowing seniority or anecdote to dominate decisions
  • Build a practical portfolio for talent management and HR business partner roles

For your organisation

  • Reduces vacancy risk for roles with high business impact or scarce expertise
  • Improves internal mobility through visible career paths and progression criteria
  • Focuses development budgets on successor gaps and priority capability needs
  • Produces more consistent talent decisions across managers and business units
  • Strengthens leadership continuity during growth, restructuring and planned retirements

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can explain how career development and succession planning support workforce continuity and internal mobility.

  • Career development, talent management and succession planning distinguished by organisational purpose
  • Workforce planning signals that trigger career pipeline and succession action
  • Internal mobility benefits measured through retention, fill rates and time-to-productivity
  • Common succession failures: nomination bias, stale plans and untested readiness
  • Career ownership shared between employees, managers, HR and senior leaders
  • Succession planning scope: executive roles, critical specialists and operational positions
  • Business case built from vacancy risk, capability gaps and replacement costs

Participants can design career pathways and progression criteria that make internal movement more transparent.

  • Job families group roles with related capabilities, work outputs and labour markets
  • Career levels define increasing scope, autonomy, complexity and accountability
  • Lattice career paths include lateral moves, technical tracks and project assignments
  • Progression criteria separate role requirements from individual performance ratings
  • Career pathways map feeder roles, adjacent moves and destination positions
  • Skills inventories identify transferable capabilities for internal mobility decisions
  • Career architecture governance prevents inconsistent titles, grades and progression rules

Participants can conduct evidence-based career discussions and translate them into actionable development plans.

  • Career conversation structure explores aspirations, strengths, constraints and opportunities
  • GROW model questions clarify development goals, options and commitments
  • Manager feedback connects observed behaviour to future-role requirements
  • Employee career profiles capture experience, preferences, mobility and development goals
  • 70-20-10 model balances experience, relationships and formal learning
  • Individual development plans specify actions, evidence, owners and review dates
  • Development assignments selected for stretch, support, relevance and manageable risk

Participants can distinguish performance, potential and readiness using explicit assessment criteria.

  • Performance evidence combines results, behaviours, consistency and role expectations
  • Potential indicators assess learning agility, judgement, motivation and strategic capacity
  • Readiness categories distinguish ready now, ready soon and longer-term candidates
  • Nine-box grid maps performance and potential without replacing managerial judgement
  • Assessment criteria anchored with behavioural indicators and observable evidence
  • Halo effects, similarity bias and recency bias challenged during talent decisions
  • Calibration discussions compare evidence across functions, grades and manager standards

Participants can identify roles requiring succession coverage and assess the associated business risk.

  • Critical-role criteria combine business impact, scarcity, dependency and vacancy consequences
  • Position risk assesses retirement exposure, turnover probability and external supply
  • Role dependency maps single points of failure and concentrated institutional knowledge
  • Risk matrix prioritises succession investment by impact and likelihood ratings
  • Critical-role profiles document accountabilities, technical depth and stakeholder influence
  • Feeder-role analysis identifies likely talent sources and missing experience pathways
  • Workforce scenarios test succession exposure during growth, restructuring and attrition

Participants can run disciplined talent reviews that produce credible successor slates and decisions.

  • Succession slates identify primary successors, alternatives and external-market contingencies
  • Nomination evidence tests role fit, potential, readiness and mobility constraints
  • Talent review agendas sequence role risk, candidate evidence and development decisions
  • Calibration protocols ensure comparable standards across leaders and business units
  • Challenge questions test assumptions behind successor nominations and readiness ratings
  • Confidentiality rules define access, records, communication and data-retention boundaries
  • Decision logs record agreed actions, owners, deadlines and unresolved succession risks

Participants can create targeted development strategies for successors at different readiness stages.

  • Successor gap analysis compares current evidence against target-role requirements
  • Development portfolios combine stretch assignments, mentoring, coaching and formal learning
  • Action learning projects build enterprise perspective through cross-functional business problems
  • Mentoring arrangements transfer organisational knowledge, networks and career insight
  • Job rotations build breadth where future roles require wider operational exposure
  • Readiness milestones define evidence needed before successor status changes
  • Development reviews track progress, barriers, sponsor support and revised timelines

Participants can reduce bias and improve fairness in career and succession decisions.

  • Selection criteria applied consistently across demographic groups, functions and locations
  • Adverse impact checks identify disproportionate exclusion from talent pools
  • Sponsorship access examined for unequal exposure to high-visibility development assignments
  • Potential assessments separated from confidence, style and manager familiarity
  • Structured evidence requirements reduce subjective nomination and informal gatekeeping
  • Employee communication balances transparency, confidentiality and realistic career expectations
  • Data protection principles govern sensitive talent records and access permissions

Participants can establish governance routines and measures that keep succession plans current.

  • RACI matrix assigns accountability for talent decisions, records and development actions
  • Succession review cadence aligns with business planning, performance and workforce cycles
  • Bench-strength metrics show successor coverage, readiness and critical-role exposure
  • Internal fill rate measures movement into priority positions from internal pipelines
  • Diversity indicators monitor representation within successor pools and promotions
  • Talent dashboards distinguish leading indicators from vacancy and turnover outcomes
  • HRIS data fields support consistent reporting without excessive administrative burden

Participants can prepare a phased implementation plan for career development and succession planning.

  • Current-state assessment identifies process gaps, stakeholder concerns and data limitations
  • Stakeholder mapping clarifies sponsor influence, manager ownership and employee expectations
  • Pilot selection balances visible value, manageable scope and available leadership support
  • Implementation roadmap sequences role identification, talent reviews and development planning
  • Manager briefing materials explain criteria, responsibilities and expected conversation standards
  • Change risks include process fatigue, mistrust, weak sponsorship and inconsistent follow-through
  • Ninety-day action plan assigns priorities, milestones, owners and evidence of progress

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Career architecture design template
  2. Structured career conversation guide
  3. Critical-role risk assessment matrix
  4. Nine-box talent review pack
  5. Successor development plan template
  6. Ninety-day succession implementation roadmap

Who should attend

  • Talent Managers — responsible for career, succession and high-potential talent processes
  • HR Business Partners — advising leaders on workforce risks and internal pipelines
  • Learning and Development Managers — aligning development investment with successor needs
  • HR Managers — establishing consistent talent practices across business units
  • People Analytics Specialists — producing talent data, dashboards and succession insights
  • Senior Line Managers — making talent decisions and developing future leaders

Skills and tools covered

Career architecture designTalent review calibrationSuccession risk assessmentSuccessor development planningCareer conversation skillsTalent governance

Tools and standards

Nine-box grid, GROW model, 70-20-10 development model, RACI matrix

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short briefings to introduce career and succession methods, followed by facilitator-led analysis of realistic organisational cases. Participants interpret talent data, classify critical roles, calibrate nine-box decisions and build successor development actions in small groups. Simulated career and talent-review conversations develop judgement and communication skills. Individual application planning connects the methods to each participant's current processes, stakeholder groups and implementation constraints. Facilitators provide structured feedback using templates that participants can adapt after the course.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience in HR, learning and development, workforce planning or people management. Familiarity with performance appraisal processes and organisational structures is helpful, because the course uses realistic performance, potential and workforce-risk scenarios. Participants should be able to discuss their organisation's current career paths, key roles and talent challenges. Prior responsibility for succession planning is not required. No specialist qualification, psychometric certification, advanced analytics capability or prior use of a nine-box grid is required.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants need practical familiarity with HR, people management or learning and development processes. Experience running succession plans is useful but not required; the course introduces the core methods and applies them to realistic cases.

Participants should bring examples of their current career pathways, talent review process or succession challenges where organisational policy permits. They do not need to bring confidential employee data, names or performance records.

The course is suited to talent managers, HR business partners, learning leaders, HR managers and senior managers with responsibility for developing people. It also suits people analytics specialists supporting talent reporting and succession decisions.

Performance management focuses primarily on current-role expectations, feedback and appraisal. This course uses performance information as one input, then addresses future potential, readiness, career movement, critical roles and successor development.

Participants can use the career conversation guide, critical-role matrix and successor development template with their teams or HR colleagues. The implementation module helps them identify a suitable pilot area and agree practical first steps.

The five days provide approximately 32.5 contact hours, normally from 08:30 to 16:30 each day. Time is divided between instructor input, case analysis, group work, simulations, peer feedback and individual application planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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