In today’s high-pressure business environment, where executive turnover is at an all-time high and recruitment freezes are becoming more common, many organisations are facing a growing leadership vacuum at the top. The Challenge: How to fill key roles swiftly and cost effectively, without disrupting momentum.
A quarter of C-suite leaders say they plan to leave within six months. Executive positions now remain vacant for an average 4.5 months in the UK and 5.2 months in the US, a 37% increase over the past five years. These extended vacancies can have a disruptive ripple effect across the organisation, demanding sometimes costly interim solutions, potentially slowing organisational growth and productivity and unnerving staff and stakeholders.
One study found the average cost to recruit a C-suite executive has increased to £213,000 in the UK and $382,000 in the US, including search fees, onboarding costs and productivity losses during transition periods
Yet while the external market tightens, a powerful alternative is already inside the business: untapped leadership potential. Internally-developed executives hit full productivity 50% faster than external hires. They stay longer, align better and cost less to retain. Deloitte research revealed that organisations with robust internal leadership development programs experience 68% higher leadership retention rates while Harvard says such companies are four times more likely to be among financial performance leaders in their industries.
If future success depends on strong leadership, then developing it from within isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a strategic imperative.
Five steps to finding your next senior leaders from inside your team:
Start with an honest review of your current leadership pipeline. Where are the real gaps? What’s working – and what’s not?
Auditing past external hires, internal promotions and development outcomes against your long-term goals (including digital and operational transformation) will reveal where processes need to evolve.
Are your current development programmes future-focused? Are they building resilience, adaptability and cross-functional thinking, the traits leaders need today?
Create appropriate measurement systems to track both development processes and outcomes, and start with pilot initiatives that demonstrate quick wins while building toward systematic approach
Most organisations sit on a goldmine of potential leaders they haven’t yet recognised. New tools, including data-informed assessments, can help spot ambition, agility and leadership potential early.
Map that talent to your strategic roadmap and you’re no longer hiring for roles, you’re developing people for outcomes.
Traditional one-size-fits-all leadership development programmes don’t work at the top. Senior leaders and rising stars need tailored development aligned to their strengths, gaps and aspirations.
Executive coaching provides a trusted space to explore real career goals, challenges and capabilities. When paired with role design and business planning, this unlocks powerful alignment between individual and organisational growth.
Classroom learning and theoretical knowledge have limited impact on executive development. Nothing develops leadership like guided experience. On the job leadership training might include:
Rotation programmes: Executives and future leaders spend time on cross-functional strategic initiatives outside their primary responsibility area, enabling them to develop mental agility, strategic thinking and helps them to gain greater insight into their own capabilities and motivational drivers.
Board apprenticeships: Senior leaders serve as non-voting apprentices on subsidiary boards or partner organisation boards.
Crisis simulation workshops: Regular simulations, virtual or real, addressing different types of organisational crises create safe spaces to practice difficult leadership scenarios with immediate feedback.
Innovation secondments: Brief immersion experiences with fintech partners, other innovators and startups.
Build reflection and coaching into these experiences to help leaders translate insight into long-term value and work with HR to design roles which optimise the strengths of each individual, as realised through experiential development.
Platforms such as Salesforce, Spire.AI and Microsoft Viva use advanced analytics and AI to systematically gather rich datasets from across the workforce, which can include communication pattern analysis from email and meeting data (with appropriate privacy protections), leadership behaviour assessments from multiple feedback sources, performance metrics across different dimensions, career history and experience data and self-reported motivation and aspiration information.
They can set goals, gather employee feedback, build skills inventories and aid succession planning, identifying current and future need and matching those with candidates who can then be offered hyper-personalised training.
While AI platforms and workforce analytics can surface insights on performance and engagement, it’s human coaching that turns data into growth, helping individuals translate them into actions and drivers for higher performance, innovation and organisational growth.
Leadership today demands more than just strategy and execution. Emotional intelligence, resilience and agility are no longer “soft skills” in the era of AI, they’re survival skills.
Executive coaching creates space for reflection, challenge, and growth. It accelerates readiness for leadership, improves retention and builds confidence in tomorrow’s decision-makers.
In the US, up to 40% of Fortune 500 companies invest in executive coaching for their leaders and listed companies in the UK are increasingly seeing the value and ROI of professional career development services to unlock internal potential and drive success.
Coaches might work with individuals, leadership teams or boards to offer an objective analysis of performance and productivity, identify room for improvement, offer spaces for reflection and professional development, audits skills and unlock opportunities for learning, experiential growth, innovation workshops and insight into those elusive, in-demand soft leadership skills so important in this era of AI and economic uncertainty.
Rialto director Richard Chiumento said: “When I work with clients, I create a trusted space for exploration – not just of leadership capability and blind spots, but also of future impact and opportunities for meaningful influence. In today’s volatile business environment, executives are under immense pressure to navigate complexity, lead transformation, and make fast, high-stakes decisions – often in isolation. Coaching offers the rare thinking space they don’t get elsewhere.
“It helps build the self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and strategic agility needed to lead with clarity and resilience. Whether it’s sharpening decision-making, enhancing communication, managing stakeholder dynamics, or preparing for generative AI and other disruptive forces, coaching equips leaders to perform at their full potential.
“For many, it’s the only space where they can truly pause, reflect, look up and ahead and prepare for what’s next. For emerging leaders, it accelerates readiness, confidence, and credibility. Time and again, executives tell me they would never have opened up, or developed so rapidly, without this kind of support.”
At Rialto, we help organisations across sectors to unlock and accelerate leadership from within. We combine coaching, data-driven insights and strategy-aligned development to deliver real outcomes.
Whether you’re navigating digital transformation, scaling innovation, or building organisational game changing capability a future-ready leadership will be your key advantage.
If you’re ready to future-proof your leadership from the inside out, do get in touch for an initial confidential exchange.
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