Talent reviews are supposed to help leadership teams understand where the organization has depth, where it is exposed, and which people could grow into larger roles.
Too often, that is not what happens.
The meeting becomes a long discussion about ratings. Leaders debate whether someone belongs in one box or another. A few names move around the grid. Someone takes notes. Then everyone goes back to work.
The process may look organized, but the organization’s leadership bench has not necessarily become any stronger.
That gap matters. Gartner research found that only a minority of managers who participate in talent reviews believe their leadership bench is actually strong, and one of the problems Gartner identified is that organizations can spend so much energy on assessment and calibration that very little attention remains for development planning.
That is the part I think leadership teams need to take more seriously.
A useful talent review should do more than describe where people are today. It should help leaders make better decisions about where people could go next, what experiences they need, where succession risk exists, and who is responsible for closing those gaps.
If the talent review does not change how people are developed, it was probably just a rating exercise.
Start with the roles the business cannot afford to leave exposed
One of the easiest mistakes to make is starting the talent review with a list of employees.
I prefer to start with the business.
Which roles would be difficult to replace tomorrow? Where would a departure create immediate operational risk? What capabilities will the organization need two or three years from now? Which positions have only one realistic internal successor, and which have none?
Those questions change the conversation.
Instead of asking, “Who are our best people?” the leadership team begins asking, “Where does the organization need stronger depth?”
That is an important distinction because succession planning should not be limited to replacing the current person in a role. It should help the organization prepare for the leadership capabilities it will need next.
The Center for Creative Leadership has written about why succession planning should build leadership readiness, not simply identify replacement names. That is the better lens for the discussion.
A strong talent review should leave leaders knowing where they have depth, where they have risk, and where development needs to begin before an opening becomes urgent.
Separate current performance from future potential
This is where tools such as the 9-box talent review can be useful, but only if leaders understand what the boxes are actually telling them.
Strong performance in a current role does not automatically mean someone is ready for a larger one.
An employee may be exceptional at running a specific function because they understand the work deeply, have strong relationships, and operate with confidence inside a familiar environment. The next role may require something different: greater ambiguity, broader decision-making, cross-functional influence, financial responsibility, or the ability to lead through change.
Potential is not a reward for good performance.
It is a judgment about whether someone appears capable of handling greater complexity and responsibility over time.
That means leadership teams need to look beyond results alone. They should consider learning agility, judgment, adaptability, leadership behavior, the ability to develop others, and whether the employee actually wants broader responsibility.
The last part is easy to overlook.
Not every high performer wants to become an executive. Not every excellent technical leader wants a large team. A succession plan built around assumptions about ambition is not much of a plan.
The talent review should create enough space to understand both readiness and interest.
Challenge the stories leaders tell about people
Some of the most important moments in a talent review happen when someone says something that sounds reasonable but is not very specific.
“She is not strategic enough.”
“He does not have executive presence.”
“She is probably not ready.”
“He is great where he is.”
Those statements may contain useful judgment, but they can also hide assumptions.
A strong leadership team asks for more.
What specifically makes us believe that? What behavior have we seen? Has the person been placed in a situation where they could demonstrate the capability? What experience would change our assessment?
This is where the quality of the conversation matters more than the framework.
A talent review should not become an argument about who is right. It should be a disciplined discussion about evidence, patterns, and development.
I have written before that clarity is a leadership responsibility. That applies here too. If leaders cannot explain why they believe someone is or is not ready, the employee has very little chance of understanding what needs to change.
Vague judgments create vague development.
Specific observations create something people can actually work on.
Talk about the people no one is advocating for
Every leadership team has employees who are highly visible.
They work on important projects. They present to executives. They are known across departments. Their names come up easily when succession is discussed.
The harder question is who is missing from the conversation.
Who consistently delivers but has limited executive exposure? Who is developing quickly but sits outside the obvious leadership path? Who has never received the stretch assignment that would allow them to demonstrate broader capability?
Talent reviews should force leaders to look beyond familiarity.
There is a natural tendency to advocate for the people we know best. That does not make leaders unfair or careless. It makes them human. But a good process has to compensate for that tendency.
Ask whether someone has been evaluated on demonstrated capability or simply on visibility. Ask which people have been overlooked because their current manager depends on them too heavily to let them move. Ask whether certain employees have had access to the experiences that make readiness visible in the first place.
Sometimes the person with the most potential is not the person with the most exposure.
A good talent review creates room to find that out.
Define what “ready” actually means
Succession plans often use labels such as “ready now,” “ready in one to two years,” or “future potential.”
Those labels can be useful, but only when everyone understands what they mean.
Ready for what?
A person can be generally talented and still be unprepared for a specific role.
One future executive may need P&L responsibility. Another may need experience leading through a difficult transformation. Someone else may need direct customer exposure, a larger team, cross-functional responsibility, or more opportunities to communicate with senior leadership.
This is where succession planning becomes development planning.
Instead of asking whether someone is ready in the abstract, ask what would have to be true for that person to step into the role successfully.
What experience is missing?
What capability has not been tested?
What kind of pressure has the person not yet had to navigate?
Those questions create a much more useful development conversation than simply assigning a readiness label.
Give every serious successor a development move
This is the point where many talent reviews lose momentum.
The leadership team identifies someone as a potential successor, records the name, and moves on.
Then nothing changes.
A real succession plan should change what the person gets to experience.
That might mean leading a cross-functional initiative, taking responsibility for a difficult customer, managing a larger team, owning an important transformation, rotating into another part of the business, presenting regularly to senior leadership, or taking responsibility during a leader’s absence.
The development move should match the readiness gap.
If someone needs more strategic exposure, another generic leadership course is probably not enough. If the gap is operational experience, the person needs operational responsibility. If the gap is influence across functions, they need a situation where they have to lead without relying on formal authority.
DDI makes a similar point in its guidance on targeted development for future leaders. Identifying potential is only the beginning. The organization has to create experiences that allow readiness to grow.
That is why I do not think talent reviews should end with a list of development needs.
They should end with development moves.
Be honest about whether the bench is actually strong
A succession chart can look reassuring.
There are names under every critical role. Several people may even appear on multiple lists. On paper, the organization seems covered.
But a chart full of names does not automatically mean the company has bench strength.
How many of those people could realistically step into the role today?
How many need one or two important experiences first?
How many are listed as successors for three different positions because the organization is relying too heavily on the same few high-potential employees?
Where would the organization still need to hire externally?
These are uncomfortable questions, but they are the questions that make the review useful.
A strong bench is not measured by how many names appear on a succession chart. It is measured by how many credible options the organization has when a leadership transition actually happens.
The goal should not be to make the chart look complete.
The goal should be to understand the risk accurately.
Have the conversations leadership teams usually avoid
Some of the most valuable questions in a talent review are also the easiest to skip.
Does this person actually want the role?
Are we confusing loyalty with potential?
Are we keeping someone in their current position because they are too valuable to move?
Has this employee been given a fair opportunity to demonstrate readiness?
Does the current leader genuinely want to develop a successor, or is there an unspoken fear about becoming replaceable?
Are we calling someone “future potential” because we are avoiding a harder performance conversation?
Are different leaders using completely different standards to judge potential?
And what happens if our preferred successor leaves?
These conversations require honesty because talent reviews deal with people, ambition, performance, and judgment. Leaders naturally want to be careful.
Careful does not have to mean vague.
I have written about how accountability works better when it creates learning. Development conversations work the same way. People need honest feedback, but they also need to understand what they can do with it.
A talent review should help leaders become clearer about what people need, not simply more confident in the labels they have assigned.
End with owners, actions, and dates
The meeting should not end when the grid is finished.
For every meaningful succession gap or development opportunity, leadership should know what happens next.
What experience does the employee need?
Who is responsible for making that experience happen?
When should it begin?
What would demonstrate progress?
When will leadership review the person’s readiness again?
Without those answers, development can easily become something everyone supports but no one owns.
That is especially true when the action requires coordination across departments. A manager may agree that an employee needs cross-functional exposure, but unless someone creates that opportunity, the idea stays in the meeting notes.
As I have written before, unclear ownership slows teams. Succession planning is no different. Every meaningful development action should have a clear owner.
Leadership teams should also revisit these actions between formal talent reviews. Waiting an entire year to discover that the planned experience never happened wastes valuable development time.
The talent review should create accountability for developing people, not only evaluating them.
A talent review should create movement
The point of a talent review is not to create a perfect 9-box grid.
It is to prepare the organization for what comes next.
A good review should create movement. Someone receives a stretch assignment. A leader starts developing a successor more intentionally. An overlooked employee gets greater exposure. A succession risk becomes visible. A development gap gets a real owner.
Those outcomes matter more than whether everyone agreed on exactly where a name belonged on a chart.
McKinsey has written about the importance of building a deeper bench of leaders, and I think that idea gets to the heart of what talent reviews should accomplish.
Building the bench is not something HR can do alone.
Executives have to participate because they control many of the experiences that develop future leaders. They decide who gets exposure, who leads important work, who receives stretch assignments, and who gets trusted with greater responsibility.
The quality of a talent review is not measured by how accurately leaders place people in boxes.
It is measured by what development happens after everyone leaves the room.
That is when a talent review becomes more than an assessment.
It becomes succession planning.