Meet our expert: Debbie Low, President and CEO of the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario
“How Can I Effectively Prepare My Team For The Day I Move Onto A New Role?”
Most leaders don’t get to plan their succession. Their succession plans them. A new offer arrives, a life change hits, or something else. We asked Debbie Low, president and CEO of the Canadian Sport Institute Ontario, how she thinks about succession in sport and business.
At CSIO, “readiness” isn’t an abstract idea. It’s the difference between a medal and a missed final. The non-profit delivers sport science, sport medicine, and high-performance leadership to Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes and coaches. The athletes it supports brought home 28 medals at the Paris 2024 Games.
Debbie runs an organization built entirely around preparing people for the moment that matters. Succession planning, it turns out, is no different.
01. Coach yourself out of a job, starting now, not later
“Life is unpredictable,” Debbie says. “You don’t always get to choose when a successor takes over.” Her rule: build the foundation long before you think you’ll need it. Her goal as a leader is to make herself helpful, but never essential.
A strong team should be able to function without its leader in the room. If not, the team is too dependent on one person.
02. Recruit a mirror you can’t argue with
Every leader has blind spots, and by definition, blind spots are invisible to the person who has them. So Debbie leans on her board chair, Ian Gordon, a former Loblaw Senior Executive. Because he sits outside the sport industry, he can offer a different perspective and challenge her assumptions.
An outsider’s feedback isn’t clouded by the history and emotion that can obscure your view. Who plays that role for you? If no one does, it’s time to look for someone who can.
03. Turn “who might replace me” into an honest conversation, not a guessing game
Talk directly with the people on your team who could realistically grow into your role. Ask if they see themselves in your job one day. If they do, be straight: You can’t guarantee the job, but you can commit to preparing them to compete for it.
Then get specific. Sit down with them and map out what the role demands. Be candid where they measure up and where they don’t. Sometimes the fastest path forward is sideways – a lateral move that builds the experience the top job requires.
Give feedback often enough so that no one interested in your job is ever blindsided. The worst outcome isn’t someone losing the opportunity. It’s someone feeling they never had a real shot because you weren’t honest about where they stood.
04. Loop in the people who’ll actually make the call
A development plan is only as good as the intelligence behind it. Find out what the decision-makers need to see in a successful candidate, then build those exact requirements into how you’re preparing your people for succession.
05. Make the process the prize, not just the promotion
This is the hardest part to get right but the one that matters the most. If you frame the entire plan as a competition to become you, then you’ve built a pressure cooker, not a pipeline.
Instead, make sure the skills, relationships, and track record your people build along the way have value on their own. That way, even if they don’t get your job, the work they put in still pays off for their career.
Succession planning isn’t about finding your replacement. It’s about building a team so capable that when you move on, you know you’ll be missed. But you also know your team will be just fine.
