Your succession plan has a pattern. Look at the last five people promoted into senior roles. They probably share a communication approach. Not exactly the same. But close enough that the leadership team sounds the same as it did five years ago.
That pattern isn't intentional. It's the natural result of leaders selecting successors who "get it" — meaning successors who think the way they think. The result is an approach monoculture that gets more pronounced with every promotion cycle.
How Approach Monoculture Develops
It starts with the selection criteria. "Leadership potential" usually means "leads the way our current leaders lead." A Gold Mine CEO values thoroughness and rigor. Their succession criteria rewards detailed analysis, careful decision-making, and evidence-based arguments. The people who excel at those criteria are Gold Mine communicators. Green Planet thinkers who challenge assumptions get labeled as impractical. Orange Sky doers who push for speed get labeled as reckless.
Then it compounds in the development pipeline. High-potential programs are designed by the current leadership team. If the team is Blue Ocean dominant, the program emphasizes coaching, collaboration, and people skills. Green Planet candidates who want to discuss strategy get told they need to be more relational. Gold Mine candidates who want structured curricula feel like the program lacks substance.
By the time the promotion decision arrives, the short list looks remarkably like the existing team. Not because those candidates are the best. Because the system filtered for approach match instead of approach diversity.
The Cost of Monoculture
An all-Gold Mine leadership team makes thorough decisions slowly. They analyze exhaustively, document meticulously, and miss market windows because they couldn't move fast enough.
An all-Blue Ocean leadership team maintains team harmony at the cost of tough decisions. They avoid hard conversations because the team's emotional wellbeing takes priority over uncomfortable truths.
An all-Green Planet leadership team generates brilliant strategy that never gets executed. They're so busy reimagining the future that they forget to manage the present.
An all-Orange Sky leadership team executes fast and breaks things. They move so quickly that they miss the details, burn out the people, and solve the wrong problems.
Every monoculture has a predictable failure mode. And the failure mode gets worse with each succession cycle because the blind spot never gets corrected.
What Approach-Diverse Succession Looks Like
At Forzani Group, when the leadership team engaged all four communication approaches, the organization saw $26 million in additional profit. That profit came from diverse perspectives challenging each other productively. It came from Gold Mine rigor combined with Orange Sky speed, tempered by Blue Ocean's people awareness and expanded by Green Planet vision.
Building that diversity doesn't happen by accident. It happens by redesigning the succession process.
Step 1: Map the current leadership team. Have every senior leader take the Naturally assessment. Plot the approach distribution. You'll see the monoculture clearly. This isn't a personality test. It's an X-ray of your team's collective communication pattern.
Step 2: Identify the approach gap. Which approach is missing or underrepresented? That's the approach your succession plan needs to prioritize. If your team has no Orange Sky, you lack execution drive. If you have no Green Planet, you lack strategic vision. If you have no Blue Ocean, you lack people intelligence. If you have no Gold Mine, you lack analytical rigor.
Step 3: Rewrite the selection criteria. Instead of "demonstrates leadership qualities consistent with our culture," try "brings a perspective that challenges and complements the existing leadership team." This isn't about lowering the bar. It's about widening the lens. The Green Planet candidate who seems impractical to a Gold Mine team is exactly the strategic thinker the team is missing.
Step 4: Design development for all approaches. Your high-potential program needs multiple pathways. Gold Mine candidates need stretch assignments that develop their speed and people skills. Blue Ocean candidates need assignments that build their comfort with tough decisions. Green Planet candidates need assignments that translate strategy into execution. Orange Sky candidates need assignments that develop their patience and analytical depth.
The Interview Trap
Here's where most succession plans go wrong in practice. The final interview is a conversation. And conversations favor people who communicate like the interviewers.
A Gold Mine interview panel asks detailed questions. They reward detailed answers. Blue Ocean candidates who share stories instead of data get rated lower. Not because they're less qualified. Because their answers don't match the panel's approach.
The fix: build approach diversity into the interview panel. Include at least one interviewer from each approach. And score candidates on what they bring to the team's gaps, not just how well they perform in the interview format.
Protecting the Minority Approach
When you promote someone with an underrepresented approach, your work isn't done. One Green Planet on a team of four Gold Mine leaders will get steamrolled unless the senior leader deliberately creates space.
This means actively inviting the minority perspective: "Before we finalize this decision, I want to hear from a different angle. What possibilities are we missing?" That invitation — given consistently — turns the minority voice from an outsider into an essential contributor.
At American Express, approach diversity on the sales team produced 147% growth in insurance sales. The lesson applies to leadership teams too. Diverse approaches create better outcomes — if the system protects the diverse voices from being assimilated back into the dominant approach.
The Three-Year Test
Look at your succession plan. Project forward three years. If every candidate gets promoted, what does the leadership team look like? More diverse in approach? Or a slightly younger version of the current team?
If it's the latter, your succession plan is replicating, not building. And replication means the same blind spots, the same failure modes, and the same gaps that cost money today will cost more tomorrow.
Your next promotion is an opportunity to build a team that challenges instead of confirms. Start by mapping your team's current approach distribution. Then promote to fill the gap.
Explore Lead Naturally to develop leaders who can lead across all four approaches and build teams with productive diversity.