Stopping the Revolving Door: How a World‑Class 360 Can Cut Regretted Senior Attrition
Executive turnover at the top is no longer an exception – it is becoming the norm. CEO tenure in major indices has fallen sharply over the last decade, with median S&P 500 tenure dropping by around 20%, and global data showing average CEO tenures continuing to shrink. In private equity, nearly 70% of CEOs in PE‑backed companies are replaced during the hold period, often in the first 12 months – effectively forcing sponsors to rebuild the cockpit while the plane is already in the air.
Behind these headlines sit the real horror stories: senior hires leaving inside two years, C‑suite “musical chairs” in finance, tech and sales, and whole leadership teams turning over mid‑strategy or mid‑hold. The direct costs of replacing a mis‑hire at this level regularly run to multiples of annual salary, and the indirect costs – strategy drift, culture damage, follow‑on departures, lost client relationships – are worse. Turnover is the symptom. The underlying disease is poor recruitment (which we have written on separately), fragile succession and under‑powered leadership development.
Underneath it all often sits a flawed assumption: we keep hiring A‑players (think shiny bricks) and all will be fine. But we pay far too little attention to the mortar that holds them together as a leadership team – shared values, ways of working and mutual understanding. The real opportunity is to use a world‑class 360, such as Zenger Folkman’s Extraordinary Leader, to answer three questions early and honestly: who have we got, how good are they and how do we make them better – then move deliberately from “build” to stabilise over an 18–24‑month window.
Below is a 10‑step roadmap you can use as a corporate or PE‑backed business.
1. Name the problem clearly
Stop treating churn as “just how things are now” or as purely a recruitment issue.
Persistent regretted turnover and early exits signal that not just recruitment, but also succession planning and leadership development are not doing their job.
Reliance on external hiring for key roles is often a sign that internal pipelines are weak or invisible, not that internal talent is absent.
For PE sponsors, repeated CEO and C‑suite changes inside a 3–5 year hold dilute the equity story and drag down exit multiples; for corporates, they disrupt long‑term strategy and culture and equally destroy value.
Put this in front of your CEO, ExCo, board and (where relevant) investors so churn is seen as a fixable design issue, not just bad luck.
2. Decide where you are in the cycle
At the start of a new PE hold, a major corporate M&A, a strategy reset or a CEO transition, you often do not yet know whether the team you have is the team you should keep.
Be explicit about your phase:
Build / shape phase (first 6–12 months): some swapping out and role redesign may be necessary once you see who really fits the strategy and culture. This is also when an overhauled recruitment process matters most – treating each senior external hire like an organ transplant, where the “receiving team” and culture are assessed as rigorously as the candidate, and fit is judged at system level, not just role level.
Stabilise / compound phase (12–24+ months): once the core team is set, the goal should shift from replacing to developing and keeping the team together long enough to deliver. This moves into multiple and complex areas, from board effectiveness at working with the ExCo (especially Chair and Remco) to ensure compensation is not the reason for departures, to efforts to build cohesion and leadership stability so it becomes a team they want to stay part of.
Design your development approach to support that arc: first to inform tough choices, then to underpin stability.
3. Use a 360 to answer three questions
A robust 360 – anchored in Zenger Folkman’s research base of 125,000+ leaders and 40+ years of data on what differentiates the best from the worst – should be used to answer three practical questions, not as a tick‑box exercise.
Who have we got?
Map not just titles but who actually holds influence, runs key agendas and shapes culture across ExCo, ExCo‑1 and critical functions. Active organisational network analysis (ONA) can add hard data here: revealing informal influencers, connectors, bottlenecks and hidden high‑potentials who may not show up in traditional succession lists.How good are they, individually and collectively?
Use the 360 to gather structured feedback from managers, peers, direct reports and stakeholders, then benchmark against ZF’s global dataset to see where people really sit relative to world‑class leaders, not just local norms.How do we make them better?
Identify a small number of high‑leverage strengths and strength builders using Zenger Folkman’s proven development system for each leader, plus patterns across the team, so development effort targets the biggest gains rather than spreading thinly.
This shifts succession and leadership conversations from anecdote and politics to evidence.
4. Define the cohort and success metrics
Be deliberate about scope and outcomes.
Cohort: ExCo, ExCo‑1 and selected functional leaders in high‑risk or high‑change areas (finance, tech, sales, transformation, new markets), where early turnover has bitten hardest.
Horizon: 18–24 months – long enough for behaviour change and stability to show, short enough to matter for a PE hold or strategic cycle.
Agree up front what “good” looks like:
Lower regretted turnover and fewer early exits in this population.
Stronger engagement and healthier climate in their teams.
Better cross‑functional execution and delivery of key value‑creation initiatives.
In PE environments, fewer top‑team resets mid‑hold and a demonstrably stronger, more cohesive leadership group at exit.
These become the yardsticks for the programme.
5. Establish a 360 baseline once leaders are observable
Timing matters. You do not want to run a 360 in week one, but you cannot wait until reputations are fixed and politics harden.
A sensible pattern:
Allow 6–9 months in role or post‑deal so stakeholders see real behaviour.
Run the Zenger Folkman Extraordinary Leader 360 for the defined cohort, with robust rater groups (manager, peers, direct reports, key stakeholders).
Use ZF’s global benchmarks to see how your leaders compare to top‑quartile and bottom‑quartile performers worldwide on the dimensions that drive engagement, performance and retention.
This gives you a defensible baseline of individual effectiveness and team profile, anchored in real‑world outcomes rather than opinion.
6. Make disciplined decisions in the “build” phase
In the first year of a PE hold, a major integration or a new strategic cycle, the 360 will sometimes confirm that certain leaders are not right for the journey.
Use the data to:
Swap out where necessary: if there is deep misalignment with role demands or values and limited coachability, act before damage compounds.
Reshape roles: where strengths are clear but fit is off, move people into roles where they can genuinely thrive.
Back high‑potential leaders: where the data shows strong potential and alignment, prioritise these individuals in your succession plans and development investments.
The discipline is that by 12–18 months in, most structural changes should be done. Beyond that, constant reshuffling becomes value‑destructive for both corporates and PE sponsors.
7. Shift deliberately from “swap” to “stabilise”
Once you have shaped the core team, change the stance.
The 360 becomes primarily a development and cohesion tool, not a pruning device.
The key question moves from “who do we replace?” to “how do we help this team become outstanding together?”
Stability – the same core team staying in place and getting better – becomes an explicit goal for the next phase.
For corporates, this aligns with the life of a strategic plan; for PE, it maps to the middle and later years of the hold where continuity is critical to hitting the equity story.
8. Turn 360 insight into individual and team growth
Zenger Folkman’s research shows leadership improvement is not linear: some behaviours and strength combinations produce outsized gains. Remember the aim is not just to polish individual A‑players, but to build a wall that will actually stand – strong bricks and strong mortar.
For individuals:
Use debriefs to identify each leader’s standout strengths and the specific “cross‑training” behaviours that will create the biggest lift in their overall effectiveness score.
Build focused development plans (90 days and 12 months) around 2–3 priorities tied directly to team engagement, performance and stability – not generic wish‑lists.
Encourage leaders to share a simple “here’s what I’m working on” narrative with their teams to build trust and show that growth is expected at the top.
For the team:
Aggregate the 360 data to see where the group is over‑ or under‑weighted (for example, big on drive and results, light on collaboration and developing others).
Facilitate working sessions where the leadership group decides how to operate as a fellowship rather than as soloists: who plays which roles, how to leverage complementary strengths, how to compensate for collective blind spots.
Agree a small set of team‑level behaviours and norms, grounded in the data, that everyone commits to model.
This is where you move from a loose pile of shiny bricks to a robust leadership wall that can withstand real‑world shocks.
9. Embed 360 into succession, promotion and onboarding
To stop the revolving door, 360 insights must live inside your talent architecture.
Succession planning: make 360 data a core input to successor discussions, alongside performance and potential. Ask who is already showing the behaviours you need in the next role.
Promotion: require a rounded view of leadership impact for promotions into critical roles; do not rely solely on functional excellence or stakeholder lobbying. We have recently built competency models for a client that explicitly tie ZF behaviours to technical competencies at all levels, not just leadership.
Onboarding and role moves: for internal promotions, use known 360 insights (or an early pulse followed by a full ZF 360) to design structured integration: role clarity, key relationships, team expectations, likely friction points.
You will still need to go to the external market sometimes – especially at the start of a PE hold, after a major acquisition or when a genuine strategic pivot is required – but frequent resort to external hiring then becomes the exception, not the default, because your internal bench is visible and actively developed.
10. Re‑run the 360 and prove that stability pays and defend the ROI
After 18–24 months:
Re‑run the ZF 360 with the same cohort and rater structure to create a clean “before and after” view of leadership behaviour.
Compare individual and aggregate scores to baseline, and use the global benchmarks to show how far you have moved towards top‑quartile leadership quality.
Overlay these shifts with hard outcomes: changes in regretted turnover, early‑tenure exits, engagement scores, delivery of key initiatives, and for PE, progress against value‑creation plans and the quality of the team you will present at exit.
The Punchline
This all lets you tell a simple, credible story to boards, shareholders or sponsors:
We started in a high‑churn, high‑risk environment.
We used a world‑class 360 to understand who we had, how good they were and how to make them better.
We made necessary changes early, then focused on developing and stabilising the core team.
Today, our leadership team is stronger, more cohesive and more durable – and that is visible in both people and value creation metrics.
You cannot control the macro volatility, but you can stop your own senior leadership revolving door. The route is not more recruitment; it is a disciplined, 10‑step, 360‑centred approach that helps you build the right team early, then keep and grow it long enough to deliver the strategy and the returns your stakeholders expect.