The report includes survey responses from 13,124 leaders, 1,528 global human resource executives and 2,031 participating organizations. To ensure that no individual organization dominated the overall results, a random sample was taken from any organization whose leaders comprised more than 1 percent of the global sample. 54% of leaders say the overall quality of their organization’s leadership is high, but only 41% of HR professionals view their organization’s leaders as high quality.

While leaders say 46% of critical positions can be filled immediately by internal candidates, only 25% of organizations have a strong bench.