Professionals in higher education face many challenges. Chief among them are increasing leadership and organizational effectiveness. A variety of approaches can be used to build competencies to increase leadership that results in organizational effectiveness. For the purposes of this article, leadership is "the capacity to influence others by unleashing their power and potential to impact the greater good" (Blanchard 2010). "Organizational effectiveness is the concept of how effective an organization is in achieving outcomes that the organization intends to produce" (Etzioni 1964). Understanding leadership and organizational effectiveness in higher education constitutes a critical opportunity. One strategy, successorship, is intended to identify and develop current talent within the academic environment. This paper addresses this strategic premise in four sections: (1) understanding successorship in higher education; (2) identifying the skills of an effective leader; (3) developing leadership; and (4) why and how higher education should increase leadership and organizational effectiveness through successorship.