Enhancing Succession Planning Through the Art of Letting Go with Obi James, Leadership Coach

Julia: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go-to resource for all things workplace learning, brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Julia Nieradka, Manager of Customer Success here at Go1. Today on the show, I'm very excited to be joined by Obi James, a Finn-Nigerian leadership coach, international speaker and bestselling author, who develops global leaders and organizations to build truly inclusive cultures where everyone can thrive.

Obi, welcome to the show.

Obi: Thank you very much, Julia. I'm delighted to be here with you today.

Julia: Wonderful. Today in our deep dive, we are going to be exploring the topic of succession planning through empowerment and letting go.

Succession planning is something most organizations associate with identifying replacements and filling gaps, but you've spoken about a more human and empowering approach.

Can you start by unpacking what succession through empowerment and letting go really means to you?

Obi: Absolutely. It's very much about moving beyond the replacement planning to actually create a culture of leadership across the board, and that's right from investor level to board level to the most junior, um, members of staff within an organization. When we build leadership within the system and have that as a way of being within the system, we start to create a, a culture of succession essentially, and it becomes a way of life within the organization as a systemic uh, coach.

We tend to coach teams collectively and in these coaching programs, every individual is given, almost given permission to wear a leadership hat. And that leadership hat means that they start to build the muscle of leadership in their day-to-day interaction in the context of the work that they're doing.

And we start to move beyond people feeling restricted by the roles that they sit in to actually hold in leadership as a way of being.

Julia: And you sort of describe, uh, succession planning as building leadership capacity, system wide, uh, and not just naming the next person in line. How does that mindset shift change the way organizations prepare their next generation of leaders?

Obi: It changes the whole philosophy. Really once you see succession planning as something you cultivate rather than something you assign it becomes clear that it's not a one-off event, but actually it's a process and a journey that organizations have to be constantly involved in. It's the everyday act of creating space within your organization and allowing everyone to step into leadership, It's leaders learning to step back, gradually supporting rather than directing. And when this becomes normal and part of the fabric and DNA of an organization. resilience, um, stops being something that is dependent on individuals, but actually something that is part of the culture. And organizations see that when they, they allow their leaders or they develop their leaders to let go more and allow others to lead and to share leadership essentially.

Julia: I like that image of leaders gradually stepping back so that others can step forward or be elevated and it normalizes development as part of the flow of work.

Obi: Absolutely. it became really clear when I was writing my book Let Go Leadership. The book is essentially started out being called Get Outta Your Teams Way. I got the sense that leaders were the ones who were blocking the progression and the emergence of talent. But as I interviewed leaders and some of our exec coaching clients and, you know, across different levels, experienced leaders started opening up about actually what was really getting in the way of them letting go and, and one of the things that came up for me was actually that this system invests so heavily in emerging leaders, we do that as organizations. There's a, there are lots of programs for future leaders. There are programs for, you know, the next level down or the next two levels down, but actually the, the most experienced leaders get left behind. And there is something about, um, that level of leadership that you know, is quite tricky because a lot of these leaders build their careers and their identity within work. They're very good at solving problems. They're good at leading, they're good at coming up, um, with solutions. And these are essentially the, the skills and the ways of leadership that have led to their progressions to where they have reached and the heights they have reached with within leadership. So it becomes quite vulnerable and quite trying for us to then say to them, we need you to focus on talent. We need you to let go and allow others to step up. We need you to coach more. But one of the things that we don't look at when we are asking them to get out of their teams and organizations, we're essentially asking them to give up everything that they've built their confidence around and achieve through other people. Of course, that's vulnerable, but we are not equipping them and giving them the, the support and the confidence they need to believe that. They can let go on their legacy and, and leadership and mentoring and, and those that they build will carry on those, their legacies and whatever they leave behind.

Julia: It's so true. It's almost like leaders are asked to unlearn what once made them very successful and what still makes them very successful. And that's such a tender transition, and I think you're framing gives permission for vulnerability from leaders, and it turns letting go into like a shared growth process instead of a loss.

Obi: You know, now in the age of AI, you know, it, that fear and, and that feeling of loss can become quite amplified. And actually what we're saying is let's look at that and look at how do we turn that into an opportunity?

How do we turn that into a celebration of your leadership? Because we're seeing the impact of your leadership and we're seeing the sustainability of your leadership. And, and that's the most powerful part of this. But that is a, a space and a journey we have to create for these experienced leaders to fully embrace this idea of talent being what we need and succession planning, not being a replacement for them, but actually, building on their legacy and, and sustaining their legacies.

Julia: Absolutely. And Obi what role do trust and psychological safety play in enabling leaders to hand over the reins, as you might say?

Obi: I think they play a huge role across the board. Trust and psychological safety is needed, um, for leaders to feel, they can open up about the vulnerabilities that they're facing and, and the challenges that they are experiencing, and the heightened imposter syndrome that is coming up for a lot of them with the, as I said, the threat of AI, but also the threat of emerging talent. The future generation. I have a, a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old and, and you know, they are way above anywhere that any of us have been at that age, and, and even as a parent, you see that and you think, my goodness, you know, there's something emerging here that I'm not even sure I can contain and I'm equipped to contain.

But without the right environment, without us, within organizations who hold this power of being in learning and development and being able to influence the, the development of our leaders without us intervening and actually creating safety and intentionally building those safe environments. It is very hard for, for the change to happen.

If the leaders and the experienced leaders don't trust us and don't trust the systems we create, it's going to be very hard for them to vulnerably say, I need help and I need support, especially within systems where it is taken for granted that they know they have what they need, which obviously they don't.

So if we think practically for learning and development teams tasked with building talent pipelines, how can they design programs that don't just teach skills, but actually encourage leaders to create space for successors?

I mentor and, coach a lot of L and D professionals. I'm also, as, as you know, an ex L&D Professional. So I grew up within L and D within the corporate world, so I, I know what it's like to design programs and, and I know the pace of life within, you know, L&D is, is quite frantic and can be a lot, especially during these periods. One of the things I find with the design of programs, especially by L&D is that we don't allow enough spaciousness in our programs and the system still the same way as they do folks, uh, for experienced leaders look at L and D as being the experts. And sometimes we can trip up and actually fall into that being in the spotlight within the programs that we design, which means we take up too much space rather than allowing the space for this vulnerability to emerge. We build programs that are way too packed. Because we're trying to cover a hundred things in something in, you know, in a program that can only fit in 10 things. So we end up being a bit of master of, you know, jack of all trades, master of none and, and essentially the switch we need to get to.

It is no different from what we are asking experienced leaders to do. We need to look at how we're showing up in the programs we're designing, and for those programs we need to build in structured mentoring and reverse mentoring and start getting the younger future leaders. To, to help us with the work that we do around getting experienced leaders to feel confident in leading in today's world. We also need to build in structures, as I, as I've mentioned, where, um, we reward that empowerment and we reward collaboration and we reward co-creation. One of the things that we find in organizations that we work with is that we focus so much on tools and, and processes and systems that are, are really emphasizing individual performance. We look at career development conversations for an individual. We look at the promotion cycles for an individual. We look at bonuses for an individual. Everything is centered around promoting this feeling of me, me, me. , And yet we complain that there isn't enough teamwork, there isn't enough collaboration, there isn't enough empowerment.

So we really do need a big systemic overhaul of how we do L and D and how we design programs that are, that would encourage leaders to let go more and make sure that we're building organizations that can. Staying beyond our time within the organizations.

Julia: That idea that L&D must sort of model empowerment is brilliant. You've given a practical challenge to L and D to facilitate more, teach less.

And I think that's a shift we can all take on pretty immediately.

Obi: Absolutely. And, and I think that it's, it's not an easy shift. I think there's something about us, um, meeting ourselves in this space with a lot of compassion, and a lot of reflection. When I wrote the book, Let Go Leadership, the focus was actually on sharing leadership. And it was in the interviews that I realized that we cannot share leadership until we've done our own self work. So I had to go back and actually create a part one of the book, which is self-leadership. Because there's so much we need to unpack and unlearn ourselves so that we get to a place where sharing becomes something that we enjoy and welcome and, and we facilitate as opposed to thinking it's taken away from us.

That self-work piece is the piece that we often forget that we are not prepared for in L&D and HR, but also our very experienced leaders are not prepared for, and I think we all need a lot more support. Support to work on ourselves so that we can be much better at it.

Julia: I love that.

Obi: Could you share an example maybe from your experience where a program truly shifted that dynamic?

A good example would be in our Leader as Coach program, which is a two day program for very experienced leaders who learn to coach, but also work on live examples and challenges they have in letting go, um, across two days.

One of the biggest shifts we see is when these leaders move from being the fixer in chief and problem solver to really stepping into coaching and transitioning into less directing, more coaching, allowing space, asking more open questions, which they often struggle with. Many come in filling the airtime, that they have with solutions and they just can't be with silence. They can't be with pauses, they can't be with stepping back and allowing others to emerge because they are expected to lead.

So it's also a two-way, um, two-way challenge in the sense that they have built up parent-child relationships with their people so that people are waiting for them to come up with the solutions and they're people. Um, have had their, uh, creativity and curiosity and innovation stifled because of the culture of leadership within their organizations. When they come in with that, um, way of working, of filling in spaces, which is well intentioned, they start to realize the extent to which it creates a dependency on them. And so when we slow that reflex right down for them and they practice asking, uh, clean questions, they learn the discipline of silence.

Um, because the thinking as we know, happens in those silences. They start to see that in, in the cohort that they're working with when they hold back their people step forward. So we introduced simple structures like the grow model and, and the idea of switching hats because, you know, advice given is still needed.

We are not asking leaders, um, not to do the work anymore. They're still accountable for the successes and the outcomes of their organizations. But what we're saying to them is to, to move back from advice giving all the time and instantly to stepping back and actually ensuring that they're not taking on the problems. That their people are bringing to them, but they're actually coaching them to find ways to still meet the outcomes that they expect. So what really drives that change is the follow through. What we find after those two days is that when we have the refresher with the same cohort, six months later, they come in full of celebrations. After the session, they have the opportunity to, to walk the talk and practice the skills they've learned and see the results, which they come back. And that really reinforces the learning. So it's usually that point that they, they understand the power of coaching as leaders. And how when they create space for their people, people actually do rise to feel those spaces.

Julia: When we move from replacement planning to empowerment, planning success looks different. So how can organizations measure the impact of this kind of approach?

Obi: One of the things, organizations forget in, in measuring these approaches, and I'm sure you're familiar with that, is we forget to capture the baseline. And, and I think that's a very important, um, part of coaching as a whole, When we shift from that, um, you know, in this process and we start to shift into empowerment planning, one of those things that we absolutely must think about is how do we know that's made a shift?

We need to measure, we need to kind of be able to, to, um, sell, you know, the value of the programs that we design and we run within L and D.

One of the, the key ones we use, the team coaching, the team diagnostic assessment, is that it benchmarks teams against high performing teams. So I spend a lot of time coaching senior leadership teams and exec teams collectively over a 12 month program, the exact same way that I do the work with individual exec coaching clients, but actually doing that collectively with teams.

We find that when we start with a baseline assessment. The data shapes the team coaching plan, and even that baseline measurement means that everyone feels ownership for the journey that we're about to go on. And we don't kind of decide on what the development needs of a team or a system or an, or an organization, are based on input from one person, one leader telling us this is what we need. We tend to get a holistic fee from everyone about how the organization currently stands, what the gaps are, and what success looks like, so that when we create the coaching plan. Or the journey or development plan. 'cause it's not always coaching. They're able to kind of own the program and own the process and know that accountability is built in because at the end of these assessments, we reassess and we remeasure. And so we show them a comparison, um, graph that shows that before and after metrics and, and that really drives the movement we see across teams when we get that ownership and empowerment built into the whole system from the start, So four things. We look at team resilience, we look at internal mobility and retention. We measure innovation and initiative, and we can look at leadership behaviour, team resilience, you know, if it's a team going through a program or a cohort, can the team still perform when their leader steps back? That's a big assessment. What does empowerment look like? What does resilience look like? Has that dependency on the leader gone down? And actually the leader might have more of a life as a result. We look at secondly, the internal mobility and retention. You know, are people staying and growing because they feel trusted and supported?

We look at innovation and resilience, and initiative taking. So, our ideas emerging from across the organization, not just from the top. A senior leadership team I was working with, and we have, um, regular team coaching sessions every six to eight weeks. And for one of those sessions the CEO was unable to join. But we went ahead with the session and, and it ran absolutely fine and we came up with actions and, and she was able to kind of step away completely and step back into the next one knowing that her team took ownershipand progress the work that we were doing. You know, how often do we see leaders say that team meetings get canceled because the leaders not available. You know, what is that about? Because that already is telling me, as a parent, we are not gonna have dinner because mommy's working late. You know, that does not make sense. So, so I think that there definitely something there about how we are, we are getting and measuring the progression of, the work that we do. The fourth one we look at is leadership behavior. Our leaders developing leaders. Rather than creating dependency like that parent child relationship.

Julia: That is such a comprehensive view, combining data diagnostics and stories, and I think it really honors both the science and the soul of leadership change. And I guess if you could leave our listeners with one question, just picking one to reflect on about their own legacy and leadership, what would it be?

Obi: I would go to one I often use for myself as a parent of teenagers, and I would say, where are you holding on when letting go? Might be just the opportunity that somebody else needs to be able to step up and grow.

Julia: Let's get into our next segment, AI at Work, where we dive into how you're using AI to work smarter and how you're helping your teams to do the same.

So, Obi, what are your current personal AI priorities and advice to others?

Obi: I love AI. I don't feel threatened by AI and I, I really don't think L&D should feel threatened by AI. My personal priority when it comes to using AI is that it helps me reduce the noise. the world needs more humanity. And, and I think AI has amplified this need personally I use AI as a, as a thinking partner. I use it to synthesize ideas. I use it to explore patterns and themes. I use it to accelerate preparation for the work I do, but ultimately the work still comes from me.

I always say there isn't another Obi just like there isn't another Julia, For me, AI is such a facilitator and, and a tool that creates space for us to really do the deep work that we are, we are trained and experienced to do, and it takes away all the fluff and all the noise and all the stuff that take up our time so that we can really get very strategic in the work that we do as, as facilitators and, and L and D practitioners.

My advice is simple. Let AI do the heavy lifting. And you do the human lifting and, and let it help you amplify your, your reach, the depth of the work that you are able to do, your leadership. But absolutely don't see it as replacing the work you do, we as humans are irreplaceable.

Julia: Absolutely. I love that.

Julia: Now moving into our Future Ready segment where we talk about the future of work and how L and D leaders can prepare themselves and their teams. Obi, tell us about your take on the future of work and what should L and D leaders be preparing for? What is a trend you're currently noticing?

Obi: The future is tech enabled. The future of work is more deeply human. AI will take on tasks. It's doing that already for us. As humans, we will take on the meaning. We will take on the depth emotions. For L&D specifically, I think we must prepare leaders to navigate complexity. We must prepare leaders to collaborate across differences, to really look into how do they harness the diversity of that humanity, um, that we have within, within the workplace. I'm a certified relationship coach. I love relationships. I, I still think all I do is relationships really and, I think relationship with AI is one thing, but I think relationship with work is, is, is evolving. And, as L and D practitioners, we really must step into that building of relational capability and capacity. Um, we need to look at empathy. We need to look at inclusion. We need to look at systemic awareness, that's what's going to differentiate us, is rather than trying to be the ones that carry all the knowledge and information, recognizing that the knowledge and information is out there. What we hold and what we must absolutely protect is the humanity, is the feelings, is the emotions. It's the currency of relationships because that's the leadership edge that we have for the future.

Jules: Our final segment, this is called the learning list, and one question I have for you Obi, is what are your favorite L&D related pieces of content or resources?

Obi: My favorite go-to L&D resource is mindfulness.

I am a trained mindfulness practitioner. A book that I often recommend to people is Finding Peace in a Frantic World, um, by Mark Williams and John Casin. It helps leaders to just build simple daily habits, of attention, of calm, of being able to make right decisions and choices under pressure and overwhelm. And, and it really gets us to that grounded place where once we, we come from that grounded, present, mindful space, our decisions are much better, our leadership is richer, and all the leadership tools and skills and knowledge that we have is just applied much better and, and in a much more meaningful and deeper way because we're present.

Julia: That's wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, and I want to also thank you, Obi, for being a guest on the podcast today and for joining us. It's been wonderful to have you.

Obi: Thank you so much, Julia. I've absolutely enjoyed our conversation and I look forward to, to the future podcasts to come. I, I love your program and I'll, I'll, I'll keep, um, you know, amplifying it, but also leaning into it because I learn a lot from you too. Thank you.

Julia: Thank you so much.

Thanks for tuning into the show. I'm your host, Julian Nieradka, and that wraps up another episode of L&D in 20. To continue the conversation, send me a message on LinkedIn through the show notes. Your comments will help inform future episode and who knows, maybe we'll even feature some of your questions on the show.

We'll catch you on the next episode, and until then, keep learning.