Humanergy Leadership Podcast

Succession planning usually gets assigned to HR, the CEO, or the board, and everyone else waits to be told what to do. That waiting is where succession plans stall.

When someone else formally owns succession, it’s easy to treat it as their project and show up as a participant. Then a retirement gets announced, or a health issue forces a sudden exit, and the final weeks turn into a scramble to hand off work nobody was prepared to pick up.

In this free Humanergy workshop, coach Corey Fernandez walks through five practices any leader can start on now, whether their exit is two years away or ten.

Corey draws on his executive coaching work, including a two-year exit plan built with sticky notes on a wall and the way financial advisors introduce clients to their successors years in advance.

Humanergy is a Michigan-based leadership development firm that has worked with leaders and teams since 2000. These workshops are free and run the second Wednesday of each month. Register at humanergy.com.

Watch with your own role in mind, and pass it along to a colleague who’s carrying a lot of work only they know how to do.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

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When you and a colleague are locked in opposing positions, the conflict usually gets worse, not better. In this short episode, David Wheatley walks through four steps from Humanergy’s Green Path: engage the right person directly, align on what success looks like, learn from each other’s perspectives, and coordinate next steps based on facts. He explains why this one practice has been the answer to many of the challenges leaders have brought to him in coaching recently. 

Humanergy is a leadership development firm that helps organizations solve business problems by developing their leaders; learn more at humanergy.com.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

Join the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.

Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops. 

When plans keep changing during a period of rapid growth, it's easy to start wondering if you're the problem. Humanergy coaches Jim Marshall and Quay Eady take on a scenario from a director leading a team through a post-acquisition scale-up who is frazzled, defensive, and doubting herself. They use Humanergy's CIMA tool to separate what's in your control from what isn't, and share practical ways to plan for change, respond to new ideas without getting defensive, and bring your team into the change instead of pushing it onto them. 

Humanergy has been doing leadership development and coaching since 2000. Learn more at humanergy.com.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

Join the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.

Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops. 

When a CEO leaves, the entire organization goes through the transition, and how the exit is handled shapes what the next leader inherits. In this second conversation on executive transitions, David Wheatley, Judy Brown, and Rick Eigenbrod talk about why sense-making has to start the day a departure is announced, how boards and outgoing CEOs can plan the narrative together, and what it takes for a transition to end well. They also share a family business handoff that worked against conventional wisdom and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's four styles of leadership exits. Humanergy is a leadership development firm helping leaders and executive teams since 2000; learn more at humanergy.com.

Link to 1st executive transitions conversation.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

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Three months of silence. A leadership group that doesn't seem to get along. A board meeting on the calendar that might explain everything, or might explain nothing at all.

This week's scenario comes from someone stuck in exactly that gap: no information, no clarity, and a growing sense that something's happening without them. David Wheatley and Quay Eady dig into why silence gets filled with conjecture almost every time, what to actually say in the conversation that clears it up, and how a communication vacuum at the top usually traces back to something much more fixable than office politics: a delegation problem, a missing cadence of one-on-ones, or a leader who's simply overloaded.

You'll walk away with a clearer way to think through uncertainty at work, not a script to read off.

The Coaching Table is Humanergy's live coaching series, part of the Humanergy Leadership Podcast. Real scenarios, real coaches, no prep. Learn more about Humanergy's leadership development work at humanergy.com.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

Join the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.

Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops. 

Succession plans live in a binder nobody opens until someone quits, and by then it's out of date. Here's a two-part excise you can actually run this week. 

In this episode, David Wheatley opens a four-part series on succession planning by skipping the expensive consulting version most companies pay for and never use again. Instead, he breaks it down to two tools built to actually get used - 2 Names, 3 Charts.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

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A lot of leaders build their careers on being the expert in the room. What happens when that stops working?

David Wheatley talks with Nikki Patterson about why, as AI makes information available to everyone instantly, the leaders who succeed won't be the ones who know the most. They'll be the ones who can build a team willing to challenge them, question the machine's output, and learn faster than the situation changes. They get into what Nikki calls the silence tax, the cost organizations pay when people can see a problem coming and don't feel safe enough to say so, Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety, and what it actually takes to shift your own identity from expert to expert learner.

Humanergy has spent over two decades helping leaders build stronger teams and better conversations. Learn more at humanergy.com.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

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Seven books. One summer. A few of them might change how you think about leadership.

David Wheatley, co-founder of Humanergy and host of the Humanergy Leadership Podcast, wraps up the season with his annual summer reading list for leaders. This year's picks span decentralized leadership, AI, gender dynamics in the workplace, coaching philosophy, team performance, and how people build a life worth living.

The books on the list:

Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet — a classic on leader-leader culture that keeps coming back into the conversation for good reason.

The AI-Driven Leader by Jeff Woods — the book Humanergy has been recommending all year for leaders trying to get a practical handle on AI.

The Only Woman in the Room by Lisa Davis — not just for women. David interviewed Lisa earlier this season; this is a good companion listen.

The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh — a look at what actually goes into building a winning culture, from the coach who rebuilt the 49ers.

And It Was Beautiful by Phil Hay — the story of Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds, and a counterpoint to Walsh worth reading alongside it.

What Great Teams Do Great by Humanergy — if you haven't read it yet, it's 98 pages and worth every one of them.

What to Make of a Life by Jim Collins — his newest book. If you know Collins from Good to Great or Great by Choice, you know what to expect: rigorous, research-driven, and worth your time.

Drop your own summer reading recommendations in the comments.

Humanergy is a leadership development company based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Learn more at humanergy.com.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

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AI tools create a specific kind of trust problem on teams, and most leaders aren't sure what to name it or where it's coming from. In this Practical Field Notes episode, Mimi and David react to a Harvard Business Review piece by Jayshree Seth and Amy Edmondson on psychological safety and AI integration. They connect the article's ideas to what leaders are actually navigating in their organizations, including how to build learning loops that keep AI use transparent and how leaders can model the kind of openness that makes it safe for teams to question, challenge, and learn. Humanergy is a leadership development company that helps leaders and teams work better under real conditions. Learn more at humanergy.com.

(Note: The HBR article is behind a paywall. HBR offers free monthly access, if you're out of free reads, you can still follow this conversation without it.)
Link to article here:
https://hbr.org/2026/02/how-to-foster-psychological-safety-when-ai-erodes-trust-on-your-team

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

Join the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.

Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops. 

Managers know when a performance conversation is overdue. What stops them is not knowing what to say, or worrying the conversation will go sideways. In this free workshop, Humanergy coach Jim Marshall shares two practical tools: the WXYZ framework for giving specific, grounded feedback without triggering defensiveness, and Feed Need Seed Weed, a four-part structure for organizing accountability conversations from recognition through correction. If you're sitting on a conversation you've been delaying, this one's for you.

Humanergy is a leadership development company that helps leaders work better and make better decisions in real organizations. Learn more at humanergy.com.

Learn more about Humanergy's work: https://www.humanergy.com

Join the Humanergy community on LinkedIn.

Sign up for our FREE leadership workshops.