From Individual Contributor to Leader
You may be able to relate to this, a conversation I recently had with an executive working in the service industry. She said, “The person we promoted – he was the best person for the job. It felt like an easy decision, at the time.”
I asked, “What made you think he was ‘the best?’”
“Because he was the best performer on the team,” she said. “He always delivered high-quality work, never missed a deadline, and knew our systems and processes better than anyone else.” She paused for a moment, and then added, “But seven months in, it’s not working.”
I asked what she was seeing.
“The deadlines are starting to slip. The team is frustrated and morale is low. I’m starting to worry about turnover.”
“And the new manager?” I asked. “How is he doing?”
She shook her head. “He’s overwhelmed. And the thing is, he is still great at the work. That was never the issue.” She paused again, then said something that stuck with me: “He just wasn’t ready for what the role actually required.”
In my most recent blog posts, I have been talking about the leadership transitions, or “passages” described in The Leadership Pipeline. The first major leadership passage is the transition from leading self to leading others. It sounds simple, but this is actually one of the most difficult passages to navigate.
- When someone leads themselves, success is defined by personal performance: delivering high-quality work, managing their own deadlines, and consistently meeting expectations through their own effort.
- When someone leads others, success is redefined by team performance: achieving results through others, developing people to perform at a higher level, and building the capability that sustains results over time.
Moving into this kind of role is not just “doing more of what you did before.” It’s a fundamentally different job.
The Expensive Assumption
Here’s the assumption that causes the damage: If someone is good at the work, they will be good at leading the people who do the work.
It sounds good on paper, but it’s also where the breakdown begins. Because leadership is not a continuation of what made someone successful as an individual contributor; it’s a transition away from it. What used to define success—personal output, problem-solving, ownership—doesn’t disappear, but it has to be redirected.
- The person who was known for doing the work must learn to get work done through others.
- The person who excelled at solving problems must learn to develop problem solving in others.
- The person who took pride in owning outcomes must learn to create ownership in others.
That’s not a subtle shift, it’s a complete redefinition of the role. And the part that organizational leaders consistently underestimate is that teaching, coaching, and developing others is not a natural extension of technical skill. It requires a different mindset, an acknowledgement that leaders use their time and define success differently from individual contributors. Without this shift in mindset, new leaders often can’t make the transition. They just try to do their old job, but now with more people depending on them.
New managers often try to succeed in their new role using the same behaviors that made them successful before. They jump in to fix problems, or redo the work of their direct reports instead of coaching performance. They stay buried in execution instead of stepping back to lead.
And they can make this work for a while … until it no longer works. Because every time they step in, they are training their team to step back.
The Cost of Getting It Wrong
When this transition from self-leadership to leading others is mishandled, the cost shows up quickly:
- High performers burn out trying to do two jobs
- Teams become dependent instead of capable
- Engagement drops because people aren’t growing
- Organizations quietly weaken their leadership bench
And here’s the long-term consequence: You don’t just lose a manager. You lose your best individual contributor and fail to gain an effective leader. That’s an expensive trade.
If you’re responsible for developing leaders, this is the moment to pay attention to. The question is not: “Who is the best at the work?” The question is: “Who is ready to stop being the best at the work—and start building others who are?”
Because the first step in managing this leadership passage is not only about teaching the new leader how to manage others. It’s also about helping them let go of the identity that made them successful in the first place.
Before promoting someone into a leadership role, look for early signals:
- Do they help others improve, or just fix the work themselves?
- Do they share what they know, or withhold it?
- Do they take satisfaction in their own performance, or in the growth of others?
Because these are not technical indicators; they are indicators of leadership potential.
Leadership doesn’t begin when someone gets the title. It begins when they shift how they define success. Their mindset needs to shift from “How well did I perform?” to “How well did others perform because of me?”
That’s the transition. And it’s where “leading others” begins.