The Three Stages of Leadership.
The three leadership shifts.
There are three unique growing pains that come with becoming and evolving as a leader.
Knowing how to navigate them increases employee engagement, performance and overall well being in teams.
These stages are:
From ‘doer’ to leader.
From delivery to quality control.
From coach to strategic coach.
From ‘doer’ to leader.
You have previously been a subject matter expert or great on the ‘tools’.
You might potentially be managing former peers and it might be your first leadership position.
You’re about to experience the steepest learning curve in leadership. The good news is once you’ve gone through this stage, it gets easier and you’ll deliver amazing results.
The mental switch for doers to leaders.
As a ‘doer’, you were formerly rewarded for creating a high volume of work or for being on the tools.
As a leader, you will now be rewarded for producing results, regardless of who in your team creates the work.
It’s a big switch and can take some time to get your head around.
As a result, your focus is typically making sure your team is competent, confident and focussed on the right things.
The skills most relevant for this stage.
Mindset switch: Mentally reframing ‘doing’ to ‘producing results’.
Reporting: Creating a reporting system that has your team pushing results to you.
Delegating: Start small. Get started with this guide.
From delivery to quality control.
You’re in a stage of your leadership where the majority of your time is spent with your team, delegating and giving feedback.
This is usually the sweet spot of a bit of delivery, a lot of management, and engaging your team.
The mental switch for delivery to quality control.
Your team is probably humming at a good rate, so you might be hesitant to change anything. But it’s likely your team can either stretch or grow, or be craving more learning opportunities to keep them engaged.
Consider whether it’s possible to delegate the majority of your to-do list according to people's capacity and capabilities. Learn about what intrinsically motivates them and how you can facilitate their growth.
The skills most relevant for this stage.
Your four levers are:
Delegation. Get started with this guide.
Feedback. Get started with this guide.
Giving your team stretch goals.
Creating a team agreement. Get started with this guide.
From coach to strategic coach.
Now at the strategic level, you are balancing delivering high quality results, with an engaged team and encouraging them to think strategically.
Your goal is typically making sure the team is engaged, intrinsically motivated, and aligned to the goals of the organisation.
Part of the gig could also be finding ways to find new challenges, or even identifying a successor.
The mental switch for coach to strategic coach.
You’re probably at a stage where you are considering your personal brand, your authentic leadership style, and potentially what’s next.
Without taking action on any of these items, it’s easy to become complacent and even a bit tapped out. The trick is to make a plan for what you’d like to do next (whether that’s making a goal for yourself within the company or elsewhere) within the next three years and working backwards to achieve it.
The skills most relevant for this stage.
Building stakeholder relationships. Get started with this guide.
Creating your relationship influence. Get started with this guide.
Reflecting on what culture you want to create. Get started with this guide.
Mentoring and coaching your team. Get started with this guide.
Do your leaders need to know how to manage these three stages of leadership?
The majority of leaders lack foundational skills like the ones listed above.
In our Essential Skills for Leaders Programme, we give leaders the mindset shift and practical toolkits to learn how to navigate the three stages of leadership.
Our practical tools help new and emerging leaders set the foundation for positive leadership. Learn more.