What does it take to become a leader of leaders?

Key mindset shifts no one prepares you for.

In her recent Harvard Business Review article “Navigating the Jump from Manager to Executive” (link in the first comment below), Melody Wilding, LMSW, Executive coach and human behaviour professor at the City University of NY, argues that leading leaders “isn’t “more of the same” just with bigger teams and budgets”.

When you first become a people leader, you realise that it is not about your performance only anymore. It is about the performance of the people you lead. You have to influence, lead, inspire through your team to get results.

The next shift, becoming a leader of leaders, is another significant step up: “you have to fundamentally shift how you think about your role, how you spend your time, and how you measure success It requires rewiring beliefs you have about what makes you valuable and effective.”

So, what are those shifts that are important to make? The first one Melody highlights is the need to “go from expert to coach: you need to grow your managers into independent decision-makers.” And how do you do this?: “by resisting the urge to jump in with fixes and instead creating space for your team to build their own judgment.”

That is often a difficult one. So far you certainly have been promoted based on your expertise. Resisting the urge to give the answers and coaching your team members to find their own answers is a critical mindset shift.

Melody suggests: “the next time your team brings you a challenge, push for their analysis before offering your own thoughts. Get comfortable sitting with discomfort while your people wrestle with ambiguity. Get comfortable with pauses and silence.”

Another critical one is “evolving from oversight to scalable systems. Since you’re overseeing more people and projects, the volume of information coming at you, may double or triple. Without proper mechanisms in place, you may drown in detail or miss critical issues entirely.”

While you are often overwhelmed at the start of a new job by the amount of new information you need to digest, it shouldn’t become a chronic state of permanent information overload.

Melody offers that you need to “identify three to five priorities or risks you must stay closest to, such as revenue targets or client retention. Then establish clear guardrails for when your managers should escalate issues versus handle them independently.”

And here comes the next challenge: to empower and trust your employees. To push the decision making authority to those closer to the process or the clients, those who know best what works in their specific conditions.

“Freedom in a framework” is often an analogy I use with my coaching clients. How broad would you like the frame to be, how tight? And make sure that people understand the boundaries. Then get out of their way and keep nudging them from the side.