Supporting, leading and letting go: the transition from expert to leader

Looking back, I don't think anyone ever sat me down and taught me how to lead people. Like many of us, I simply became experienced in my role, took on more responsibility and eventually found myself responsible for helping others succeed. It felt like a natural progression at the time. Only later did I realise that being good at the job and helping someone else become good at it required completely different skills.

Organisations rightly invest time in helping new managers understand recruitment, performance management, budgets, objectives and policies because these provide the framework for leading a team. What is far harder to teach is the human side of leadership. As many of us learn pretty quickly, no two people respond in exactly the same way.

Working across different organisations, I've often watched two managers respond completely differently to the same challenge. One instinctively steps in to solve the problem, while another asks a few questions before stepping back. Neither approach comes from a lack of care, but the outcomes for the individual learning to solve that problem can be very different.

Perhaps that's why so many people discover that leading others is less about having all the answers and more about asking better questions. It asks us to move from measuring our own success to creating the conditions in which other people can succeed, and that transition is rarely as straightforward as it first appears.

The leaders who shape us

Long before we're responsible for leading anyone ourselves, we're already forming opinions about what leadership looks like.

Every manager, mentor, colleague and coach leaves an impression. Some show us the kind of leader we'd like to become. Others quietly influence us in different ways, prompting us to think, I'll remember how that felt, and if I'm ever in that position, I'd like to do things differently.

Looking back across my own career, I've experienced both. Early on, I worked in environments where learning often felt like a case of finding your own way. Later, I had the privilege of working with leaders who trusted me, recognised my contribution, shared success generously.

One manager that comes to mind had a habit of leaving handwritten notes on my desk after particularly difficult weeks. Sometimes it was only a sentence or two thanking me for how I'd handled a situation or recognising something I'd done well. Years later I couldn't tell you exactly what every note said, but I still remember how they made me feel. They reminded me that good leadership often isn't about grand gestures. Sometimes it's simply making sure people know they've been seen.

Those experiences shaped my own approach far more than I realised at the time.

Earlier in my career I'd also experienced the opposite. There were times when feedback only arrived when something had gone wrong, while good work quietly became the expectation, with no acknowledgment. It taught me just as much about the sort of leader I wanted to become.

What's interesting is that we often spend far more time reflecting on poor leadership than great leadership. Difficult experiences naturally stay with us because of how they make us feel, but the best leaders often influence us more quietly. They create environments where confidence grows gradually, where people feel trusted, where learning is encouraged and where success becomes something that's shared rather than directed.

Perhaps we don't spend enough time asking why those leaders had such a positive impact.

Looking back across your own career, who are the leaders that have stayed with you? More importantly, what was it they actually did that made such a lasting impression?

Supporting isn't the same as rescuing

One theme that has emerged across a number of coaching conversations is how often our own experiences of being managed influence the way we lead others, often without us realising.

Most leaders will recognise the situation. A colleague comes to you with a problem you've solved countless times before. You know you could fix it yourself in a matter of minutes. It would certainly be quicker, and in the short term it would probably feel helpful too.

Leadership, however, isn't always about doing what's quickest.

Sometimes the greatest support we can offer is creating the space for somebody else to think, experiment and discover their own solution, while knowing we're there if they genuinely need guidance. Confidence is often built through experience rather than instruction.

The next time someone comes to you with a problem, it might be worth pausing before offering the answer. Are they asking you to solve it, or are they looking for the confidence and autonomy to solve it themselves?

Trust, autonomy and high standards

One of the best leaders I worked with gave me something I didn't fully appreciate until years later.

He trusted me.

He didn't ask to be copied into every email or want every decision checking first. If I had a difficult situation, he was there. If I wanted to test an idea, he'd challenge my thinking. Most of the time, though, he simply expected me to use my judgement. That trust probably did more for my confidence than any training course I've ever attended.

Looking back, I've realised that trust wasn't the absence of accountability. It was what made accountability possible.

It's easy to assume that maintaining high standards means keeping a close grip on every decision. Yet the people who grow the most are often those who are trusted to take ownership of their work. They develop confidence because they're encouraged to think independently, not because every decision has already been made for them.

I wonder, how often do we judge success by whether somebody completed a task the way we would have done it, rather than by whether they achieved the outcome we were hoping for?

Questions worth returning to

Throughout this article I've deliberately avoided offering a checklist of leadership tips. Every organisation, every team and every individual is different, and leadership is rarely improved by following someone else's formula.

Instead, perhaps these are five questions worth returning to from time to time, when thinking about your own leadership style, challenges and outcomes.

• Which leaders have influenced my approach the most, and what was it they did that I'd like to carry forward?
• When I step in to help, am I making life easier in the moment, or helping someone grow over the longer term?
• Do different people in my team need different levels of support, challenge or autonomy from me?
• Am I judging success by the outcome, or by whether somebody approached the task in the same way I would have?
• If I asked my team what helps them do their best work, would their answers surprise me?

The transition from expert to leader isn't something we complete and move beyond. It's something we continue to navigate throughout our careers as our teams, our organisations and our own experiences evolve.

Perhaps that's what makes leadership both challenging and rewarding. The work is never truly finished because neither are we.

The more organisations I work with, the more convinced I become that people rarely remember every project outcome, or appraisal, but they do remember how we made them feel about their own potential.