One of the biggest surprises for new leaders is not the workload. It is how fundamentally different the work becomes.
Early in your career, success is tied to personal execution. You are rewarded for solving problems, moving quickly, and producing results yourself. Your time is spent doing.
Then you step into leadership, and that model no longer works.
If you continue to spend your time the same way you always have, you will likely feel stretched, frustrated, and ineffective — not because you are failing but because the role has changed and your mindset has not caught up.
The Shift You Have to Make: Leading Through Others
At its core, leadership is about leading through others. That phrase gets used a lot, but it is worth slowing down and asking what it actually means.
Leading through others means creating the environment for other people to be successful. It means your impact comes less from what you personally do and more from how well your team performs, grows, and makes decisions when you are not in the room.
This is where many new leaders struggle, especially those who were promoted because they were strong individual contributors. The instinct to jump in, fix things, or show how it should be done is hard to break.
But leadership is not about proving you can still do the work. It is about making sure the work gets done well, consistently, and sustainably by others.
The Key Question Every New Leader Should Ask
One of the most helpful questions you can ask yourself as a leader is this:
What am I particularly qualified to do?
As a new leader, your answer should rarely be “everything.”
Your highest and best use of time often includes:
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Coaching and developing your people
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Providing clear direction and priorities
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Giving timely, thoughtful feedback
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Removing obstacles that slow the team down
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Creating clarity where there is confusion
I often find it amusing when leaders lament that they spend all day in 1:1s or other people-focused conversations and can never “get anything done.” Hmm. Spending time with your people is not a distraction from the work. It is the work.
Teaching Not Telling
Leading through others requires a shift from telling to teaching.
When time is tight, it is tempting to jump in with answers or take work back onto your own plate. That might feel efficient in the moment, but it can limit growth over time.
Teaching looks like:
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Asking questions instead of giving solutions
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Helping someone think through an approach rather than prescribing one
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Letting people try, adjust, and learn
This also means resisting the urge to “save” someone when things are not going perfectly. Growth often requires space to make mistakes, reflect, and improve. Your role is to coach and provide feedback, not to eliminate all discomfort or rescue them from every challenge. Sometimes we think we are helping by “saving” someone, when in reality we are stunting their growth and development. The best way to learn is often to fail. As leaders, our job is to make sure that failure is not fatal and there is a path to return.
Letting Go of Control
This kind of restraint — coaching instead of doing — requires letting go of control. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received at work came from the President of our company, Karen Maxwell Powell: “If you are going to ask someone to do something, you have to be okay with how it gets done.”
This is a hard lesson and one we all need to remind ourselves of frequently as leaders.
Letting others take the reins means accepting that they may approach the work differently than you would. Different does not mean bad. In many cases, different leads to better ideas, stronger ownership, and more capable people.
If you find yourself constantly stepping in to correct, redo, or adjust, it may be a signal that you have not fully let go of your old role. It may also be a sign that you’ve not set clear expectations about what “done” really looks like.
What to Pay Attention to Instead
As a leader, your attention needs to shift away from specific tasks and toward the needs of your team.
Ask yourself:
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What does each person need to be successful right now?
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Where do they need clarity, confidence, or support?
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What patterns am I seeing across the team?
Results still matter. But results now come through people, not directly from you.
A Simple Reflection to Try This Week
Take a few minutes and reflect:
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Where did I spend most of my time this week?
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How much of that time was focused on developing others?
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When was the last time I checked in with my team about how I could be supporting them more effectively?
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Where did I jump in when I could have coached instead?
Small shifts in how you spend your time and how you support your team add up quickly.
If this is a shift you or your team are navigating, our New Leaders offering focuses on exactly this: moving from doing to leading through others.
