How to move from doer to leader

Moving from being a doer to a leader can be a challenging transition; Ben Brearley shares how it can be managed

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Thoughtful Leader

The focus of your role can change dramatically when moving from a doer to leader. Here are some of the main challenges faced by people moving into leadership roles.

Strategic thinking

As a doer, your focus is more on the work at hand but, as a leader, you need to take a more strategic focus towards the work and the team as a whole. Thinking strategically comes down to:

• Setting a direction or strategy: where is the team going? Where does the team need to be in one year or more? Do you need to add new services or products? Is there a big change coming that you’ll need to adapt to?
• Improvement: where does the team need to improve? Do you have skill gaps? Could you use better processes or systems?
• People development: one of the benefits of improving your team is that it provides development opportunities for your people to step up and improve.

Focus on the people more than the work

As a leader, it’s on you to help people work better together, and to resolve conflicts if they occur. This means potentially having a difficult conversation or two along the way. You’ll find that much of your time is now spent on the people rather than the actual work. This could include:

• Having one-to-one meetings with team members.
• Being available to support your team.
• Overseeing the quality of the work.
• Providing feedback to team members about their performance, behaviour or attitude.
• Tackling poor performance or dysfunctional behaviour.

Delegation

In your new role you will need to allocate work and delegate responsibility to others. Delegation can feel uncomfortable at first, because it can feel like you’re pushing a burden from yourself onto your team. However, if you reframe delegation in a way that makes you feel more comfortable doing it, you will see it is about helping people to grow.

Delegating challenging work, or work that is a step up from their normal role, helps your employees grow their skills. Delegation may also provide authority to make decisions about the work or the functional area offering more autonomy, which can be motivating.

Exercising restraint 

When you’re moving from doer to leader, it can be tempting to go deep into the detail with your team. This won’t help them; if you get stuck in the details of the team’s work, it will impact your ability to think strategically and focus on supporting your people. Many leaders fail to exercise restraint in this way because they feel more motivated and comfortable doing the technical work than the people or strategy-focused work.

It’s not easy moving from being a doer to a leader, but it’s important to make the transition successfully so that you don’t build poor leadership habits that might hold you back in the long run.