Recently, I spoke with a client who is struggling to make the transition from being an expert in his field to effectively leading others.  It is a common challenge for people who, in the beginning of their careers, have invested time and effort to develop their mastery of their chosen field – the law, engineering, IT, accounting… the list of such jobs is long.

Perhaps you are already familiar with this transition and all its challenges.  You’ve invested significantly in developing your skills.  You know what you need to do in a given situation in your field.  Now, though, you have staff to manage and instead of doing everything yourself, your primary role is to help members of your team to deliver.

Why is it so challenging to move from expert to leader?

I don’t want to understate the challenges that come with making this transition.

Firstly, you were so good at being an expert.  Of course you were!  You invested years in developing the skills and knowledge that made you an expert in the first place.  Now, as a leader, you recognise that you face many situations in which you don’t know what to do and in which, what’s more, the connection between what you do and what transpires seems increasingly tenuous – outside your control.  You try something – and you do try – and it doesn’t work.  You make the case for the next level of investment in your team and it gets turned down.  You delegate an important project to a member of your team and it doesn’t quite turn out.  You want to make it work and when it doesn’t your instinct is to withdraw back to the work you do so well.

And yes, there is the whole issue of standards.  It’s all very well trying to achieve results through others – delegating to your team or collaborating with your peers – but sometimes you wonder if anyone’s standards match your own.  How can you do this leadership thing without presiding over the decline of standards?  For surely, when your standards are so much higher than anyone else’s, you have to let them slide a little or drive your team to distraction with your feedback.  As you try to balance allowing people to do things to their own standards and giving feedback you sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to do things yourself.

You may not notice and still, there’s a third challenge that may be keeping you stuck.  It’s the challenge of embracing a bigger agenda.  As an expert, you were charged with things to do – projects perhaps, case files, bridges to design.  The projects got bigger, they may even have been called “programmes” and still, they were projects.  Now, as a leader, the performance of your team is your task, your project… but there is a risk that you haven’t spotted it yet.  What’s more, there’s a risk that you’ve spotted it and yet, when things get tough, you find it easier to get stuck in to the work of your team because that’s where you know you can succeed.

Making the transition – some “how tos”

How then, can you break the cycle of taking action to move forward, struggling with the results and retreating to your old ways before taking action again?  Here are just a few things that may work for you, because they’ve worked for others in your situation:

• Remember you’re not alone:  It can feel as though you’re moving from a relatively private success into a hugely public arena of failure when you take your first steps as a leader.  When it does, it helps to stop, breathe and remember – you’re not alone.  You are not the first person to have grappled with this transition and you won’t be the last;
• Find a reason to stay the course:  For some people, leadership is its own reward.  It comes with all sorts of bells and whistles they have longed for and finally get to play with.  For the expert, leadership can bring a sense of loss or sacrifice – unless you have a compelling reason to make the transition.  Perhaps you realise that you can no longer do everything yourself.  Perhaps there’s a vision you have that you can’t deliver alone.  Whatever your reason, it’s your reason to stay the course – so think about what you’re trying to achieve, especially when you feel the lure of your expertise;
• Make time to lead:  Especially in your first leadership role, you may struggle to balance your technical contribution to the team with your role as leader and it could go either way.  Is it your leadership agenda that will give way to immediate projects or vice versa?  You choose.  Choose a percentage of your time that you will spend on the larger agenda of leading your team.  Think about when and how you will spend that time.  The more you have made plans to spend time and know what you want to do, the more likely you are to choose to lead;
• Cut yourself some slack:  In your early days as a leader, it’s unlikely that you will show the same level of skill in your leadership role as you will as an expert.  Perhaps the biggest challenge you face is dancing with the voice of your inner critic.  He or she is vocal enough in your area of expertise but, hey!  s/he’s louder still when it comes to your first steps as a leader.  Learning to hear your inner critic without being overwhelmed is a skill in itself – one that’s worthy of at least one posting on this blog (look out for it during the days ahead);
• Build a support team to help you through:  It may be that you have the best boss in the world  – or wife or husband – who can support you in making this transition.  It’s likely though, that you could do with more help.  Perhaps there are areas in which you need to develop a new kind of expertise – in how to influence others, for example, or how to get the best out of your staff.  It could be that you need new skills in self management.  Your boss, your colleagues, a mentor, a coach… make sure you have all the help you need.

If you’re in the midst of making the transition to leadership, I’d love to here from you:  what is your biggest challenge?  And if you are looking back and thinking “yes, I remember it well…” please share your experiences and especially the lessons that made it possible for you to make the transition from expert to leader.