You promoted your best performer last month and they said yes before you finished the sentence. But nobody told them what comes next, and likewise nobody probably told you either.

I know because I said yes the same way. Years of doing the work with cold calling, booking my own meetings, eventually moving up to work with large key accounts. I consistently performed and did my numbers. Closed big contracts and delivered what we promised. People noticed. Then one day someone said we want you to lead a team. Or more accurately, I wanted the chance and I got it.

What followed were three surprises. Here they are and under each one what you can do about it.

Their expertise turns against them

Here is a common example. The team that your new manager is now leading is handling something they could fix in twenty minutes. They watch and wait. The team takes two hours and gets it about eighty percent right. Every instinct says step in. So they do, and they have just taught the team that they always will.

The hardest part of becoming a manager is unlearning the habits that made you successful in your previous role in the first place.

If you promoted them watch for the week they stop escalating to you. That is not confidence. That is a tell that they need help.

The loneliness arrives overnight

Before they had colleagues. People they vented with, laughed with, complained about the boss with. Now, they are the boss and the same people are still there, but the dynamic shifts in ways nobody announces. Now conversations change when they walk into the room. They are no longer fully inside the group. But haven't found their place in new group with the other leaders. That in-between place is an isolated one to be.

You have to go and find out because they will not tell you this.

Their results now sit in other people's hands

As an individual contributor you can outwork a bad spell. But as a manager you can't. Their number is now their team's number. And the only levers left are coaching, developing, and then trusting the team. The role changed and the identity has to change with it.

You rewrote their job description. Now you have to rewrite how you measure them.

What only you can do

Tell them their old instincts will misfire in the new role. Tell them the isolation is coming and that it is normal. Tell them their job is now other people's output. Each of these three are a different skillset from the one that got them promoted. A twenty minutes conversation inside the first month. Do not push this out.

Then put a standing informal check-in in the calendar. Fifteen minutes on how the change is going. Or even better, do it as a walk-and-talk. This is where you will hear what they would never raise in a formal one to one.

I made this transition without asking for help. I had watched managers for years and I thought I knew what good looked like. And I had already read "all the books" 🙄. What I did not fully get was that watching someone do something, vs. having read up on it, and being supported through learning to do it yourself are completely different things.

Whether you are about to make this transition or you are the one handing it over, neither of you has to work it out alone.

Most of us did.

Most of us wish we hadn't.

Which of the three will you say out loud to them this week?

The First 90 Days as a Leader, a four-part series

• Week 1, You promoted them. Now tell them what nobody told you
• Week 2, Your new leader inherited a trust debt. Some of it is yours
• Week 3, Stop solving problems. Start asking better questions
• Week 4, Your team does exactly what you reward

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/Jonas

Everything here is built from my own ideas, drawn from my reading, and life experience. For structure, validating research, proofreading, and edits, I use AI tooling to help make it a better experience for you, the reader.

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