Stepping up to your first leadership role

The work changes before the title sinks in

In your first leadership role, your results start to come through other people rather than your own output. Expect some days to end with a sense that you did no real work. That feeling is normal: your output now runs through other people.

You were probably promoted for being good at the job you did before. Your week now fills with questions, decisions and conversations, and the tasks you used to finish feel like the only proper work. What counts now is whether the team does its work well, and whether people know what you expect of them. The habits that get in the way, and how to show readiness before a promotion, come further down.

Most new leaders start with no training

If this feels like learning on the job, that is because it usually is. In 2023 the Chartered Management Institute published research run with YouGov, drawing on more than 4,500 UK workers and managers. It found that 82 per cent of workers entering management positions had not had any formal management and leadership training. The institute calls them accidental managers.

The Chartered Management Institute is a professional body that also offers management qualifications, so it has an interest in the answer. Even so, the survey suggests most people who step into management start without training, so the gap you feel is common. Starting untrained does not make you the wrong choice, but it does mean you should learn on purpose rather than wait for the role to teach you.

What to do in the first ninety days

Ninety days is a convenient frame, not a rule. Think of it as three stretches of about a month, each with one main task. Take a fictional new team leader in a housing association, promoted from within the team she now leads.

• Weeks one to four: listen. Hold a short one-to-one with each person. Ask what is working, what gets in their way and what they want from you. Change as little as you can.
• Weeks five to eight: agree what good looks like. Write down the two or three things the team must get right this quarter, and check them with your own manager.
• Weeks nine to twelve: make one visible improvement. Pick a problem people raised more than once, fix it with them and say what you changed.
• Throughout: keep a note of each decision you make, why you made it and what happened next.

Old habits that quietly hold you back

The habits that earned the promotion are the hardest ones to drop, because they still feel like competence. The housing team leader keeps the most difficult cases herself, because she is quickest at them. Her team learns that hard cases go upward, and her calendar has no room left to lead.

Each of these made sense when you were doing the job yourself. Watch for them in your own week, try the alternative for a month, and ask whether the team got stronger or weaker.

• Doing the work yourself because it is faster this time. Instead, hand it over with a clear brief and a check-in date.
• Rewriting other people's work. Instead, explain what needs to change and let them make the edit.
• Answering every question on the spot. Instead, ask what they would do, then add what they missed.
• Avoiding hard conversations with former peers. Instead, raise small concerns early, while they are still small.

Leading people who used to be your peers

Being promoted from inside the team is a common route and often an awkward one. Former colleagues may test whether anything has really changed, or wait to see whose side you are on.

Name the change early, in a short conversation. Tell them you are the same person, that your job now includes decisions about the team, and that you will explain those decisions. Then keep that promise. Former peers will forgive a decision they disagree with more readily than one you never explained.

Showing you are ready before you have the title

If you are hoping to step up, the strongest case is leadership you have already shown in a smaller form. Decision makers find it easier to promote someone they have watched handle a smaller version of the job.

Look for bounded pieces of responsibility. Run a meeting from agenda to actions. Induct a new starter. Take one recurring problem and own it until it is solved. Each gives a decision maker something concrete to point to.

Then record it. A fictional maths teacher who wants to become a head of department writes a few lines after each piece: what she was asked to do, what she decided, what changed and who saw it. After a year she has a dozen examples rather than a vague sense that she is ready. In an interview, she can talk about real decisions instead of describing qualities.

Keep a private record of your leadership

Whether you are new in the role or working towards it, the decision note is the habit worth keeping. It shows you your own patterns, and it gives you material for appraisals, applications and honest conversations with your manager.

Keep it somewhere private, so you can be candid about what went wrong as well as what went well. A private OTO Careers record is one place to hold achievements and the evidence behind them, with each section's sharing set to off or private until you choose otherwise. A notebook works too, as long as you write each note while the details are fresh.