Transitions
6 min read
When Your Leadership Role Outgrows Your Habits
Recognise the behaviours that helped you succeed before, but may now be limiting your impact.
The habits that earn a promotion are rarely the habits that make someone effective in the next role. Deep expertise, fast answers and personal heroics are valuable early on. At a larger scale, they can quietly hold a team back.
Why this matters
Transitions expose the gap between what you are good at and what the role now requires. If that gap is not named, leaders tend to work harder at the old habits, which only increases the strain on them and their team.
A more useful way to approach it
Name the shift explicitly. Decide which strengths you will keep, which habits you will retire and which new capabilities you will practise. Treat it as a deliberate change rather than something that will happen on its own.
Three actions to try
Write down three habits that helped you succeed in your last role.
Mark which ones still serve you and which now limit your impact.
Choose one new behaviour to practise for the next six weeks.
Closing thought
Growth in leadership often means doing less of what made you successful. Which habit is it time to retire, and what would replace it?
Written by
CEOVANTA Editorial Team
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