Issue 001 | October 6, 2026

What got you here may not be what makes you successful at the next level

THE BRIEF

Years ago, I made a career move that didn't look particularly impressive on paper.

I already had visibility. I was managing major consumer brands, taking on stretch assignments, and building a clear path forward. Then I moved sideways.

New role. New industry. New York. No bigger title.

What I got instead was something I didn't fully appreciate at the time: range.

Suddenly, being good at my part of the business wasn't enough. I had to work across functions and explain business value to people in finance, operations, and sales who didn't see the work the way I did. I couldn't assume that because something made perfect sense to me, it would make perfect sense to them.

I had to become better at helping other people understand the work.

That distinction matters because organizations routinely promote people based on the capabilities that made them successful in their current roles.

Researchers Kelly Shue, Alan Benson, and Danielle Li studied nearly 39,000 sales workers across 131 U.S. companies. They found that the strongest individual performers were more likely to be promoted into management. But individual sales performance did not predict managerial success. In fact, higher pre-promotion sales performance was associated with lower subsequent managerial performance.

That doesn't mean high performers make bad leaders. It means the capabilities that make you successful in one role don't necessarily make you successful in the next.

Think about how we become strong performers in the first place. We build expertise, become faster at solving problems, develop judgment, and earn the trust of people who know we can deliver. So when our scope grows, it's natural to keep reaching for the thing that has always made us valuable: our expertise.

Except the job has changed.

A 2026 systematic review of 136 studies on leadership transitions helps explain just how significant that change can be. The researchers found that becoming a leader isn't simply a matter of adding management skills to someone's existing expertise. The transition also involves adjusting to different demands, developing a new conception of yourself, and becoming recognized by others as a leader through your interactions with them.

That last part is particularly interesting to me because leadership doesn't happen entirely inside you. It happens in how you work with other people.

And communication is one of the places where that shift becomes visible.

As the expert, knowing the answer may have been enough. As the leader, you may need to help someone else understand the problem well enough to find the answer themselves. Solving something quickly may once have demonstrated your value. Now, solving everything yourself can prevent other people from developing the judgment to solve it without you.

The quality of your own thinking still matters. But increasingly, so does your ability to create enough clarity for other people to make decisions, take ownership, understand what success looks like, and move without you.

Expertise doesn't stop mattering. It stops being enough.

This is why I think the transition can be so difficult for strong performers. We tell people to be more strategic, delegate, influence, lead, and show executive presence. But underneath those expectations is a fundamental change in how they create value.

What got you here may very well get you promoted.

It may not make you successful once you get there.

TRY THIS

This week, ask yourself:

What does my role require me to stop being the person who does?

Pick one situation where your instinct would normally be to jump in, solve, explain, or take over. Before you do, ask whether your job in that moment is to produce the result yourself or create the clarity that helps someone else produce it.

The answer won't always be the second one. Expertise remains valuable. But as your leadership scope grows, your ability to enable other people becomes increasingly important.

I understand that much better now when I look back at that move to New York.

At the time, I thought I was moving sideways. There was no bigger title waiting for me. What changed was the way I had to operate. I could no longer rely only on being good at my function. I had to learn to work through other people, across functions, and with people who saw the business differently than I did.

I thought I had made a lateral move.

In many ways, I was learning how to operate at the next level.

Natasha