They will work it out. Usually!

We’ve written endlessly about leadership transitions.
And yet the same patterns keep resurfacing, in different organisations, with different people, and with remarkably similar consequences.

Which suggests the issue isn’t lack of awareness.
It’s that we continue to underestimate what actually changes when someone is promoted.

On paper, it looks straightforward. Progress. Recognition. Trust.
In reality, it’s a disruption, subtle at first, then increasingly tangible.

The room doesn’t change, but the promoted person’s relationship to it does.

People who were once peers now listen differently. Some lean in. Some hold back. A few quietly reassess. Almost without noticing, the work shifts. What was once about doing becomes about carrying, not just tasks, but expectations, direction, and momentum, through other people.

That shift is where most leadership strain begins.

For the person stepping into the role, the pressure is rarely dramatic. It’s quiet and internal.

There’s a sense that you need to show you’re up to it. That the confidence placed in you was justified. So, you lean into what has always worked. You move faster. You push standards. You make decisions and keep things moving.

Not out of ego.
 Out of responsibility.

I remember stepping into a role where the atmosphere in the room changed more than I expected. The same people I’d worked alongside for years became noticeably quieter in meetings. Nothing explicit had happened, but something had shifted. My instinct at the time was to drive harder, assuming clarity would follow pace.

It didn’t.

What often happens instead is that direction starts to land without context. Decisions feel abrupt to those receiving them. Change feels imposed rather than shared. The intent is sound, but the gap between intention and impact begins to widen.

 This is usually where the conversation stays focused on the individual. Their style. Their confidence. Their ability to lead.

But that view misses something important.

Promotions don’t happen in isolation. Someone made the call. Someone saw potential. And someone is now watching from above, often with goodwill, but from a distance.

From an executive perspective, promotion is usually framed as a vote of confidence.
They were successful before. They’ll work it out.

That belief isn’t careless. It’s optimistic.

But it quietly transfers full responsibility for the transition onto the individual at precisely the moment when the role itself is least defined.

What often goes unspoken is that the criteria for success have changed. Output matters less than judgment. Certainty matters less than how uncertainty is handled. And yet those shifts are rarely named clearly.

So, the promoted leader is left to infer, while still being assessed.

When things don’t quite land with the team, most new leaders don’t disengage. They lean in.

They explain more. They try to involve people. They attempt to bring others into their thinking. And when progress still feels slower than it should, a very practical instinct kicks in.

It will be quicker if I just do it myself.

At first, it feels like a temporary adjustment. A short-term fix to keep things moving. But over time, the work starts to pool. Decisions concentrate. The leader becomes the place where things get resolved.

The team waits.
The leader carries.
 Everyone stays busy.

And almost without noticing, leadership turns into load-bearing.

This is rarely recognised as a trap while it’s happening. It feels responsible. It feels committed. It feels like what a good leader should do.

Until the strain starts to show.

Most people who are promoted do eventually work it out.

They adjust their style. They learn when to step back. The team settles. Performance stabilises. From the outside, it looks like a successful transition.

What’s less visible is the cost paid along the way.

Months of unnecessary pressure.
Energy spent proving something that didn’t need proving.
Time lost carrying work that could have been shared earlier.
Relationships strained that now need attention.

Often there’s a quieter cost too, a dent in confidence that takes longer to rebuild than the role itself.

The issue isn’t that people can’t grow into leadership.
It’s that we accept the price of the learning curve as inevitable, when much of it isn’t.

This isn’t about blame, and it isn’t about control.

For the person in the role, noticing the pattern earlier changes everything. Slowing down when it would be easier to push on. Making thinking visible instead of only delivering decisions. Allowing others to wrestle with the work rather than absorbing it on their behalf.

For the executive above them, it’s about recognising that promotion creates ambiguity, and deciding whether that ambiguity is left with the individual or held more deliberately.

Clarity about what has genuinely changed.
Clarity about what now matters most.
Clarity about how success will really be judged.

When that clarity is absent, even strong people default to old habits. When it’s present, leadership takes shape faster, and at far lower cost.

Most leadership transitions succeed in the end.

The more interesting question is how much time, energy, and confidence is quietly lost along the way, and how much of that loss we’ve simply learned to tolerate.

The patterns are familiar.
Which suggests they’re not inevitable.

They persist not because people aren’t capable, but because we keep underestimating what actually changes when someone is promoted, and who carries responsibility for that change.

If this pattern feels familiar, it’s often worth talking it through with someone outside the system. Not to fix it quickly, but to see it more clearly.