When stepping into managing other leaders, most people notice that leadership starts to feel very different.
Instead of managing a front line of people with less experience, you start managing other leaders who are peers or former peers.
Key Takeaways for This Leadership Transition
- Managing other leaders is a real leadership transition, not a personal failure.
- Authority shifts toward influence, trust, and judgment.
- What worked with junior teams often backfires with experienced peers.
- Getting this right early prevents long-term friction and loss of trust.
What was working before with junior personnel stops working. When leading other leaders, people feel freer to question your authority and ideas. They get offended when they feel you want to take away their autonomy. Recovering trust after even small missteps becomes harder, and you might find yourself facing a faction of overt or—worse—covert resistance.
If you’ve had any of these experiences, you’re not alone. In fact, this is a normal adjustment for high performers transitioning into the trusted ranks of upper management.
The most important thing now is to clearly name the challenge. Once you are clear about what you are facing, there will be plenty of time to figure out what will help.
What’s Different Now That You’re Managing Other Leaders:
There are three key differences you might be noticing:
Authority Changes
Less experienced direct reports probably appreciated your expertise and insight. Telling them how you would handle a situation felt like guidance and mentoring. Now that you are managing peers or former peers, many have the same experience you do — or more. They may be skeptical of your advice and quietly resent your formal authority.
Influence Replaces Control
Even if a front line team wanted your instructions and training, managing a more mature team looks different. They have their own ideas about how to get work done. They are not looking to you for answers; they are looking to you for support. Instead of guiding or controlling their work, your job is shifting more into the role of a guide. That’s where your ability to influence becomes much more important.
Ownership Replaces Accountability
Leadership at the next level is not about enforcing accountability. The people you are leading are leaders themselves. They have already demonstrated their commitment to getting work done.
Instead of checking whether work is completed, your role shifts toward encouraging ownership of their teams, decisions, and results. This means making it safe to make mistakes, supporting learning when things go wrong, and being the first to recognize real leadership growth.
Outcomes Depend on Other Leaders’ Judgment
The leaders you lead now are leading a team themselves. Trust, respect, and support are no longer optional. Without them, influence erodes quickly — and recovery takes time. Sometimes you can influence them, but at the end of the day, you have to trust their judgment or risk resentment and dissent.
What Still Matters
Respect always matters in leadership, but it matters even more in leadership at the next level. If you signal that you don’t respect them, trust erodes quickly—and respect is rarely recovered. Respect is always mutual.
At this point, as you are leading other leaders, even the smallest slights can create big problems.
Getting this right sooner rather than later is important. It’s a lot harder to repair relationships than it is to start building the right foundation for a supportive, successful team from the beginning.
Why This Moment Feels Harder Than Expected
You are facing some challenges you haven’t seen before. Some of what you used in the past isn’t working now.
- You have less direct leverage and must rely more on influence.
- You have less clarity and must navigate more ambiguity.
- You receive less direct feedback while giving harder feedback to others.
All in all, it can feel like uncharted water.
What Actually Helps
Leadership isn’t innate. It works best as a system of skills that reinforce one another.
When you find the skills that you need to shore up during this leadership transition, you can make progress more quickly.
Trust
Trust is the foundation of every high-performing team. It is the basis of empathy, respect, and leadership presence. People are hard wired to need trust in order to collaborate, innovate, and engage.
Alignment
A really great team pulling in a bunch of different directions is going to weaken the whole. Great teams have systems that ensure alignment of effort, common goals, and a common purpose.
Letting go of being the expert: We all know that leader who tries to be the smartest person in the room. You will earn more trust and respect from your team if instead, you learn when to hold back and how to sift through everyone’s ideas to find the ideal way forward. The best leaders listen to good ideas no matter where they come from, and recognize the contributions of everyone who helped create a great plan.
Coaching Instead of Directing
Coaching means asking questions, helping people find their own answers and solve their own problems. Instead of telling people what to do or how to fix something, good leaders take time to help people learn from their mistakes and try again smarter.
Stepping Into a Bigger Leadership Role?
When you start managing other leaders, what worked before often needs to change. The Leadership Skills Audit highlights where to adjust so you can lead effectively at the next level.
