Common challenges for early career leaders—and how to overcome them

Being promoted to a leadership position is exciting. But it can also be daunting. According to a survey by Harvard Business Review, 65% of first-time leaders feel uncertain or anxious about their role transition. Many individuals are promoted into leadership roles based on their technical skills and competencies, but making the leap from employee to manager means taking on new responsibilities while learning how to effectively motivate, support, and drive results from a team. Too often, new leaders are left to fend for themselves during this challenging transition. 

In contrast, if equipped with the correct skills, self-awareness, and supportive frameworks, early career leaders can avoid common pitfalls, empowering them to take on their new role with greater confidence and skill.

Why is the transition to leadership so challenging?

Early career leaders often excel at the technical aspects of their new job—in fact, the reason they get promoted into leadership positions is because they excel in their operational expertise. However, the often lack the soft skills that are the hallmarks of great leadership.

Many new leaders are reluctant to admit this skill gap to their employer, out of fear that they will be seen as incapable or an incorrect fit for the role. After receiving more responsibilities, the last thing a new leader wants to do is express that they might not have the skills needed to navigate those responsibilities. This can manifest in a stressful mindset where new leaders are so afraid of making a mistake that they don’t take action when they should.

In my experiences coaching early career leaders, one of the most valuable parts of the process is providing a safe space for young leaders to test their skills without worrying about the fallout. The leaders are able to address specific gaps, and gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, and honestly explore the skills they need to work on. It’s through this deep reflection and trial-and-error analysis that individuals are able to develop an effective and authentic approach to leadership.

Here's how early career leaders can approach developing core management skills:

Communication & Emotional Intelligence

Effective communication is the foundation of managing a successful team. Communication, while an integral part of our daily lives, has a lot of complexity. When communicating with team members, a leader needs to consider their wording, tone, form of communication (email, in-person, zoom), timing and frequency, and the audience they’re delivering the message to. It’s important for new leaders to understand how their words and actions affect the people around them. They must engage in active listening and think critically about what their team members are communicating to them, which sometimes includes the things that go unsaid due to the power imbalance in the relationship.

Through a deep process of self-reflection, leaders can develop a greater sense of their own emotions and a better understanding of how to interact with members of their team. Through role-play and other techniques, early career leaders strengthen their active listening skills and practice communicating expectations in a way that is clear, concise and thoughtful. It’s beneficial not only to understand their own communication style, but also how the members of their team tend to communicate as well. Empathizing with your followers and knowing how to communicate with them effectively is vital to motivating individuals on your teams, predicting and understanding their reactions in challenging situations, and effectively supporting them through those circumstances. 

Delegation

Effective delegation is a bit of a balancing act and a difficult skill to develop without experience. New leaders tend to fall into the trap of micromanaging. Individuals with technical prowess are used to having complete control over their outcomes and performance, but when leading a team, your outcomes are reliant on the performance of everything on your team.

There are a few ways that micromanagement in leaders’ behaviour. In some cases, leader swill try to perform too much of the work themselves to maintain control on the outcomes, which causes them to become overworked and leads to burnout. Other times, leaders spend too much of their time monitoring how their team members perform work or over-reviewing their outputs. Not only does this also lead to burnout, but it takes time away from the leader being able to focus on their own responsibilities. 

Further, leaders who micromanage end up stamping out creativity and innovation because their teams end up always trying to make their work match your ideas without feeling like they can share their own. It’s important for a leader to learn to give feedback about their expectations and outcomes while simultaneously developing trust and inspiring confidence in their team members to drive the best results.

While there are some best practices and advice that leaders can look to develop their delegation skills, the work involved in becoming a better delegator are often specific to the individual and the context they work in. It takes a lot of self-exploration to understand why they, as a leader, struggle to relinquish control and find ways to counteract those instincts in their day-to-day work. It’s a bit of a trial-and-error process to figure out how much to delegate, what workload and outcomes are fair to put on your team members, and how to foster an environment where everyone feels like they are contributing meaningfully.

Having Difficult Conversations

Leaders at all stages of their careers tend to struggle with providing constructive criticism or negative feedback. They may worry about coming across as too harsh, and sometimes avoid difficult conversations in order to avoid conflict. This worry can be further amplified for new leaders who are promoted into a role where they now have to provide feedback to employees who they used to work alongside.

The truth is that conflict is a natural part of being a manager, and it’s important for a leader to be able to communicate negative feedback when necessary. Having a conflict-avoidant approach as a leader also has the potential undermine your team members’ confidence in their skills or work presence. You may think that by avoiding conflict, you aren’t upsetting anyone, but in reality the lack of honest feedback can make individuals feel uncertain and anxious about whether or not they actually are meeting your expectations.

In coaching sessions with early career leaders, one of the most common skills that needs practice is learning how to have difficult conversation; in the safe space of a session, the leader can prepare for difficult conversations and receive helpful feedback for how they can improve their delivery. That way, when they actually have the conversation at work, they can be confident in their ability to communicate effectively.

Leadership Presence

Many first-time leaders put pressure on themselves to exude a ‘leadership presence’ that is based on social and cultural understandings of what leadership looks like. When attempting to maintain the appearance of what they think a leader should be, they often eschew parts of themselves or act in a way that doesn’t feel natural to themselves. Not only is this practice tiresome, but it can also cause the individual to feel anxious about how they present themselves. At the same time, followers are less likely to trust a leader who they perceive as inauthentic.

It takes a lot of self-reflection, visioning, and confidence-building to develop an authentic leadership presence where the leader feels like themselves while asserting their authority and skills as a leader. Sometimes, what a new leader needs most is a sounding board to reassure and support them as they develop their personal brand as a leader and push them to create their own version of what their best self looks like in a leadership role.

Build the foundational skills for long-term leadership success

While working on their soft skills can benefit leaders at any stage of their career, it is particularly helpful for those who are just starting out. It is much easier to start your leadership career with a strong foundation of skills than to jump into it unprepared and, retroactively have to unlearn bad habits and form new ones.

In addition to addressing the common challenges faced by new leaders, the most valuable outcome I find in coaching early career leaders is helping them develop a strong sense of self and providing tools that can rely on and increasingly build upon as they progress throughout their leadership career. In today’s hectic business environment, working with a coach offers a rare opportunity for young leaders to pause, reflect, and actively work on self-improvement, setting the stage for continual growth and sustained leadership excellence.   

This article was co-written by Bryan Benjamin, Executive Director, Ivey Executive Education, and Jill Roussy, an Ivey Executive Coach.

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