EP 77: Nobody Told Me This About Leadership: 10 Lessons Every New Leader Needs to Hear

What if everything you were told about getting promoted was actually setting you up to struggle? In this episode, I'm sharing something a little different — no guest this week, just me and 10 things I wish someone had told me before I stepped into my first leadership role. I did a LinkedIn post on this recently and the response told me there was more to say. So this is me going deeper.Because here's the truth: most people are promoted into leadership because they're great at their job. Not because they've been trained to lead. And those are two completely different things. What follows is usually a quiet kind of struggle — the replaying of conversations at night, the urge just to do it yourself, the desperate wanting to be liked — that nobody warned you about and that too few people talk about honestly.This one is for every new leader trying to find their feet, every experienced leader who never got the foundation they deserved, and anyone sitting on the edge of a leadership role, wondering if they're ready.Key TopicsWhy becoming a leader is a complete career change — not just a promotion — and why businesses keep getting this wrongThe accidental counsellor problem: what to do when your team brings their personal struggles to work and why it's not your job to fix themHero mode and why swooping in to do the work yourself is actually undermining your team — not helping themThe trap of wanting to be liked and the shift from being liked to being respectedHow to communicate decisions you don't fully agree with — or weren't given full context on — in a way that still motivates your teamWhy leadership is the ultimate selfless act: giving credit down and taking accountability upThe case for fun — why injecting levity into your team isn't a nice-to-have, it's a performance strategyWhat to do when you lay your head on the pillow replaying a conversation you're not proud ofWhy repair matters more than perfection — and how to actually do itThe greatest gift of leadership: watching the people you led go on to do remarkable thingsKeywordsleadership, new leaders, leadership lessons, first-time leader, management, team culture, difficult conversations, performance, coaching, wellbeing, professional development, career growth, workplace