What changes when you lead

The day you start leading, the thing you are judged on changes completely, and almost nobody tells you.

As an individual you were measured on your output. You could work harder and produce more, and the relationship between effort and result was direct and satisfying. As a leader you are measured on what a group produces, and your own output is now a small part of that and often a distraction from it.

This is why the first year is uncomfortable. You end days having produced nothing you can point to, having spent the time in conversations, and it feels like you did not work. You did. The output is somewhere else now, and it arrives later.

Three things become your actual job.

Direction. People need to know what matters and why. Not a strategy document, but an answer they could repeat: what we are trying to achieve this quarter and how their work connects to it. A team without this does reasonable work on the wrong things.

Removing obstacles. Most people are blocked more often than they are short of ability. Finding out what is in the way and clearing it is the highest return activity available to you, and it is mostly unglamorous.

Developing people. The team you have in a year is a consequence of what you did this year.

What stops being your job: doing the work yourself because it is faster. It is faster today and it is why you have no capacity in six months.