Why high-performing individual contributors often struggle in their first leadership role, and what organisations can do differently. Arjun was the best salesperson his organisation had ever seen. For six consecutive years, he topped the revenue charts. He knew the product better than anyone. He could read a client's hesitation before the client had finished their sentence. His manager trusted him completely, his peers respected him, and when a regional manager role opened up, the decision...

A few years ago, our team was walking through a manufacturing plant in Pune with the plant head - a sharp, experienced leader who had spent nearly two decades in operations. We were there to understand why a well-designed training program that the organisation had invested in, was not producing the results everyone had hoped for. Midway through the visit, a line stoppage happened. Nothing dramatic -- a recurring quality issue that the team had seen before. Within minutes, the supervisor had...

Deepa had not taken a single day of leave in eleven months. As the operations head for a mid-size logistics company, she had become the person every problem eventually found its way to. A supplier delay. A client escalation. A team member walking out the door at precisely the moment she had no capacity left to handle it. She answered emails at 11pm because that felt easier than facing a backlog the next morning. She told herself this was simply what leadership required. By month nine, she...