Leadership · Developing Leaders
Lead Through the Transitions Where Leaders Fail
Leaders do not fail at random. They fail at the passages between levels, doing the old job well in a new role.
Leaders rarely fail in the middle of a role. They fail at the transitions between roles, when the skills that earned the promotion become the wrong skills for the job. The new manager who keeps doing the work instead of leading it, the new executive who keeps managing tasks instead of building conditions, these are not character failures. They are unsupported transitions, and the leaders who develop others learn to see them coming and help people through them.
Research Foundation
- Leadership pipeline research
- Leadership development research
- Leader-member exchange research
- The Builders Build Framework
Key Takeaways
- Leadership failure clusters at the transitions between levels, not inside stable roles, because each passage demands a new way of working.
- The Leadership Pipeline shows each transition requires letting go of the skills that made someone successful and adopting new ones.
- This is an Adaptability condition: developing leaders means anticipating the transitions where they fail and supporting people through them.
Failure lives at the passages
Charan, Drotter, and Noel found, across decades of work with large organizations, that leadership failure clusters at the transitions between levels rather than within them. Moving from leading yourself to leading others, from leading others to leading leaders, each passage demands letting go of the skills that made you successful and adopting a new way of working. The person who does not make the shift does the old job well in the new role, and fails at the new one.
The trap is doing the old job well
The most common failure is subtle: the newly promoted person leans on exactly what earned them the promotion. The star engineer keeps engineering instead of leading engineers. The great manager keeps managing tasks instead of building conditions. They are working hard and competently at the wrong level, and because they are working hard, no one, including them, sees the problem until the results do not come.
The newly promoted rarely fail from weakness. They fail from strength, doing the job they mastered instead of the one they were given.
Development is supporting the shift
Day's research on leadership development shows the most effective growth happens in context, through mentoring and honest feedback around real work, exactly the moments a transition demands. Graen and Uhl-Bien's work on leader-member relationships shows that support is delivered one relationship at a time. Developing leaders is not promoting people and hoping. It is anticipating the passage they are about to attempt and walking them through the change it requires.
Through the Four A's
This is an Adaptability condition. An organization that supports people through the transitions where leaders fail adapts and scales; one that promotes and abandons them repeats the same failure at every level. The leader who sees the passages coming, and helps people let go of the old job to take up the new one, is building the pipeline the organization will run on.
Evidence matrix
| Claim | Research | Field evidence | Four A's |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership failure clusters at transitions | Charan, Drotter & Noel (2001) | Support the passages, not just the roles | Adaptability |
| Development happens in context | Day (2000) | Mentoring carries people through the shift | Adaptability |
| Support is delivered relationship by relationship | Graen & Uhl-Bien (1995) | Walk each leader through the passage | Authority |
Executive reflection questions
- Who on your team is in a transition right now, and are you supporting the shift or just watching?
- Is anyone failing by doing their old job well in a new role?
- Do you promote people and abandon them, or promote and develop them through the passage?
- Which transition did you struggle with, and who helped you make it?
Builder actions
Lead people through the transitions where leaders fail. Recognize that failure clusters at the passages between levels, so watch for anyone doing their old job well in a new role. When you promote someone, name the shift the new level requires and help them let go of what made them successful before. Support the transition in context, through mentoring and honest feedback around real work, one relationship at a time. Promoting people and abandoning them repeats the same failure at every level. Walking them through the passage builds the pipeline.