The Leader’s Leap … stepping up from being a manager to leader is more significant and difficult than most people imagine … navigating chaos, innovative problem-solving, driving growth

September 7, 2025

Most organisations are full of good managers. They make sure plans are executed, resources are allocated, and operations run smoothly. Good managers provide clarity, stability, and focus — all essential in keeping things on track. But the leaders who truly transform organisations, win markets, and inspire people operate at a different level. They thrive in ambiguity, confront impossible challenges, and innovate under pressure.

The transition from good manager to great leader is one of the hardest, but also one of the most important shifts for anyone in business. It’s certainly not a simple step up the ladder, doing more or the same, perhaps with more responsibility and power, and more reward. It’s different.

It is the difference between a doctor who provides excellent clinical care, and a department head who must reimagine how a hospital serves patients amid shrinking budgets and rising demand. Between a consulting manager who delivers projects efficiently, and a partner who must build long-term client relationships and deliver bold growth in uncertain times. It could also be a slightly different shift, from a corporate CEO with vast power and resources to a small-tech founder who has to rewrite the rules with limited cash and relentless competition.

In today’s world of relentless change, complexity, and external shocks, the leadership bar has risen. What matters most is not managing the known, but leading into the unknown. This requires courage, boldness, and a leap.

From manager to leader

At IE Business School, I created the Global AMP, the flagship executive program for developing business leaders in today’s fast-changing world. Every year we bring together leaders from every type of industry, from all over the world.  Their markets, organisations and personal styles are all different. But they all share a common desire to “step up” as a business leader, in role, in behaviour, and in impact. To make the leap.

There is no simple formula, no one-size-fits-all approach, but there is commonality in the challenge – the leap from management to leadership involves a shift in mindset and capability:

  • From clarity to complexity: Managers thrive when roles, processes, and outcomes are defined. Leaders operate when rules are fluid, outcomes uncertain, and priorities competing.

  • From control to influence: Managers rely on authority and process. Leaders must inspire, shape, and empower others across silos, organizations, and even ecosystems.

  • From solutions to questions: Managers find answers quickly. Leaders ask deeper questions, reframe challenges, and open new possibilities.

  • From delivering to creating: Managers execute projects and ensure efficiency. Leaders create new value, redefine markets, and set the direction others follow.

Sometimes we use the “T” shaped metaphor – as a functional manager, you were the expert, and rose vertically with expertise. As a leader, you now grow horizontally, connecting the organisation, a bigger picture, more strategic, and more challenges. It’s not about having all the answers but asking the right questions, making sense of complexity, solving difficult problems.

For me, despite the leadership shift being essentially an internal challenge, it can often be most effectively sparked from the outside. Particularly in today’s frenetic marketplaces of relentless, uncertain and chaotic change. When you’re inside an organisation it’s easy to put the blinkers on, keep doing the same thing, winning in the same way.

Externally, therefore, stepping up to become a leader often means embracing a challenger mindset with clients. Instead of merely meeting needs, great leaders teach customers something new about their world, reframe their challenges, and co-create innovative solutions. Internally, it means navigating ambiguity, iterating solutions, and enabling teams to move faster and smarter, even when the path is unclear.

The challenger model

The “Challenger Sale” approach developed by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson in 2011 found that the most effective salespeople weren’t those who built the warmest relationships, but those who challenged clients’ assumptions and taught them to see their business differently. This can equally be applied to leadership externally, and internally.

The model distills into the 3Ts:

  • Teach for Differentiation – Bring unique insights that reframe how the client thinks about their business, their risks, or their opportunities. Leaders don’t just sell; they teach clients something they didn’t know.

  • Tailor for Resonance – Customize the story to each stakeholder’s priorities. A CFO cares about cost structure, a CMO about growth, and an operations lead about efficiency. Great leaders adapt messages to resonate with multiple perspectives.

  • Take Control of the Sale – Guide the conversation assertively, create urgency, and resist being commoditized. Leaders don’t let clients dictate the entire process; they shape the journey toward value creation.

This external Challenger thinking mirrors the internal leadership challenge. Leaders inside organisations must also teach, tailor, and take control — offering new ways of thinking, tailoring approaches to diverse teams, and guiding organisations with confidence through uncertainty.

Examples of the leadership shift

I have worked with many leaders, at all levels of organisations. One of the most inspiring for me, was Satya Nadella at Microsoft, who over the last 20 years has become a legend in stepping up, and helping his organisation grow from $300m to a $3 trillion market cap business. There are many other examples:

  • Satya Nadella at Microsoft: As a manager of engineering teams, Nadella delivered products effectively. As CEO, he transformed Microsoft from a shrinking software giant into a cloud-first innovator by redefining culture, encouraging curiosity, and shifting focus from “know-it-alls” to “learn-it-alls.”

  • Angela Ahrendts at Burberry: As a good manager, she could have focused on cutting costs and tightening operations. Instead, as a leader she reimagined Burberry as a digital-first luxury brand, embracing online engagement before the rest of the fashion industry and delivering tenfold growth.

  • Howard Schultz at Starbucks: Managers would have optimized store performance. As a leader, Schultz reframed Starbucks as a “third place” between home and work, making it a cultural movement as much as a retail business. His focus on a bigger purpose, gave his people a North Star to be much more creative, but aligned at the same time.

In smaller companies, many founders face the challenge of stepping up as their businesses evolve. As entrepreneurs they often love the tech and the detail, and running a small team is about managing products and developers. But leading a growing business requires building culture, attracting investors, making hard trade-offs, and setting strategic vision.

  • Brian Chesky at Airbnb:  From renting out air mattresses, his early years were about hustling to survive. As CEO he shifted to leading a global platform with millions of hosts and guests, navigating regulation and crises. Now he acts as a visionary leader, shaping trust, culture, and the future of travel.
  • Melanie Perkins at Canva: The Australian started as a young designer teaching peers and building a simple online tool. She grew into leading a fast-scaling unicorn, balancing investors, product innovation, and global teams. And then evolved into a mission-driven leader focused on empowerment, culture, and lasting impact.
  • Daniel Ek at Spotify: Started as a coder and entrepreneur determined to solve music piracy with streaming. He then transitioned into building and scaling a disruptive platform across industries and geographies. Now he leads as a strategist, redefining media, creator economies, and Spotify’s cultural influence.

Seven actions for making the leader’s leap

So how can a business develop a leadership team that rises above good management into true leadership? Here are seven actions:

1. Redefine purpose beyond performance

Managers hit targets; leaders define the bigger picture. A leadership team must articulate a clear and compelling purpose, why the organization matters, what change it seeks to create, and how it will serve clients, employees, and society. Purpose provides direction when the path is unclear. It is the north star that guides teams through turbulence.

Action: Hold strategy sessions not just on “what we do” but “why we do it,” and continually communicate that purpose across the organisation.

2. Embrace ambiguity and complexity

Leaders cannot wait for perfect information or clear rules. They must learn to interpret signals, connect disparate insights, and act decisively in the fog. Complexity is not a threat but a field of opportunity.

Action: Develop scenario planning and war-gaming practices that expose leadership teams to multiple futures, encouraging flexible thinking and adaptive strategies.

3. Challenge and reframe client thinking

Externally, leaders must step up from transactional sales to challenger conversations. This means teaching clients something they didn’t know, offering provocative insights, and co-creating solutions that help clients see their challenges differently. This approach elevates the business from vendor to trusted advisor.

Action: Develop your teams in challenger sales skills — insight-led selling, storytelling, and provocative questioning — and reward people not just for closing deals but for deepening client impact.

4. Empower through influence, not authority

Great leaders don’t just manage teams — they build movements. They empower people across the organization to take ownership, experiment, and innovate. Leadership is less about giving instructions and more about creating the conditions where people perform at their best.

Action: Shift performance management from tasks to outcomes, and replace rigid hierarchies with networks of empowered teams.

5. Model curiosity and learning

The best leaders don’t have all the answers; they ask better questions. They are learners who embrace curiosity, experimentation, and iteration. This attitude signals to teams that it’s safe to explore, fail fast, and adapt.

Action: Encourage reverse mentoring, reading groups, and innovation labs where senior leaders engage in active learning alongside junior staff.

6. Navigate complexity with creative problem-solving

Complex challenges — whether climate change, digital disruption, or global supply chains — cannot be solved with yesterday’s playbook. Leaders must combine analytical rigor with creative imagination. This often involves building cross-disciplinary teams, experimenting rapidly, and iterating toward solutions.

Action: Use design thinking and agile sprints not just in product development, but in strategy-making and organizational problem-solving.

7. Balance short-term delivery with long-term creation

Managers focus on efficiency and short-term results. Leaders must simultaneously protect today’s business and create tomorrow’s. This dual lens requires setting bold long-term goals, while managing near-term execution.

Action: Adopt an “ambidextrous” leadership model — dedicating resources to core performance while carving out innovation teams tasked with reinventing the business.

The Leader’s Leap: building next generation leaders

The shift from good manager to great leader doesn’t happen overnight. It requires businesses to intentionally develop their leadership teams. That means moving beyond technical skills and operational excellence, and investing in adaptive capability, strategic insight, and human influence.

It is not as simple as a linear shift, and everyone will have their own path, but over time it is a dramatic change in mindset, behaviour and impact:

  • From Tasks to Thinking
    Managers focus on clarity of tasks, execution, and outputs. Leaders elevate into critical and creative thinking — framing big questions, shaping direction, and navigating ambiguity.

  • From Team to Trust
    Managers organize teams to deliver work. Leaders build trust across the whole system — empowering, inspiring, and multiplying the impact of others.

  • From Tactics to Transformation
    Managers optimize the short-term and tactical. Leaders lean into transformation — challenging assumptions, exploring new possibilities, and guiding through change.

Together, this creates a pivotal shift that enables individuals (and leadership teams) to move beyond managing the known into leading the unknown.

The best way to develop these leadership capabilities is out in the marketplace, working with clients, helping them to make sense of change and complexity, and find new directions for their businesses. It’s about helping them with the same chaos which you yourself of faced with, being a challenger, but really a guide, a trusted authority, a partner for innovation and growth. This then is reflected in how the organisation aligns behind the leader to deliver the clients, and in the business impact it brings.

This is personal capability development, but for leaders, with a direct business impact. Often it goes hand in hand – transform yourself, transform your business.

Great leadership is not about knowing more than anyone else. It is about creating clarity in chaos, shaping possibilities in uncertainty, and inspiring people to do more than they thought possible. As the world grows more complex, the businesses that thrive will be those whose leaders embrace the unknown with curiosity, courage, and creativity.

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