As leaders progress, they move through stages, each with new challenges and perspectives. Each transition demands a different set of skills, emotional resilience, and perspective shifts. Here’s a breakdown of the five levels and what leaders should focus on at each stage as well as what challenges they typically face in the transition:
1. Lead Self
The leadership journey begins with self-leadership, where leaders build self-awareness, discipline, and resilience. At this level, the focus is inward: achieving high-performance while deepening and understanding of personal values, strengths, and areas for growth. Leaders start to cultivate emotional intelligence and a growth mindset, which are both essential foundations for influencing others. Success here is measured by a leader’s ability to demonstrate high-performance, responsibility, integrity, and authenticity.
Mindset Shift: From a reactive mindset to proactive self-management.
Challenges:
- For those accustomed to being actively managed, shifting to self-leadership requires learning to set personal goals, prioritize effectively, and hold themselves accountable. It also means shifting from a reliance on external validation towards intrinsic motivation and self-validation.
- Lack of self-awareness leads to a struggle to objectively assess one’s own strengths, weaknesses, and behavioural patterns.
2. Lead Others
Once grounded in self-leadership, leaders turn outward to inspire and motivate others. Here, the focus is on communication, empathy, and building trust. Leading others is about understanding and responding to the unique strengths and needs of team members. Leaders at this stage build relationships, set clear expectations, and support individuals in achieving both personal and team goals.
Mindset Shift: From “doing it alone” to empowering and guiding others.
Challenges:
- Resorting to micromanagement when feeling responsible for the team’s outcomes but lacking the skills to empower and trust others.
- Shifting from individual focus to relational impact as well as balancing own goals and performance with the needs and goals of others.
- Some are used to independence and lack emotional intelligence as well as capabilities in communicating and building trust.
3. Develop Leaders
Developing leaders takes leadership beyond direct influence, requiring leaders to nurture the growth of others as future leaders. This level emphasizes coaching, mentoring, and leading a culture where team members are encouraged to take ownership and initiative. Leaders here shift from managing tasks to developing potential, fostering an environment where everyone has the opportunity to lead in some capacity.
Mindset Shift: From “I lead” to “I support others in leading.” Transitioning from managing performance to coaching potential.
Challenges:
- Shifting from directing tasks to fostering growth requires a new skill set: coaching, mentoring, and providing constructive feedback.
- Leaders may struggle with letting go of control and focusing on long-term team development rather than short-term task completion. This might lead to frustration when team members don’t immediately meet expectations, which can hinder the development of autonomy and ownership.
4. Develop Leaders Who Develop Leaders
In this fourth stage, leaders embrace a scalable model of leadership, focusing on creating leaders who, in turn, develop other leaders. This level is essential for long-term organizational growth, as it embeds a culture of continuous development. Leaders at this stage work on empowering their teams to make independent decisions, encouraging autonomy and resilience across the organization.
Mindset Shift: Scaling influence through a leadership culture. Transitioning from personal impact to creating a legacy of leadership development.
Challenge:
- The complexity of leadership multiplies. Leaders are not only building up individual leaders but also creating a culture and systems that enable leadership development that does not require constant, direct intervention from top-level leaders.
- A lack of confidence in the scalability of their influence causes leaders to try to directly control outcomes rather than trusting and empowering leaders down the line to take on this development role themselves.
5. Lead Organizational Systems
At the highest level, leaders think in terms of interconnected systems rather than individual departments or teams. The focus shifts from direct influence over people to strategic alignment, organizational agility, and balancing multiple priorities at a systems level. Leading organizational systems involves strategic thinking, systems integration, and aligning the organization with broader societal goals.
Mindset Shift: From leading individuals and teams to orchestrating complex systems. Expanding focus to systems thinking and strategic alignment.
Challenge: Leaders struggle with learning how to see beyond immediate results to the long-term impacts on the organization’s entire ecosystem. This leads to getting bogged down in operational details or specific department issues instead of focusing on larger systemic changes and strategic impact.
Ascending through the levels
As leaders ascend through these levels, the shift is less about skill acquisition and more about perspective and influence. Each level builds on the last, requiring a blend of self-awareness, relational intelligence, and strategic insight. Leadership development through these five stages ensures that leaders are not just effective in the moment but equipped to drive sustainable, impactful change in their organizations and beyond.
