LEADING LEADERS FOR THE FIRST TIME? Your Old Leadership Playbook Just Expired

Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC, Executive Coach, Leadership Expert, Speaker, Author

You’ve just been promoted, and you're now leading other leaders. Congratulations!

There’s a moment that comes for every newly minted 'leader of leaders' that’s rarely discussed and seldom taught. Your calendar is fuller, your meetings are longer, and suddenly the job of leading that once felt so natural now feels... oddly slippery.

 You’re still a great leader. But something has shifted. You’ve moved from leading individual contributors to leading other leaders, and that changes everything. It messes with your rhythm, rewrites your role, and forces you to lead in ways that might feel unfamiliar, at least at first.

 Most organizations (even the progressive ones) still treat this promotion like an upward hop, rather than a leadership leap. They assume that the skills that got you here (coaching, prioritizing, and delivering results) will automatically translate to success at the next level.

 But if you're now managing people who manage people, let me be blunt: what got you the promotion is not what will make you successful in the new role.

  

THE JOB YOU HAD IS GONE.

Let’s name the real challenge: the stuff that made you feel competent, effective, and trusted, like knowing the details, solving problems, jumping in to fix things, can now get in the way.

 You can’t be the fixer anymore. That’s no longer your job. Now, your focus is to grow exceptional leaders who can drive results through their people, while creating the kind of culture others want to be part of.

 Let that land.

 Your value isn’t in knowing everything. It’s in building strong people leaders who can both deliver results and foster inspired, healthy, high-performing teams of their own. That requires a specific mindset shift, some new skills and self-awareness, and healthy doses of humility and self-restraint.

  

FIVE THINGS THAT MATTER MORE NOW

Based on years of research, coaching leaders and their teams, and delivering in-the-trenches leadership development training, here are five critical shifts for leading other leaders well:

 1. Coaching Matters More

This isn’t about performance feedback. It’s about capacity-building. You’re no longer coaching for technical skill or task execution; you’re coaching leaders to lead. That means helping them think strategically, build trust, hold others accountable, and develop their teams. It’s a different kind of conversation. And it’s the most powerful tool you have.

 2. Thinking Matters More

You’re no longer paid for how much you do; you’re paid for what you think about. This means carving out space for strategic reflection: What’s coming around the corner? What’s not being said? Where are we leaking energy? And yes, that means letting go of firefighting to make room for longer-range, proactive thinking.

 3. Your Example Matters More

If you’re still checking your team’s work, showing up to meetings you should have delegated, or reacting emotionally in a crisis, your managers are learning the wrong things. People don’t just listen to what you say, they watch what you model. What are you unconsciously teaching?

 4. Conversation Matters More

At this level, there are fewer updates and deeper dialogue. Your one-on-ones are coaching conversations, not status reports. Your team meetings build cross-functional trust, and break down silos. Ask more powerful questions; talk less. Create the space where both ideas and people can grow.

 5. Influence Matters More

At this level, your impact isn’t just vertical. It’s lateral and diagonal. How you show up with peers, the way you manage relationships across the organization, and how you model accountability will ripple outward. The power of your new position doesn’t come from proximity to the work; it comes from the strength of your insight and influence.

 

 COMMON PITFALLS (AND HOW TO AVOID THEM)

From my coaching work and years of delivering leadership development training, here are the five traps newly promoted leaders of leaders fall into most often, and what to do instead:

  • Doing Instead of Delegating: Ask yourself daily, “Should I be doing this, or coaching someone else to own it?”

  • Managing Individual Contributors Instead of Managers: Step back. Let your managers manage. You’re building capability, not substituting for it.

  • Under-Leveraging Your First Team: Treat your leadership team (your peer group) like a team, not a collection of silos. They are your 'first team' now, not your direct reports, and you can leverage the hell out of each other to help you all lead more effectively (see my article on the power of PEER COACHING CIRCLES here).

  • Staying Too Operational: In this new role, you're flying at a higher altitude now, which allows you to see further ahead, and take in a wider horizon line. So look up! Think system. Zoom out before you zoom in.

  • Hiring Mini-Me’s: Resist the urge to hire people who think and act like you. Diversity of style, thought, and experience makes your team stronger.

 

A QUICK CHECK-IN FOR NEW LEADERS OF LEADERS

  • Are you coaching leadership skills or correcting deliverables? If so, what's driving your need to stay in the weeds? What might help you raise your altitude?

  • Do you spend more time on strategy or task triage? How is your natural preference helping or hindering the people leaders reporting to you?

  • How are you creating a true leadership team, and not just a collection of people who report to you?

  • What behaviours will you intentionally model, to let your managers know what great leadership looks like?

  • How might you be helpful, without getting involved in the working level weeds?

 

 THE SELF-MANAGEMENT SHIFT

At the 'leading leaders' level, the biggest development gap isn’t skill; it’s self-management. It's learning to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing, not jumping in, and not being the hero. And it’s also the shift from delivering value to creating value. From knowing the answer to asking the better question.

That’s not just a promotion. That’s a transformation.

 If you're stepping into the new world of leading leaders, here's your invitation to recalibrate. If you're ready to grow your confidence, build your strategy muscles, and develop the leaders below you, reach out for a free consultation conversation. Let’s make sure you’re ready for one of the biggest mindset shifts you'll ever make in your leadership journey.

COLD DATA, WARM MEANING & ROI: Relevant Leadership in the AI Age

Leslie Rohonczy, IMC™, PCC, Executive Coach, Leadership Expert, Speaker, Author

The bots are coming! The bots are coming!

Actually, they're already here, and they're forever changing the very fabric of how we work. But if you’ve been wondering whether Artificial Intelligence might someday replace your role as a leader, let's look at what leadership truly calls for in this new machine-learning era. AI may change how we work, but the beating heart of leadership remains profoundly human.

As AI continues to transform how businesses operate, streamlining workflows, crunching complex data, and making rapid decisions, it’s easy to imagine that our human value could be diminishing. But if leaders want to remain relevant, there's one area to double down on, where machines still can’t compete: emotional intelligence.

Hey, good news! It turns out, being human is your competitive advantage.

 

COLD DATA MEETS WARM MEANING

AI excels at what we might call 'cold data': facts, figures, patterns, research, and probabilities, all processed at a speed that boggles the mind. This ability to process vast amounts of information, find efficiencies, and surface insights is immensely valuable, especially where timely decisions matter.

But leadership decisions don’t happen in a vacuum 

Leaders also rely on 'warm meaning': the emotionally rich, human context we pick up through connection with each other: tone, silence, body language, relationships, intuition, and trust. This isn’t abstract or fluffy woo-woo stuff; it’s grounded, perceptive intelligence.

Warm meaning is what tells you when your team is nearing burnout, when a conflict is quietly gaining momentum, or when someone’s underperformance is rooted in fear, not laziness. When leaders rely only on the available cold data, without tuning in to the emotional dynamics that shape behaviours, they're missing out on half of the critical information they could be using, the kind of information that doesn’t show up on a dashboard, but that shows up in people.

In leadership, 'warm meaning' is about how we connect, how we listen, and respond to the emotional reality around us. AI can inform you that productivity is dipping. But it won’t tell you that your top performer is quietly job-hunting after being passed over for a promotion.

High-impact leaders use both cold data to sharpen their decisions, and warm meaning to ensure they land in ways that inspire, motivate, align, and sustain. 

In fact, it’s not just about what you know – it’s about how wisely and humanely you apply it. Future-ready leaders are experimenting with a new equation: AI + EI = ROI. But more on this in a minute

 

WHY AI ISN’T YOUR ENEMY

I've talked to many leaders about how AI is impacting their teams, and their roles. Some are excited by the possibilities and are willing to embrace it. Others are fearful that they'll become irrelevant, replaced by this technology altogether. While there's no way to predict exactly how the future will unfold, one thing is already clear: AI isn’t the enemy; it’s a powerful ally that, when used well, enhances decision-making, accelerates innovation, and frees up capacity for higher-value work.

According to McKinsey’s 2023 Global Survey, 55% of organisations have adopted AI in at least one function, up from 20% just five years ago. That number will keep rising. Today’s AI tools are being used to:

  • Predict customer behaviour with remarkable accuracy

  • Personalise employee learning and development pathways

  • Improve hiring processes with less bias (when designed properly)

  • Monitor operational performance

  • Optimise pricing strategies based on real-time market data

  • Identify emerging market trends ahead of competitors

  • Streamline back-office operations such as scheduling, forecasting, and logistics

  • Assist with regulatory compliance by flagging anomalies and generating audit trails

  • Provide frontline customer support through natural language chatbots and virtual assistants

 

Here’s the part that makes me hopeful, even excited, for the future: the World Economic Forum has identified emotional intelligence as one of the top 10 skills of the future. I'm excited about this because, as machines take over routine tasks, the human differentiators – empathy, influence, relationship-building, and self-awareness – become more valuable, not less.

 

THE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE EDGE

High-performing leaders make people feel seen; they pause before reacting, ask the question no one else thought to ask (or was brave enough to ask). They’re the ones who can read the tension in a room without a word being spoken, who notice when someone’s holding back, and who can name what others are skirting around. That’s emotional intelligence in motion, and in the mad scramble to hire the best and brightest, corporate recruiters look for leaders with high EQ, which is quickly becoming the most powerful differentiator that can set you apart from the pack. 

Daniel Goleman, who helped bring emotional intelligence into the leadership spotlight, found that nearly 90% of the difference between star performers and average ones comes down to EI – not technical expertise. 

And in 2020, a study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that leaders with high emotional intelligence had teams with significantly higher performance, well-being, and engagement scores.

 

AI + EI: THE NEW LEADERSHIP BALANCE

The future of leadership isn’t about becoming more robotic. It’s about becoming more human. It’s about blending AI’s cold precision with your own warm presence. Here’s how:

1.      Use AI to inform, not replace, your judgment. Let the data shape your understanding, but not override your wisdom. If AI says productivity is down, ask your team what’s going on before assuming laziness. Trust the numbers, but verify the narrative.

2.      Lead with emotional context. When making decisions with AI input, add the layer that only you can: what’s the emotional temperature of your team? How will this land with them? What invisible variables might be in play?

3.      Practice strategic empathy. Anticipate emotional responses and design your communication with care, especially during change, uncertainty, or conflict, to meet people where they are. Emotionally intelligent leaders don’t just feel for others; they act on that understanding.

4.      Build human-centred cultures in tech-driven environments. AI doesn’t build culture, people do. Use your emotional intelligence to create environments where curiosity, learning, feedback, and collaboration flourish, even when bots are doing half the work.

5.      Model emotional self-regulation. Leaders set the emotional tone. If you’re short-tempered or avoidant under pressure, your team will mirror that. Use self-awareness tools, mindfulness techniques, and coaching to manage your own triggers and stay grounded in tough moments.

 

One of my current coaching clients is a senior executive in the tech sector, with 7 regional teams in her span of control. She started using AI-powered dashboards to track team performance, and the data was clear: one region was underperforming. The 'cold data' conclusion? This was an under-performing team not focused on delivery. And the 'warm meaning' conclusion? She held skip-level one-on-one conversations with the Director, Team Leaders, and employees, and discovered that the region had lost two key members and was working overtime just to stay afloat. She shifted resources, offered her appreciation to the overwhelmed employees, put well-being supports in place, and helped reset expectations with upper management. Three months later, their performance surged, not because of the dashboard, but because of the human decisions that followed.

 

OUR HUMANITY WON'T BE AUTOMATED

So what does it actually look like when cold data and warm meaning work together in leadership? It comes down to a simple, but powerful formula: AI + EI = ROI: AI gives you insight, and EQ gives you impact.  

It’s one thing to know what’s happening across your systems, teams, and markets. It’s another to understand how those changes are felt, absorbed, and responded to by real people. While AI can highlight performance dips or flag process gaps, it takes emotionally intelligent leadership to uncover the why behind them, to challenge limiting beliefs that are driving less-than-ideal behaviours, and to navigate the human side of change. 

The return on investment in this equation isn’t just financial, although financial benefits are likely. ROI also shows up in stronger team engagement, faster adaptation to change, higher trust, better retention, and decisions that actually stick because people feel heard, involved, and supported. That’s the kind of return AI can’t fully generate on its own.  

Some AI tools are getting better at mimicking empathy or providing grief support scripts. But let’s not confuse simulation with understanding. Leaders still need to build trust, gauge emotional undercurrents, and respond in the moment to subtle cues that aren’t captured in any dataset. That’s not soft; that’s high-performing leadership. 

If you want to stay future-ready, don’t try to outthink the bots. They can’t lead people with wisdom, presence, and heart. But you can. And that becomes your leadership edge.