How Managers Can Learn Leadership – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1204

How Managers Can Learn Leadership – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1204

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1204 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here.

Credit: Mikhail Nilov

Preamble

This blog post is based on an INSEAD article by Vibha Gaba, the Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership at INSEAD and the Program Director of the Leading Successful Change executive education program. Link here. 

https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/learning-lead-new-manager?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=ec3c1e7345-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_12_17_10_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-ec3c1e7345-250254070 

From Doer to Leader: How New Managers Can Learn to Lead with Confidence and Impact

Stepping into your first management role is a defining moment in any career. Yet for many new managers, it’s also one of the most bewildering. Suddenly, the success formulas that got you promoted, technical expertise, individual performance, task execution, no longer suffice. As Professor Vibha Gaba explains in her discussion on leadership, becoming a manager isn’t just a change in title or responsibility; it’s a transition in identity, mindset and skillset. 

Let’s explore the key insights leaders at all levels can apply, whether you’re newly promoted, preparing for your first leadership role, or helping others make this transition.

Leadership Is Not Automatic, It Must Be Learnt

The most important insight from Gaba’s discussion is simple but often overlooked: being good at your job is not the same as being good at leading people. Most new managers receive little formal training before they take on their roles. Rather than learning leadership in advance, many “figure it out as they go along,” which can result in confusion, ineffective techniques, or leadership missteps.

Today’s workplaces are complex and dynamic. Managers don’t just assign tasks; they are expected to motivate, coach, resolve conflict, facilitate cooperation, and guide teams toward shared goals. These competencies, task management, relationship building, and self-management, require different behaviors and emotional intelligence than those used in individual contributor roles.

The first step for new managers, then, is to recognize that leadership is a discipline unto itself, one that must be learned, practiced, and reflected upon deliberately.

The New Leadership Challenge: From Technical to Adaptive Work

Gaba explains that the nature of managerial work is fundamentally different from individual contributor work. Most individual contributors focus on technical problems with clear solutions. Leaders, by contrast, grapple with adaptive challenges, ambiguous, human-centric issues that don’t have clear answers and require learning in real time.

Adaptive challenges might include:

• Managing diverse personalities with conflicting motivations

• Coaching people to grow rather than telling them what to do

• Balancing organizational goals with team wellbeing

• Building trust and psychological safety in teams

These are not tasks that can be solved with logic or expertise alone. They demand curiosity, empathy, behavioral flexibility, and ongoing learning.

For example, assigning a task to a team member requires more than matching skills to jobs. It requires understanding people’s motivations, capabilities, and development needs, a perspective shift that reflects the deeper relational dimension of leadership.

The Three Dimensions of Leadership

Gaba highlights three core dimensions that every new manager must develop to lead effectively.

Managing Tasks – This includes setting clear goals, distributing work based on strengths, monitoring progress, and ensuring high standards.

Task management remains critical; without it, teams lack direction and performance falters. But technical competence alone won’t generate engagement or foster growth.

Managing Relationships – At the heart of leadership is building trust, understanding team dynamics, holding productive conversations, and resolving conflicts constructively. When relationships are healthy, people feel safe to take risks, share ideas, and collaborate creatively.

Managing Self – Perhaps the most overlooked elements are self-awareness, reflective thinking, emotional regulation, and clarifying personal priorities and values. Self-management enables leaders to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively, a critical skill when navigating ambiguity and interpersonal tension.

Together, these three dimensions represent a holistic framework for leadership that goes beyond technical competence into the realm of human dynamics and self-mastery.

Leadership Isn’t Learned by Watching; It’s Learned by Doing

A key insight from Gaba’s conversation is that leadership cannot be mastered simply through reflection or theory; it must be practiced actively. As she states: “You don’t learn to lead better by reflection alone. You learn to lead better by being a leader”.

Reflection, thinking critically about experiences, is essential. But without action and feedback loops, insights remain abstract and disconnected from real challenges. The interplay of practice and feedback builds competence. This means trying new behaviors with your team, observing the impact of your choices, asking for and accepting feedback, and adjusting behaviors based on outcomes. In this way, new managers evolve from reactionary actors to intentional leaders who learn from each interaction and refine their approach over time.

Psychological Safety and Trust: Foundations of Team Performance

Creating an environment where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and make mistakes is no longer optional; it is essential for innovation and team cohesion. New managers may underestimate the importance of psychological safety, but it’s a key differentiator between transactional and transformational leadership.

Psychological safety promotes open communication, risk-taking without fear of blame, ownership of outcomes, and peer support and collaboration.

Managers build this by being approachable, asking questions rather than issuing commands, recognizing contributions publicly, and supporting team members after setbacks. These behaviors signal to teams that their leader values people as humans, not just workers.

Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone: Growth Requires Discomfort

The transition to leadership is inherently uncomfortable. As Gaba notes, new managers must be willing to push themselves beyond habitual modes of working, adopting behaviors that don’t come naturally at first. This discomfort is a necessary part of growth. Just as physical training requires progressive stress to strengthen muscles, leadership development requires behavioral experimentation and willingness to be “a beginner” at new skills.

Leaders who resist discomfort may cling to what’s familiar, especially if their prior technical success earned them respect. But this can limit their effectiveness as leaders, because management demands a different repertoire of behaviors.

Final Takeaways for New and Aspiring Leaders

Here are the core lessons that every new manager, and anyone preparing for a leadership role, should internalize.

Lead with intention: Recognize that leadership requires a distinct mindset that prioritizes people as much as performance.

Build self-awareness: Understand your strengths, vulnerabilities, triggers, and patterns, because self-knowledge is the foundation of effective leadership.

Prioritize relationships: Team performance stems from trust, psychological safety, and mutual respect; not just task allocation.

Seek feedback actively: Feedback isn’t a critique; it’s a learning signal that helps refine your leadership approach.

Embrace discomfort: Real growth happens when you stretch beyond your comfort zone into new, adaptive challenges.

Leverage your networks: Peers, mentors, and cross-level relationships provide support, insight, and perspective that enrich your leadership journey.

Sum Up

The transition from individual contributor to manager is one of the most pivotal phases of a career, but it’s also one of the least understood. As Professor Vibha Gaba’s insights highlight, effective leadership isn’t spontaneous; it is learnt through practice, reflection, feedback, and relational engagement.

New managers can accelerate this transition by focusing not just on what they do, but how they do it, paying attention to self-management, team dynamics, and organizational networks. By doing so, they don’t just manage tasks; they inspire people, unlock potential across teams, and contribute to organizational success in meaningful, sustainable ways.

Leadership, ultimately, isn’t about reaching a destination. It’s about continuous learning — and choosing to lead with intention every step of the way.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, any claim is lodged, it will be acknowledged and duly recognized immediately.