When ‘Leading Others’ Isn’t Enough

Author: Rachael Stott

Oversimplified frameworks hold organisations and leaders back

Many organisations proudly display a simple leadership framework: Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading the Organisation. It’s easy to communicate and easy to remember, but this simplicity can hide a costly blind spot.

When every people leader, from a Frontline Supervisor running a shift to a Functional Head managing a multi million-dollar budget, is placed under the same “Leading Others” banner, we blur the very differences that determine whether leaders thrive or stall.

No wonder senior executives express frustration about the “stuck middle” or complain that mid-tier leaders are “not strategic enough.” Often, these leaders have never been given a clear definition of what “strategic enough” means at their level.

The cost of conflated leadership levels

When leadership levels are conflated with pay grades, tenure, or technical expertise, the framework fails its purpose. Ever noticed an ever growing list of leadership titles that include associate, deputy, senior, and assistant?  This can signal leadership being applied as a reward, rather than a critical organisational capability, often creating bureaucracy instead of building capability and driving performance.

Oversimplification leads to predictable challenges:

• Promotion stalls: leaders succeed in frontline roles but struggle when moving to function or business leadership because their scope, influence, and time horizon shift dramatically.
• Strategy gaps: mid-tier leaders may excel at team execution but fail to connect their function’s work to enterprise-level objectives.
• Patchy skills: a Tier-3 leader might be excellent at coaching managers but become overwhelmed by cross-functional trade-offs or P&L decisions; a gap that a generic “Leading Others” is unlikely to prepare them for.
• Talent and engagement risk: misaligned expectations can frustrate high-potential leaders, reduce retention, and slow organisational performance.

Research from the Leadership Pipeline (Drotter & Charan) and CCL consistently shows that leadership transitions matter. Each transition requires new work, new skills, and a new time horizon. Ignoring these shifts creates the exact frustrations organisations lament.

A practical compromise: differentiating “Leading Others”

While not every organisation needs a seven-level Leadership Pipeline model, adding just enough nuance can make a real difference. We recommend breaking down “Leading Others” into three distinct passages:

By recognising these different leadership levels, you are more likely to:

• Give leaders clearer expectations. 
• Provide more viable growth and development pathways (both horizontal and vertical).
• Strengthen the stronger succession pipeline for enterprise leadership.
• Create an integrated leadership capability that drives performance and delivers on strategic plans.

The Payoff - Clarity Unlocks Leadership Potential

By recognising the levels beyond ‘Leading Others’ organisations can:

• Improve alignment between day-to-day activity and strategy delivery.
• Reduce derailments at critical transitions.
• Accelerate development for high-potential leaders.

Nuance doesn’t have to mean complexity. Reviewing and defining the unique value each leadership level contributes will deliver an aligned and differentiated framework, that drives real performance impact. 

So, the next time you hear someone suggest that a mid-tier leader “isn’t strategic enough,” get curious; it may not be a question of ability, it may be a question of clarity.

If you’d like a practical guide to mapping leadership value-add in your organisation, get in touch. We’ve worked alongside some of Aotearoa NZ’s largest and most iconic organisations to define frameworks that accelerate leadership growth and succession readiness.

Need more information? Contact the Winsborough Team:
winsborough.co.nz | 0800 222 061 | support@winsborough.co.nz

Image credit: Aleksandar Ristov (Unsplash)