#81: Why your technical expertise is holding you back as a manager
5 mindset shifts to transform from problem-solver to leader
👋 Hey, Leo here! Welcome to The Tech Leadership Playbook. Each week, I explain the concepts needed to become a better tech leader and grow your career. Subscribe to get every issue in your inbox.
Hey Friends,
Welcome to the 81st edition of my newsletter.
As you can notice, I changed the title of this newsletter as well as the logo.
It’s now “The Tech Leadership Playbook” instead of “The Level Up Ladder”.
Why did I do this?
I felt that “The Level Up Ladder” was too vague.
Is it a gaming newsletter? A career-growth one? One for construction workers?
I want to be more specific in what I write.
I’ve worked with tech people all my adult life. I lead them, I do training for them, and I mentor them, so it makes more sense to think of software engineers when I write.
And my clear goal, through this newsletter and pretty much all I write online, is to help high-achieving individual contributors become great tech leaders.
That doesn’t mean that the subjects I will approach do not apply to any domain.
They will be, because I will not write about code reviews and continuous integration pipelines.
My focus is to help people become better managers through soft skills.
Things like:
planning
communication
leading performing teams
among others.
So, I hope you like this new format, and I promise I will try writing advice that is even more relevant and applicable.
Personal Update
Not too many exciting things happened this week.
I finished the second part of the marketing course last weekend.
Worked during the weekdays, trained afterwards.
I am pushing with my training, as I have 3 more weeks until Hyrox in Valencia. So I will have a couple of weeks of intense training followed by a week of deloading.
While you are reading this, I should be running another half-marathon in the forest. (Wish me luck, and hopefully I don’t fall on the ground, like last time.)
Yesterday I drove to my home city to have lunch with my mom, see my sister and my nephew, and came back the same day.
Every trip to my home town makes me feel a bit nostalgic.
But I guess that’s normal.
Anyway, enough about me. Let’s talk about one of the traps most people get into when moving to a managerial role.
Why your technical expertise is holding you back as a manager
Not so long ago, one of my senior developers got promoted to team lead, and I saw him struggling with the same thing I did years ago—trying to stay very close to the tech side and being a leader at the same time.
It was like watching my younger self, and it brought back memories of my own painful transition.
The Hero's Journey (That's Actually Holding You Back)
Let me paint you a picture that might feel familiar.
You're the go-to person on your team.
The one who writes the most complex code, debugs the trickiest issues, or solves the problems that no one else seems to be able to solve.
Your technical expertise is so valuable that management decides to promote you to lead the team.
(First of all, this is the wrong way to promote a person; it’s called the “Halo Effect," when you think that someone who is good at doing A will also be good at doing B, but we’ll talk about this in another issue in more detail.)
Anyway, you get promoted, and that's where the trouble begins.
You feel you need to demonstrate to the others that you are still the best.
You want validation based on your technical prowess.
It’s an ego thing.
It’s also based on the fear they will not accept you otherwise.
They will not listen to you if you don’t prove yourself.
I remember my first few months as a team leader.
I was in charge of leading the team for the most important feature to come up that year. It was called vLag (Virtual Lan Aggregation Group). The feature is not important; I just felt the need to write it down, as I hadn’t remembered it in years.
Every time my team faced a technical challenge, I would jump in to fix it myself.
I thought I was being helpful. I thought I was being efficient. I was wrong.
I would spend 14 hours a day working.
It was the second time I was close to burnout.
The Hidden Cost of Being the Problem Solver
Here's what research tells us about leaders who can't let go of their technical roles:
McKinsey found that 83% of first-time managers struggle with the transition from doing to leading. But here's the kicker—it's not just hurting you; it's hurting your entire team.
Think about it this way: Every time you solve a problem that your team could have solved:
You rob them of a learning opportunity
You create a dependency on yourself
You miss the chance to develop future leaders
You sacrifice strategic thinking time for tactical work
I learned this lesson the hard way.
We had this brilliant guy, John (not his real name), who came to me one day and said, "I feel like I'm not growing anymore. Every time there's an interesting challenge, you take it on yourself."
That conversation was a wake-up call.
The Science Behind the Struggle
There's fascinating research from the Center for Creative Leadership that explains why this transition is so hard.
They call it the "transition penalty."
When you're promoted to leadership, your brain is literally working against you.
You get a dopamine hit from solving technical problems—it's immediate, it's satisfying, and it's what made you successful in the first place.
But leadership?
The rewards are delayed. The victories are often invisible. And the skills you need are completely different.
5 mindset shifts to transition from problem-solver to leader
While I struggled with letting go, in time, I developed a framework for doing it.
And I’m passing it to you.
1. From "I'll fix it" to "Who can grow from this?"
The problem-solver mindset says:
"I can solve this faster and better myself."
The leader mindset asks:
"Who on my team could develop by tackling this challenge?"
2. From "Getting Things Done" to "Getting Things Done Through Others"
The problem-solver mindset says:
"My output is what matters."
The leader mindset understands:
"My impact is measured by my team's output."
Peter Drucker captured this perfectly when he said,
"No executive has ever suffered because their subordinates were strong and effective."
Your job isn't to be the most productive individual anymore—it's to multiply the productivity of others.
This means:
Developing your people's capabilities
Focusing on removing obstacles for your team
Creating an environment where others can excel
3. From "Having the Answer" to "Asking the Right Questions"
The problem-solver mindset says:
"Let me tell you the solution."
The leader mindset asks:
"What do you think we should do?"
This shift was beautifully illustrated in "Turn the Ship Around!" by David Marquet. He transformed his submarine unit by stopping himself from giving orders and instead asking his crew what they thought should be done.
Key questions great leaders ask:
"What's your approach to solving this?"
"What other options have you considered?"
"What do you need from me to move forward?"
4. From "Short-term Fixes" to "Long-term Vision"
The problem-solver mindset says:
"Let's fix what's broken now."
The leader mindset asks:
"Where do we need to be in a year?"
This might be the most crucial shift for technical experts.
In engineering, we're trained to find and fix immediate problems.
But leadership requires looking beyond the current sprint or quarter.
According to McKinsey, leaders who regularly engage in strategic thinking are 10x more likely to be successful in their roles.
Yet, many new leaders spend less than 5% of their time thinking strategically.
Your focus should shift to:
Team capability gaps
Industry trends and market direction
Strategic partnerships and relationships
Block at least 4 hours every week in your calendar for reflection on the above.
5. From "Personal Excellence" to "Team Excellence"
The problem-solver mindset says:
"I need to be the best."
The leader mindset says:
"I need to help others become their best."
This is perhaps the most profound shift.
Your success is no longer about your technical brilliance; it's about your ability to build and develop a brilliant team.
In "Multipliers," Liz Wiseman describes how the best leaders use their expertise not to shine themselves but to amplify the capabilities of others.
They:
Share credit generously
Focus on developing others' strengths
Create opportunities for team members to showcase their work
Final Thoughts
The shift from technical expert to leader isn't about abandoning your expertise—it's about using it differently.
Instead of solving every problem, use your experience to:
Guide others' thinking
Coach and mentor your team
Identify learning opportunities
Your technical knowledge becomes a tool for developing others, not a crutch for doing everything yourself.
Remember:
The measure of your success as a leader isn't what you can do; it's what your team can accomplish without you.
Your Turn
Think about your last week:
How much time did you spend developing your team?
How much time did you spend solving technical problems?
What's one technical responsibility you could delegate this week?
I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences.
Have you struggled with this transition?
Let me know in the comments below!
Recommendations:
This podcast episode on “Never enough” by Andrew Wilkinson with Derek Sivers. After listening to this episode I picked up one of Siver’s books and it’s slowly becoming one of my role models. I’ll keep you posted.
Short video by Dr. Peter Attia in which he talks about why VO2 max is a better predictor of longevity than things like smoking or diabetes.
Senna. I rewatched the documentary on Netflix (the old one, not the one that will arrive soon) and I understood why so many people still regard him as one of the best.
Well, I hope you liked this edition.
Thank you for reading, and join me in the comments section for further discussions!
Leo
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