#14 - The Authority Trap

n this episode, I unpack the hidden pressure that comes with being the reliable one — the person expected to have answers, stay composed, and keep things moving.

We explore how authority can quietly turn into emotional weight, why leaders often absorb more than they release, and the importance of creating outlets before responsibility becomes internal strain.

A grounded conversation on leadership, pressure, and what it really costs to always be the steady one.

Transcript

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The authority trap. The moment you step into a leadership role, especially when you've been promoted from within, the dynamic generally shifts quite dramatically. And this isn't just from a professional standpoint, this is personally as well. A lot of things have to change in your personal life to be a good leader. And this will resonate with you more once you sort your your personal stuff out as well. But when you move into a leadership role where where a lot more responsibility is required and a lot more attention, a lot more focus is required, you're almost left with no choice but to sharpen up outside of work as well. And slowly start removing the things that no longer serve you anymore. Just little things going out for beers on a Friday night and getting getting absolutely wasted. Things like that would have to change for you to be successful, as in to your fullest potential. You're never going to know what your fullest potential is until you retract the things that are not serving you. And to me, that it's just something that I've been recently going through as well. It's almost like exciting because I've never actually seen myself in a way of not having anything really holding me back. Another difficult thing that you have to move into with the authority trap is the people that you know used to grab lunch with, the people used to go for beers with, uh, the ones who knew exactly how you felt about your old manager, uh, the ones that you vented to joked with, complained, now they report to you. And making that shift to making decisions and actually telling people what to do is a big change to make, and it's not easy, but it's needed, and nobody really prepares you for how strange that that feels. There's no real training around it. The job description doesn't actually outline it, and not even the people who promoted you will actually prepare you for that. And not much guidance actually is given to you early on just around the relationships and how do you actually manage a relationship. So I like to actually bring that up when we're pr promoting somebody into a higher role, actually, would like to say to them that don't come in too hot, don't come in and rule the roost straight away. You've got to earn the respect as a leader and you've got to lead by action. So you want to give the impression early on that nothing is really going to change, and nor should it. It doesn't mean that you have to come in and now you've got a different title and a different coloured t-shirt, and whatever their promotional perks are, that should not change the way that you are. You've been hired to go into that role for a reason. Probably one of the main reasons is your character and who you are as a person because your leadership skills probably haven't been at full scale yet or evident across the team. So you're definitely left figuring it out in real time, often while you're also trying to learn the new role as well. So meet new expectations and to prove that the decision to promote you is actually the right one. So it's a lot to navigate at once, and in that pressure, a lot of new leaders can make one of two mistakes, in my opinion. The first one, and this is probably more common than people admit, but it's overcorrecting into authority. So, as I mentioned before, going in too hot. Uh the new leader who suddenly becomes formal, who draws a hard line between themselves and the people that used to sit alongside. The ones who stop joining in the lunch conversations, stuff like that, stops engaging in the small talk. The thinking is usually something like, I need to be taken seriously now, and I can't be seen as one of them anymore. If I stay too close, no one will respect the role as well. And there's logic to that, I guess, but this is where boundaries come into play, and boundaries really do matter in leadership. The level of professional separation is appropriate and necessary, so don't feel guilty for doing that. But it can become overcorrected quite dramatically with some people, depending on the person. But when it happens suddenly and without any acknowledgement, this comes across very different to the team from a team perspective. It comes across as well, look at this person, your job overnight completely changed. But you've got to warm in uh into that role. They don't see a leader stepping up, they see someone who's changed when they got the title, and that really registers in the wrong way with the team. And it can really stick. If that happens early on, it can stick with the team for a long time, probably take you triple the amount of time to earn that back. Because people have long mem memories as well, and it comes back to the impression that you give people. People remember impressions, and it comes back to your character, so you that must be at the forefront of your mind as well. If you were one person before the promotion and noticeably a different one after it, they will notice that gap quickly, and they'll start to wonder which one was actually real, whether you were just trying to smooth them over when you were on the team, and then now you're actually in damage control kind of thing. The second mistake is quite the opposite, it's equally damaging, in my opinion, as well. Just not as I guess in your face, but there's the new leader who can't let go of being one of the group. So these are the people that who still want to be friends with everybody, who softens every piece of feedback because the previous relationship feels too important to strain, they don't want to ruin that relationship. This person will laugh things off when they should be addressing this situation, um, avoids hard conversations with former peers because they know exactly how uncomfortable it will be on both sides. Uh, the intention here is usually good, um, but they don't want to lose the relationship that mattered to them. Um, which is I get that as well. I completely understand. But when you go into a leadership role, you've got to make this decision. You can't have both. You've got to uh make hard decisions, and this comes with uh difficulty at times, but it's it's as as I've mentioned, it's necessary. You become terrified of someone that the team will end up resenting. What actually happens in the team they just lose clarity in the way that you want to lead, they don't actually know what your leading style is, they don't even know what your character is anymore because it's you're trying to uh to stay there, mate, but they know deep down that you're actually in a leadership role, and what can actually happen is that your direction will not get taken seriously, they'll actually walk over you, and that's purely because they don't know where the line is, they don't know what version of this person to expect from day to day, and the result is that the role is never fully held because the person feeling it is still trying to be two things or once. So these patterns come from the same place: the discomfort of transition, the desire to resolve the discomfort quickly, either by asserting the new status clearly or prior or by pretending that the status hasn't really changed, but really neither of those resolves anything, really, they just create different problems. So you're probably thinking, Yep, you've outlined the two problems, so what's the alternative? Well, it starts with accepting something is uncomfortable, so you have to get used to being uncomfortable pretty quick, and that the relationship has changed, and there's no sugarcoating that. You don't want to convince yourself or tell or tell yourself that no the relationships are still fine, I'm still your mate, don't stress, still good. It has changed and it needs to be addressed, and that's not a failure, it's just a consequence of you wanting to grow, and if they can't accept that or support you, then they're in a situation where they're gonna have to require some growth down the line somewhere, and it's actually probably a reflection on them, whether it's jealousy or whatever the case is, but really they should be happy for you, and they should be happy to see you go into the next growth phase of your career. The dynamic is different now because the context is different, so that doesn't erase the history that you had once with the team. Um, it doesn't mean you become cold and dismissive or what came before, whether you go for beers or whatever the case is, you still can do that stuff, but you've just got to have a line there, and it means that the relationship has to evolve in a different direction, and that's again, it's exciting. And if you've got a supportive team, it's not a problem at all. So you don't want to half-ass a direction as well, because this will create awkwardness with your team. You're like, Oh, yeah, he still hasn't got it yet, or she hasn't got it yet. She can't even give a direction, or he can't give it this. Is what people say, and I just want to touch on that too, that you've got to not even give that any thought out of your day that people are talking shit behind your back because it is a constant. A lot of the time in leadership, you're cleaning up people's shit, and a lot of the time it is putting out spot fires, people talking shit. That's if you entertain it. If you don't entertain it, there's uh you got you'll have a smooth day, and it drives them up the wall if you don't entertain it as well. This is what they want a reaction, and again, it goes back to I think it's a reflection on them if they criticize you, especially going into a new role. They have no idea how hard it is to public speak, they don't have no idea about getting up in front of the team early in the morning or whatever the meeting is. The first meeting, things like that, people will go five, you can't even speak, but I guarantee they're not willing to get up there and do it. So just always have that in your back of your mind as well. So it's important to notice that these situations do happen, and good leaders who navigate this well acknowledge every avenue, they acknowledge all aspects of the uh evolution of the role. Trying to get my words out. The evolution of the role, and you've got to acknowledge it, face it, write it down. How am I gonna fix it or get how to fix it or get around it? There's no good burying it. Good leaders in this area are honest about what they're figuring out as well. They show their team through consistency, through fairness, and through the way they handle difficult moments and what kind of leader they intend to be. So there's nothing wrong with saying to your team as well, hey, I've just obviously gone into a this leadership role, it's obviously new ground for me. I might have days where I'm a bit off or my decisions are a bit inconsistent, but I'm definitely you know I've got some learning to do in the role. Nobody expects you to, unless it's an executive role or something where you're actually leading the team, you can't really be saying that. But if you go into a 3RC or something like that, or a leading hand role, then absolutely you can say, Hey, I'm just gonna sit back and learn the role for a bit, and actually that gets you more respect, if anything, than trying to sort it all out on the spot, and just let the action do the rest, and you'll naturally evolve into your led into the leader that you want to be as well. It's important to think about the word credibility. So you've already got some level of credibility already, right? Because you've been hired into the job. That's a given, right? So you know that, but now it needs to be established in other areas of your roles. So you've got to work out pretty quickly what your author authoritarian style is like. And if you want to be a man of the people or a woman of the of the people, or if you feel that your strength is in that, is is dealing with people, then focus on that, and the rest of the role can actually evolve over time as well. Decisions that you make when you're uncomfortable, the standards that you hold when it'll be easier just to let something slide, the way that you treat people consistently. So it's important to remember again that your people are everything. You can have all the best planning in the world, you can have the best programming in the world, but without your people, without your team having the buy-in to what you want to achieve, you don't achieve anything close. And if anything, it actually makes you perform even worse as well because you don't really know what to do. So you need to make sure at the very beginning that you outline the standards. It's important to give the feedback to the team that they're actually doing these things well, not it doesn't have to be all bad. I can almost guarantee we've all worked in a situation where you felt more at ease around certain leaders and less at ease around other leaders, right? And you'll see certain people from the team naturally gravitate towards certain people of the team because either one's not approachable or the other one's too matey, or something like that. And this is what you want to stamp out, pretty much, because you don't want that. You want the standard consistent across the board, and everyone can can go in and confide into your team as well, and especially you as the main leader, you have to have that standard, and you have to have your open door policy where people are feel psychologically safe enough to come in and talk to you. That's the real change and the grounded growth that you will go through. And this is all up to you. You can be either a great leader or you can be a mediocre leader, but no one's gonna continuously push you in that direction. You've got to make a decision, all right, time to change, time's time to time to look after myself a bit better and be solid for the team. So I guess to wrap up the episode, the authority trap isn't the title itself, it's the belief that the title does the work for you, but it that it doesn't, and it never does. So forget that. You do the work, and the title is just a starting point. Everything that matters will come after that naturally.