From manager to director: the transition nobody explains

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

From manager to director: why the step up is bigger than you expected

David Buirs is an executive coach based in Amsterdam. This article describes the six biggest challenges in the transition from manager to director: letting go, strategic thinking, operating through others, navigating uncertainty, and the gradual disappearance of honest feedback. It explains how executive coaching helps make this transition effective.

You had been thinking about this moment for years. You knew what would be expected of you. You had watched it up close.

And yet. The first months as a director felt different from what you had imagined.

Not worse, necessarily. But unfamiliar. As if the rules of the game had changed and nobody had told you.

They had.

Research by IMD, based on interviews with 1,350 HR professionals, shows that leadership transitions are the most difficult moments in a leader's professional life. Not the hardest projects. Not the most complex reorganisations. The transition itself.

These are the six things new directors most commonly run into.

1. What got you here will not get you there

As a manager, you won by knowing. By doing. By solving problems before they escalated.

That behaviour made you successful. At director level, it becomes your biggest liability.

A director who keeps operating like a manager stays too close to the content. Makes decisions their managers should have made themselves. Without meaning to, builds a team that looks to them for answers instead of thinking independently.

The transition demands something that feels almost unnatural: letting go. Precisely when everything is new and uncertain.

2. You are now paid to think, not to do

As a manager, your day was full. Meetings, decisions, fires, people. At the end of the day, you had done something.

As a director, your calendar might look similar. But the real value you deliver lives somewhere else. In the quality of your thinking. In the questions you ask your managers. In the direction you set.

That takes adjusting to. Productivity feels less tangible. It becomes harder to point to what you actually accomplished.

And so many new directors drift back into operations. Not out of stubbornness. Out of habit. Because it feels familiar.

3. Most strategies are not a strategy

At director level, strategy suddenly becomes your responsibility. And that is precisely where many leaders struggle.

Because what most organisations call a strategy is actually a list of goals. Higher revenue. Better retention. More market share. Worthy ambitions. But not a strategy.

A real strategy is something different. It is a creative and smart choice about how to deploy people and resources to bridge the biggest obstacles standing between you and those goals. It defines what you will not do. It makes choices that hurt.

That requires a way of thinking most managers have never had to develop. Not because they are incapable of it, but because it was never asked of them.

4. Your influence now works through others

As a manager, you had a team. You knew who was good at what. You could course-correct, coach, step in.

As a director, you work largely through your managers. Your impact has become indirect. Your weekly one-on-ones with your managers are now where most of the real work actually happens.

That is a fundamentally different way of creating impact. And outside your own department it becomes more complex still. You need results through people who do not report to you. That requires alliances, trust, political awareness. Skills you were barely assessed on in your previous role.

5. There is no handbook anymore

As a manager, there was always a framework. A strategy from above. Goals that had been set. A leader you could consult.

As a director, you are that framework for others. You help set the direction. You answer questions that you do not always know the answer to yourself.

That requires something few people have explicitly learned: being comfortable with uncertainty. Making decisions on incomplete information. Holding course while the situation keeps changing.

And doing all of that while appearing calm and clear to your team. Because your uncertainty is felt by others. They look to you for direction. Even when you are still figuring it out yourself.

6. Honest feedback dries up

As a manager, you still received reasonably honest feedback. From your own leader, from colleagues, sometimes from your team.

At director level, that largely stops. People filter. They say what they think you want to hear. Or they stay silent. You hear less and less about what is actually happening.

You gradually build a distorted picture of how you are functioning, how you come across, where your blind spots are. Without realising it.

Why this is the moment to find a thinking partner

These are not personal failings. This is the transition. Anyone who is honest about their first years as a director will recognise something in this list.

But recognition alone does not solve it.

Because all of these challenges have something in common: they are difficult to resolve from the inside. You are too close. You have too little honest feedback. You are missing someone who asks the questions you are not asking yourself, because you are in the middle of it.

That is exactly where executive coaching makes the difference.

Not as therapy. Not as a course in strategic thinking. But as a fixed, confidential space with someone who understands the territory. Someone who helps you let go of the right things. Who keeps you honest about your blind spots. Who thinks alongside you on the questions you cannot raise inside the organisation.

Whether it is learning to step back from operations, building a real strategy, navigating complex stakeholder dynamics, or simply finding steadiness in a role that demands a great deal from you. In a coaching engagement, you work on the concrete situations that are live right now. Not abstract leadership theory.

The difference between who gets stuck in this transition and who grows through it rarely comes down to talent. It comes down to whether you have someone helping you ask the right questions at the moment it matters most.

For organisations looking to develop leaders across multiple levels, an in-company leadership program is a logical next step.

Have you recently stepped into a director role, or are you about to? Plan a free introductory conversation. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation about where you are now and what you need.

Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Loneliness at the top: why executives carry it alone

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

Loneliness at the top: why so many executives carry it alone

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach based in Amsterdam. This article describes the loneliness many executives and senior leaders experience at the top of an organisation. It explains how executive coaching offers a professional sounding board so leaders no longer have to carry that weight alone.

You have what you worked for. The title, the responsibility, the influence.

And yet there is something you rarely say out loud.

That it is actually quite lonely.

Everyone wants something from you. Nobody sees the full picture.

Your team wants higher salaries. You understand. But the budget is limited and the trade-offs are more complex than they appear from the outside.

Three people deserve that promotion. You can only choose one. The other two will be disappointed, maybe frustrated. You already know that. And you carry it for weeks before the decision is made.

Your CEO expects growth. The board wants margins. Clients want attention. Shareholders want returns. And you stand in the middle of all of it, every single day, trying to hold course without losing anyone.

On top of that: the dynamics within your own management team. Clashing egos. Communication problems you have seen coming for months but have not been able to resolve yet. Someone overplaying their role. Someone playing it too small.

You want to set a clear strategy. A vision people genuinely get behind. But first there is another fire to put out. And then another one after that.

You cannot fully share it.

The difficult thing about your position is this: you cannot discuss everything with the people around you.

Not with your team. They do not know all the interests at play. Some information is confidential. And you are their leader. They look to you for direction, not to absorb your doubts.

Not always with peers at the same level. Sometimes they are involved parties too.

Not always with friends or a partner. They do not have the context, or they worry in ways that do not help.

So you carry it. Largely alone.

That is not weakness. That is the reality of leadership at this level.

You are not the only one who feels this way.

Research from Stanford Graduate School of Business confirms it. Nearly two-thirds of CEOs do not receive any coaching or leadership advice from outside their organisation. At the same time, almost 100% of them said they are open to it and willing to make changes based on feedback.

The willingness is there. The support is not.

And according to the Corporate Executive Board, 70% of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaching as part of their leadership development strategy. At the highest levels of business, having a coach is no longer a luxury. It is standard practice.

Not because those executives cannot handle it. But because they understand that you cannot fully see yourself from the inside. That blind spots are not a sign of incompetence. They are a sign of being human.

What a good sounding board actually does.

An executive coach is not an advisor who tells you what to do. And not a therapist who puts your feelings at the centre.

It is a professional thinking partner who keeps you sharp. Someone who asks the questions you are not asking yourself, because you are too close to it. Someone who holds up a mirror without having an agenda.

You can say what you cannot say inside the organisation. Think out loud about a decision you have been carrying for weeks. Notice patterns in how you respond to pressure, conflict, or uncertainty.

Sometimes you need someone who asks: "What makes this so heavy for you?" Sometimes you need someone who says: "Here is how you can approach that conversation." Sometimes you just need someone who gets it.

That is what executive coaching offers. No fixed formula. A fixed space.

On the value of an outside perspective.

One of the hardest things about a senior position is this: you receive less and less honest feedback over time.

People around you filter. They say what they think you want to hear. Or they stay silent, because it feels too risky to criticise someone who has influence over their position.

As a result, you build a distorted picture of how you come across. Of how your decisions land. Of where your blind spots actually are.

That is not a personal failing. That is the structure of most organisations.

A coach has no stake in your good mood. They say what is there. That is exactly why it works.

For organisations that want to address this structurally and develop leaders across multiple levels, an in-company leadership program is a logical next step.

The loneliness does not disappear. But you do not have to carry it alone.

Leadership at your level comes with a weight that others do not see. That is part of it. That does not go away.

But there is a difference between carrying that weight alone, and carrying it with someone next to you who understands.

If you are curious whether executive coaching is right for you, plan a free introductory conversation. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation about where you are now and what you need.

Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Coaching for Directors

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

The higher you rise, the less you hear

David Buirs is a leadership coach based in Amsterdam who works with directors, executives and CEOs on personal leadership development. This article explains why senior leaders receive less feedback the higher they rise, how that affects the entire organisation, and what coaching for directors and executives concretely delivers. References include research by KornFerry/Hay Group and a study published in the Journal of Management Development.

You made it. You are a director now.

Years of hard work, strong results, and now you are at the top. The responsibility is bigger. The decisions are heavier. And the number of people who will tell you honestly what they think of your leadership: smaller than ever before.

That is a paradox most directors, executives and CEOs never say out loud. But almost all of them recognise it immediately.

A fish rots from the head

There is a saying I find uncomfortable. Because it is so precisely true.

"A fish starts rotting from the head."

When leadership at the top is not working well, that spreads through the entire organisation. Not overnight. But slowly, your behaviour, your tone, and your blind spots seep into the culture of everything beneath you.

In how people treat each other. In whether they dare to say what they actually think. In whether they take ownership or wait for you to decide.

That is a significant responsibility. And it asks something of you: the willingness to take yourself seriously as a leader. Not as a subject-matter expert. As the person who sets the tone for everything around you.

The higher you rise, the less feedback you receive

In 1969, Laurence Peter described a phenomenon now known as the Peter Principle. The idea is straightforward. People are promoted based on their performance in their current role. Until they reach a position where those earlier qualities are no longer sufficient.

Many directors became directors because they excelled as managers, as experts, as strategists. Not because they had already proven themselves at the very top of an organisation.

And at that level, honest feedback dries up.

Employees keep their real opinions to themselves. Peer directors are also competitors. The board wants results. And the question "am I actually doing this well?" becomes harder and harder to ask out loud.

That is not a sign of weakness. It is the structural reality of senior leadership.

But without a mirror, you do not grow. And if you as a director stop growing, the organisation stops growing with you.

The loneliness nobody talks about

One of the things I hear most from the directors I work with is how lonely it can be. Not socially. Professionally.

There is nobody you can call without a filter to say you are doubting yourself. Nobody who challenges you the way you needed to be challenged earlier in your career. Nobody to think out loud with about the question that has been on your mind for three weeks.

You carry enormous responsibility. For people, for results, for the direction of the organisation. And most evenings, you carry it alone.

Coaching for directors, executives and CEOs offers exactly that: a conversation with someone who speaks the language. Someone who knows what it feels like to work under high pressure, to navigate politics, and to sometimes simply not know what the right call is.

What the research shows

KornFerry and Hay Group conducted extensive research into the relationship between leadership and business results. Their conclusion: leadership determines 50 to 60 percent of organisational culture, and has a measurable influence of approximately 35 percent on business results.

That is not a soft finding. That is strategy.

And yet coaching for directors is still an afterthought in many organisations. Something for when things go wrong. Not something built in structurally, the way finance or marketing is.

A study published in the Journal of Management Development looked at the impact of leadership coaching on 75 middle and senior managers. The outcome was clear: coaching led to more individual attention for team members, more delegation, and less micromanagement.

Those are precisely the behavioural shifts that ripple through an entire organisation. From director to team member.

I know what it feels like

I spent five years leading a large international team as a director. I know the reality of senior leadership from the inside.

The moments when you doubt yourself but cannot call anyone. The decisions you are not sure about. The meetings where the atmosphere is off but you have not yet figured out how to turn it around.

That experience is not a side note in how I work. It is the foundation.

When we work together on executive coaching, I bring that with me. No theoretical models that read like a management book. An honest conversation about what is actually going on, and what you need to sharpen your leadership.

For organisations that want to work more broadly on leadership development across their management layers, management training is a complement that works deeper into the organisation.

When does coaching for directors make sense?

Not only when things are going wrong.

Coaching makes sense when you feel there is more you could get out of your role. When certain conversations keep getting harder. When your team is not taking the ownership you expect from them. When you notice you are spending more time solving problems than giving direction.

And sometimes it is simply this: you need someone you can be honest with.

That is allowed. That is smart.

Interested, or just curious whether there is a fit? Plan a free introductory call via this page. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation about what is going on.