In this actionable episode, Alícia Rius, Founder of Hive – Leadership & Team Coaching, shares why promoting your best individual contributor rarely creates a great manager. If you’re in stage 4 frustrated that your promoted leaders are struggling and your team isn’t performing as expected, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What the Four Ps of Leadership framework reveals about where clarity is missing
– Why stepping into management is a career change, not a promotion
– How to create clarity around expectations for new managers
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again to the Start, Scale, and Succeed podcast-the only podcast that grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a founder. I’m your host Scott Ritzheimer, and here’s something that takes most founders way too long to figure out, and that is that you actually cannot, not shouldn’t, not might not, but cannot promote someone into management. Our guest here explained what we mean by that. But you can give them a title, you can give them a team, you can even bump up their salary if you’re extra generous and nice. No, I’m just kidding. But none of that actually makes them a manager because being in management isn’t a level up from what they’re doing. It’s something altogether different. We’ll talk about what that is here in just a moment. And why is this important? Because your best people got promoted probably because they were exceptionally good at doing the work. But now, if you’re in level four, like so many of you are, you’re watching them struggle with a job that nobody, probably including you, prepared them for. But you’re wondering why in the world this isn’t working and what to do about it.
Well, if that’s the case, you’re in a great spot because here with us today is Alícia Rius, who has spent years inside fast-growing companies watching the same thing happen over and over and over. Brilliant people get promoted into leadership and quietly start drowning. As a founder, co-founder, and CEO-sorry-of three ventures, she’s lived it herself. Today, she runs Hive Leadership and Team Coaching, where she works with scaling companies to do the one thing that actually stops the bleeding: building clarity, clear roles, clear expectations, and clear decision making before the chaos becomes the culture. She’s a creator of the 4p of Leadership framework and the author of Lead with Clarity: A Practical Guide for New Managers and Founders. Nobody Prepared for the Job She’s here with us today, Alicia. Welcome to the show. Really excited about this conversation because it’s an important one, you-I think you open the book, if I’m not mistaken, with a reasonably bold statement that stepping into management is not a promotion. If that’s the case, what is it, and why is this so important for the founders listening today?
Alicia Rius
Well, first of all, Scott, thanks for having me today, and to go and answer your question, it’s not a promotion; it’s a career change. Now, let me explain that what it means. So, most companies, even the way we treat our best people, is to reward them for being excellent at what they do into their next career step, which is going into management. Now you were exceptional at doing your job, you know your craft, all the shortcuts, and why not? We are growing. We need to build teams, and therefore I’m going to promote you to manage people who does the job that you were doing. However, that is not a step up. It’s a step out. It’s a career change, because now you have to. So the new job requires you to have a new set of skills, a mindset, and most importantly, an identity, a new identity. So that creates a lot of confusion for people who, you know, go into that new role and start and things starts to fall apart is not what they expected. Things are off, but you can’t pinpoint exactly what it is. And the person who promotes them also feels frustration because he was the best at doing that, or she was the best. Why is not working? Why we’re not, you know, hitting targets? So there’s a lot of things that needs to be taken into account, and and is that that requires another? I mean, the type of job completely change, and nobody explained that to them.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I don’t know that it. We can really overstate how important it is at this level because if you look at the level three founder, who is the one who becomes a level four founder, all they have are great players, right? Like that’s who. That’s how you win at level three, and so the only option for bringing a manager in from within the team is to do exactly what you’re talking about, right? To and we usually pick our best person, and and and I think what makes this so challenging is you do that a couple of times, but then you think there’s something wrong with the managers, like they’re all broken, they’re all they’ve all got it wrong, but you don’t really see it going right because they’re all struggling with the same problem that you created. So that starts to compound. Gets really confusing because now it’s like your whole management team is struggling. So someone who’s in that position, founder, business is growing. It’s great. They’re trying to keep up, and they need folks to help them manage it. Let’s start with let’s actually start with basics, just in case we missed it in level three. What does good management actually look like?
Alicia Rius
Well, that is something that they need to talk between themselves. So what happens most of the times is that the person who promotes them, if it depends on the size of the company, if you have a chart, one thing, but maybe. It’s the founder himself or herself that is promoting them, and they assume that they will understand what the job requires, and that is the first mistake. Assumptions is your enemy. So the first thing is about creating clarity about what do I expect from that person. So if you are the person who promoted them, you have to stop and think. What do I want from that person? What good management or leadership looks like to me when it’s successful, and have that defined because then you can go into that person and say, I’m promoting you into this, and this is what I’m expecting you for the next three months, six and nine months, and these are the targets that we’re going to be hitting, and that’s what I expect you to do. Now, when that doesn’t happen, because as you said, you grow fast and things move very hecticly, and we don’t have time to stop and think. It’s a luxury. So what happens is that you don’t see what you’re. You know what you don’t want, but you haven’t defined what you really want to see. So what for me, good management looks like, it would be it’s personal to every person or every founder. Find out what that looks like, define it, and then share that with the person you just promoted.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, you’ve got literally the book on the topic of leading with clarity. One of the challenges that I I find with the founders I work with is that they think that it is clear. They they don’t understand how it could not be clear. It’s like I’ve asked you to do that. What is it that gets in the way of founders and actually being clear, not in what they say, but what their team understands.
Alicia Rius
What’s something very interesting about that is that for them, for the founder who’s promoting the people, clarity is extreme in their head, because what happens is that they started the idea, they started the business, so clarity still holds in their head, and it’s easier to share when you have a five to 15 people in your team. Now, when you pass a number, that clarity needs to be visible, and that’s when processes needs to happen, and you have to have documentation explaining step by step what that means for you and for the team. Now, again, because we assume, or the clarity is very, you know, clear in your head, then you again assume that it’s obvious. But when you are, or you have something in your head, or you have those expectations, you are sitting in a different chair than your team, so you don’t have the exact visibility of what your team is doing, or your lead teams, and that’s why you need to sit down and align and say, “This is what I’m expecting. This is what I want to see. Let’s have that documented because then we can check if it it matches. And what doesn’t matter, then we have to bridge the gap, and that’s how you keep improving your processes.
Scott Ritzheimer
Another of the big distinctions between level three and level four, like you’re talking about here, are that you you can’t you can’t be the only one who’s clear anymore in your communication. Your managers have to be clear as well, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that most of them are going to struggle in the same way that the founder did initially when they were learning how to be clear. So, how does a founder who’s trying to coach one of the managers on their team, and and and the founder doesn’t feel like that manager is being as clear as they think? What what would be some ways to approach that?
Alicia Rius
Asking questions, and I think that one of the things that founders and new managers needs to learn are coaching skills. And for one, that is asking for help. And you’ve talked a lot with experts in your podcast: is ask for help, and then ask if the other person needs help, and that’s how you start understanding where the other person is falling short. And also, even sometimes when your communication you think it’s very clear, then a good question to ask is, “What did you understand about what I just said? And then that person will give you an answer, because even when you try to be very clear, the language that we use or the context that we we use in that moment, the other person might interpret it in a different way, and that’s why it’s so important to just try to see if the other person got what you were intended to communicate.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so helpful, so helpful. Something else that I found really helpful as I was reading through the book. Very simple, but the challenge here with a founder at this level is there’s like so many things that they have to fix all at once, and that’s really overwhelming. And so, if we’re saying, “Hey, not only do I have to learn how to lead better, I’ve got to get all my managers to lead better, there’s there’s this like overwhelm that might cause you to never. Even start so one of the things I found really helpful was your 4p framework, and I’m wondering if you could just kind of quickly introduce those to us. Folks who want to dive deeper, we’ll make sure they know how they can get a copy of the book. But what are these 4p’s and why are they so helpful for someone learning to manage?
Alicia Rius
So the 4p leadership framework is a diagnostic tool to find out where clarity is missing in your leadership. So when we I was studying leadership, the most of the challenges that founders face fall into one of those four buckets or multiple. It’s either personal, the way you lead yourself, people, how you lead others, purpose, which is strategic leadership, and process operational leadership. Because I come from systemic and I love systems, I think leadership is also systemic. And the beauty of this framework, and I have a drawing in the book. It’s each piece is connected in a circle. The beauty of it is that when you have a challenge to face, or many, it feels overwhelming.
But you find out what’s the first one that you need to to tackle. Think about it as a chair that has four legs, and each leg is 1p So when one the chair is wobbly, you don’t rebuild the whole chair or throw it away. What you do is to find the leg that’s more unstable and you fix that. You focus on that first, and because the chair is one thing, suddenly the whole chair improves. The same happens with this framework. When something is not clear enough, you focus on that area, and I have case studies where then, by default, it creates a ripple effect that other areas are improving by itself because whenever you work on something, it impacts the others. So that’s why it’s. I’m telling funders it’s okay to feel overwhelmed, but you don’t have to find out where your clarity is missing, which dimension needs your attention the most. Work on that and see how the rest improves, and then you will go to the next.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so helpful. That’s so helpful, Alicia. It sounds so easy, and to some extent, it’s simple, but it’s not easy. It should be. I I think good management is something simple to understand, but difficult to do. Right, unless you’re intentional about it and you develop the skill for it, then it becomes then it can become second nature. So there’s this question that I’m eager to get to. It’s a question that I ask all my guests. I’m very interested to see what you’d have to say. The question is this, Alicia. What would you say is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish every founder watching or listening today knew?
Alicia Rius
That they need to know who they are. Find out who you are and who you need to be, and that thing will unlock many of the challenges that you’re facing. Sounds simple, but it is like a lot of introspection, and that’s something that we don’t talk enough, and we take it for granted. We we think we know who we are, but we go through different identity crises throughout our life. And sometimes we are on autopilot, and you think you know who you are, but you things have changed. So find that out.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so good, so good, Alicia. We cannot go any further without talking about where folks can get a copy of this book. So remind us what’s the name of the book, where can folks find it, and how can they reach out to you to hear more about the work that you and your team do?
Alicia Rius
Thank you. the The book is this blue one. It’s called Lead with Clarity: How New Managers Turn Confusion into Confident Leadership. It’s available on Amazon, and also if you are a founder or team lead, and you are curious about where clarity is missing in your leadership, if you go to my website, hiveleadership teamhiveleadership.com/resources, you will find a test, a self-assessment. You answer that, and it’ll give you a rudder and a score, and then you some next steps.
Scott Ritzheimer
Brilliant, brilliant. Well, Alicia, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for writing the book. I really enjoyed it. I know those who who take the moment to to click couple clicks on Amazon, you’ve got it yourself. You will not regret it. But thanks for being on. Join us from the other side of the pond. We didn’t even say that the opening here, but just a privilege and honor having you here. I really appreciate it. And for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Scott Ritzheimer
Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer here. Thank you so much for listening to the Start Scale and Succeed podcast. I hope this episode gave you exactly what you need for the level you’re in right now. If you want to discover what level you’re in, take our 10 question Founders Evolution quiz for free at FoundersQuiz.com. That’s foundersquiz.com. It’ll pinpoint exactly where you are and give you tailored tips to move forward and reach that next level in your journey as a founder. If you got something out of today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, or review. It helps us reach more founders like you, and let’s be honest, it means a ton to me, my team, and all our incredible guests. So keep starting, scaling, and succeeding, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
Contact Alícia Rius
Alicia Rius spent years inside fast-growing companies watching the same thing happen over and over—brilliant people get promoted into leadership and quietly start drowning. As a founder, co-founder, and COO of three ventures, she lived it herself. Today she runs Hive Leadership & Team Coaching, where she works with scaling companies to do the one thing that actually stops the bleeding: build clarity. Clear roles, clear expectations, clear decision-making—before the chaos becomes the culture. She’s the creator of the 4Ps Leadership Framework™ and the author of Lead with Clarity, a practical guide for the new managers and founders nobody prepared for the job.
Want to learn more about Alícia Rius’ work at Hive – Leadership & Team Coaching? Check out her website at https://www.hiveteamcoaching.com/
Connect with Alicia through her LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciarius/
Get a copy of her book Lead with Clarity: How New Managers Turn Confusion into Confident Leadership at https://www.amazon.com/Lead-Clarity-Confusion-Confident-Leadership-ebook/dp/B0G35ZJDDP