The Myth of Being Ready.
“I didn’t feel ready when I took the role.”
This statement is more revealing than it appears. It reflects a misunderstanding most of us carry early in our careers - that leadership begins at appointment, and that readiness precedes responsibility.
In reality however, the opposite is true. By the time you are formally promoted, the organization has voted on the patterns you have proven over time - such as how you handle ambiguity, respond when numbers miss, and maintain composure under pressure. A chance at leadership, in this sense, is rarely a starting point nor about what you promise to deliver; but a recognition that you have already demonstrated the behaviors, judgment, and composure that justify that you are ready.
Why You Will Never Feel Fully Ready
As your scope increases, it is important to understand that your operating environment does not simply become busier. More than that, it becomes structurally different - which means managing uncertainty, visibility, and consequences that extend beyond what you can immediately control despite incomplete information, competing priorities, and trade-offs that often carry significant financial, operational, or reputational weight.
Shockingly, this is where it gets easy to interpret this discomfort as unreadiness when what it is is your exposure to this asymmetry. Our 2025 review of executive transitions of over 60+ senior African leaders in finance, tech, and energy found that 78% reported feeling “not fully prepared” in the first six months after stepping into a higher-level role, despite being technically qualified and having strong prior performance. Of these, nearly 55% described heightened anxiety around decision-making under ambiguity, and 42% felt overwhelmed by the visibility and consequences of their choices - thus reflecting a structural reality that your first experience of scale will almost always feel bigger than your current capacity and that total readiness is an illusion.
What Leading Before You’re Ready Actually Looks Like
Leading before you feel ready requires measured and deliberate effort. While most professionals wait for formal authority before they expand their thinking, you cannot afford to. You must begin operating at the next level before you get it. This means you frame decisions in enterprise terms rather than functional wins, consider second- and third-order consequences before someone asks you to, step into ambiguity rather than escalate it upward, build influence, capacity and visibility, and learn to absorb complexity instead of simplifying it away for personal comfort.
When you do these, you are not overreaching but demonstrating range. And for decision makers, range is what gets evaluated in considering larger responsibility. To them, it is not asking whether you perform your current role well; it is asking whether your thinking already exceeds since a promotion will not expand your capability overnight but will only formalize the expansion you have already shown.
READY - A Framework for Practicing Early Leadership
If we reduce the art of leading before you are ready to its essence, it comes down to five deliberate expansions you can practice every day.
- Responsibility: Expand the outcomes you treat as yours. This involves stepping into decisions and results beyond your formal mandate and holding yourself accountable for their success and failure.
- Engagement: Contribute at the level of strategy and execution. Do not limit yourself to what is assigned. Instead, participate in shaping priorities, framing trade-offs, and influencing decisions that stretch across the enterprise.
- Anticipation: Surface second-order effects before they escalate. Train yourself to see the ripple effects of choices, identify hidden risks, and act before small issues become systemic challenges.
- Discipline: Deliver consistently because reliability compounds. Your capacity to perform under pressure repeatedly signals steadiness, builds trust, and establishes pattern - long before authority formalizes it.
- Yielding Ego: Seek correction while refining your approach. You do not need to appear flawless but adaptable, open, and committed to improvement. Let feedback sharpen your judgment and expand your perspective.
An Article by NerdAFRICA.
