The First Time You Lead People

You got the promotion. You wanted it. Now you sit in the car every morning for two extra minutes, trying to feel like a leader before you have to walk in and act like one. The feeling does not come. You go in anyway. And some part of you wonders how long it will be before someone notices that the person running the meeting is still figuring out what she is doing.

The gap has a name, and it is not a disorder

In 1978, psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes published a paper on what they called impostor phenomenon — the experience of feeling fraudulent despite real, demonstrable competence. Their original sample was high-achieving women. The finding that has held up across decades of replication is this: the feeling is most intense during transitions. Not when you are failing. When you have just succeeded and stepped into unfamiliar ground.

This matters. The fraudulence you feel on your first day leading people is not evidence that you were wrong to take the role. It is evidence that you have moved faster than your self-image. The role is new. The self-image is not. That lag between them is real, and it produces a very specific discomfort: the sense that you are playing someone, that the leader in the room is a performance and the real you is watching from one step back.

So the feeling is common, it spikes at exactly the moment you are in, and it does not track how good you actually are. That is worth holding.

What is actually happening between you and the role

Carl Jung wrote about something he called the persona — the face a person presents to the world in a professional or social context. Not a lie. A real part of the self. But partial, shaped by what the role demands, not by everything the person is. When you take on a new role, you are asked to wear a persona you have not yet worn before. It does not fit perfectly at first. That is expected.

The discomfort of early leadership is not that the persona is false. It is that the gap between who you have been and who the role requires is suddenly visible to you, all day, every day. The people around you mostly cannot see it. They see someone who got promoted and is doing the job. You feel the seam.

This is related to what researchers call self-verification — the process by which people seek out feedback that confirms the self-image they already hold. When your self-image is "competent individual contributor" and the world is now reflecting back "leader", the mismatch creates a low-grade friction. You are not lying. You are not failing. You are mid-update.

That update takes time. It runs on evidence. And the evidence only comes from doing the job — making decisions, surviving the difficult conversations, getting feedback that lands, gradually building a track record your nervous system can trust. You cannot think your way there. You have to live your way there.

The identity question underneath the leadership question

Leadership transition is not just a career event. It asks a harder question: who are you when the job description changes but you have not? This is why it sits in the same family as other transitions — moving countries, leaving a marriage, returning from burnout. The external record updates. The inside does not, not immediately.

Psychologists who study role transitions describe something called the provisional self — a temporary, working identity a person inhabits while trying on a new role before they have fully committed to it or been confirmed by it. Herminia Ibarra's qualitative research at INSEAD documented this in people moving into leadership for the first time: they tried on behaviours, tested what felt authentic, discarded what felt like a costume, and gradually built something that held. The process was not linear. It was iterative. And it required actually doing the role, not just thinking about what kind of leader they wanted to be.

The car-sitting is not wasted time. But it is not the process either. The self-image updates inside the room, not before you enter it.

If the tension between authenticity and persona feels sharper in leadership, that is because the stakes are social. Every decision you make now affects other people's work lives. That weight is appropriate. Feeling it is not weakness. It is the first sign that you are taking the role seriously.

What actually shortens the gap

Three things, based on what the research supports.

First, small decisions made clearly. Studies on leader identity development — including longitudinal work by Day and colleagues published in The Leadership Quarterly — show that identity as a leader consolidates through repeated action, not through reflection alone. Each decision you make as a leader, even a small one, gives your brain new evidence. The self-image runs on evidence. Give it some.

Second, feedback that is honest, not flattering. If the people around you only tell you what is going well, your sense of the role stays thin. Seek the specific feedback. "What is one thing I could have handled differently this week?" is more useful than performance reviews. The brain updates on precision, not on praise.

Third, let the role change you. This is the harder one. Early leaders often try to stay exactly who they were while also leading people. It does not hold. The role asks something of you. Not performance — growth. The person who leads effectively is not the same person who was promoted. She is the next version. And that transition — from individual contributor to someone responsible for others — is one of the genuine identity passages in adult life.

This is where the alchemical image of nigredo (the stage of dissolution, where what was solid breaks down before something new forms) is actually useful, not as metaphor but as map. The discomfort you feel is not the system failing. It is the system working. Something is being remade. That process is supposed to be uncomfortable. If you want to understand it in full, the essay on nigredo and collapse covers the mechanism in detail.

You do not need to resolve the gap today. You need to stay in the room long enough for the gap to close. It will.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is feeling like a fraud when you first lead people normal?

Yes. Research on impostor phenomenon — first named by psychologists Clance and Imes in 1978 — shows it is especially common during role transitions, including a first leadership position. The feeling does not mean you are unqualified. It means your self-image has not yet caught up with your new role. That gap is normal and it closes with time and experience.

Why do I feel like I am playing someone when I lead my team?

Because you are, partly. Carl Jung called the professional face we wear a persona — a mask that is real but incomplete. When you step into leadership for the first time, you are building a new persona before the inner self has agreed to it. The mismatch is real. It is not dishonesty. It is the normal gap between a role and an identity, and it narrows as the role becomes lived experience.

How long does it take to feel like a real leader?

There is no fixed timeline. Studies on role transitions suggest months, not days. What shortens it is not confidence-building exercises but actual repetition — making real decisions, getting real feedback, and surviving real mistakes. The self-image updates on evidence, not on intention. Sitting in the car willing yourself to feel ready does not change the timeline much. Doing the job does.

What is the difference between impostor syndrome and a genuine skill gap?

Impostor phenomenon is the feeling of fraudulence despite adequate performance. A genuine skill gap is a specific thing you do not yet know how to do. Both can be present at the same time. The useful question is: can you name what you do not know yet? If yes, that is a gap you can close. If the anxiety is general and survives specific evidence that you are doing well, that is more likely impostor phenomenon.

Should I tell my team I feel like I do not know what I am doing?

Selective honesty helps; wholesale disclosure usually does not. Research on leader authenticity shows that admitting specific uncertainty — "I have not handled this kind of situation before, here is how I am thinking about it" — builds trust. Broadcasting general self-doubt can undermine the team's sense of safety. The difference is between sharing a process and offloading an anxiety.

Short films from this research — follow on TikTok.