In January 2011, I was demoted from my role as General Manager.
At the time, it felt deeply unfair. The results were not yet visible at the pace the board expected, confidence was low, and my part of the business was under pressure.
What made it even harder was what happened next: shortly after I left, the results came through.
The initiatives had been right. The groundwork had been laid. The people had grown. But the return showed up after my departure, not during my tenure.
I left the company bitter, confused, and convinced that I had been misunderstood.
It took me years to understand what had really gone wrong.
It was not primarily a strategy issue. It was not an execution issue. It was a leadership transition issue.
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I was playing for the wrong team.
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The move I did not fully understand
I began my leadership journey in South Africa as a Team Leader, responsible for four people. It was hands-on, practical work. I knew my team well. I solved problems quickly. I supported them closely.
When I moved into an Area Leader role, that instinct still served me well. I was responsible for multiple teams and multiple Team Leaders, but the pattern was familiar: support your people, remove obstacles, stay close to the work, and results will follow.
Then I stepped into a General Manager role.
The scale changed dramatically. I was now responsible for 1,000 staff members, 150 Team Leaders, and 9 Area Leaders reporting to me.
What I had not fully understood was this: at that level, I was no longer only leading a team. I had also joined one.
There was the team below me, the leaders and teams in my function.
And there was the team beside me, the executive team responsible for leading the business as a whole.
That was the shift I had not yet made.
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Where I got it wrongUnder pressure, I defaulted to what had made me successful before.
I played for my people.
I protected my Area Leaders from executive pressure. I absorbed stress on their behalf. I tried to create stability below me by buffering the intensity above me.
At the time, I believed that was good leadership.
But at senior level, that instinct can become a limitation.
My peers on the executive team needed me to think and operate as one of them. They needed me to engage at enterprise level, align around shared priorities, contribute beyond my own function, and bring those priorities back into my area with clarity and conviction.
Instead, I was still operating one level down.
I had the title of a senior leader, but I was still leading with the instincts of a frontline leader. I was loyal to the team I led, but not fully aligned to the team I was now part of.
That misalignment slowed everything down.
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The paradox of senior leadershipThis was the lesson I learned too late: when you move into more senior leadership, your people are not best served when you shield them from the organisation.
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They are best served when you represent them effectively within it.
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Senior leaders add value by playing up to serve down.
That means earning trust at the higher table, contributing at the level of enterprise priorities, and using that position to secure what their teams actually need: support, resources, alignment, sponsorship, and strategic clarity.
When leaders remain psychologically attached to the level below them, they often believe they are helping. In reality, they can become a bottleneck.
They filter instead of translate.
They buffer instead of align.
They protect in ways that isolate.
That was my mistake.
I thought I was advocating for my people. In practice, I was limiting their access to the very support that could have helped them succeed faster.
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What I eventually understoodThe hardest part of leadership growth is that the instincts that help you succeed at one level can work against you at the next.
At earlier levels, staying close to your team is often exactly what is required.
At more senior levels, your role changes. You are no longer there simply to protect execution. You are there to connect strategy and execution, to align teams to direction, represent operational reality credibly upward, and bring enterprise clarity back down.
That is a different job.
My strategies were not all wrong. My people were not the problem. The eventual results proved that there was substance in the work.
But I had misunderstood the role.
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I was trying to be a shield when I needed to be a bridge.
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A note to leaders in transition
If you have recently stepped into a more senior role, ask yourself two questions.
Am I still leading from the level I came from?
And am I contributing fully to the team I am now part of?
If your instinct is to shield your team from the pressure above you, pause and examine it carefully. That instinct may come from care, loyalty, and a genuine sense of responsibility. But in a more senior role, it can create distance where alignment is needed.
Your team does not need you to cut them off from the wider organisation.
They need you to connect them to it.
They need a leader who can win support, translate strategy, create clarity, and bring back what enables performance.
That is the real work of leadership at scale.
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Play up to serve down.
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That is the shift nobody warned me about, and one of the most important leadership lessons I have learned.
