Welcome, everyone. Today, I'm going to walk you through my journey of being contributor to leader.And through that, I I hope to, share my learnings along the way to help you with the transition that no one really teaches us about. So today, I work at Oracle Cloud Infra as a principal technical program manager where I'm building foundational processes and systems to scale their AI infrastructure. A little bit about my journey. So twelve years ago, I moved from India to Florida to complete my master's in mechanical engineering. I landed my first job at Schneider Electric as an engineer and eventually moved into larger and larger, leadership roles. By the time I left, I was, leading a team of 10 project managers. They were my direct reports, and, I was leading the largest account in my department.

I was leading the execution for that. Throughout my time at Schneider, I've had the opportunity to work on major organizational transformations. I've built and led global teams. I've led them to influence as well as direct, management by the end of it. However, here's the interesting part. So most of my growth at Schneider came because I was really good at execution. I jumped in. I fixed issues, and I was known to be very, very reliable. So I thought success was simple. Right? You just work hard, you do more, and you deliver results. And, I mean, people are gonna notice you, and you're gonna climb the ladder. That philosophy worked very well for me for a while until I became a leader. Because what nobody tells you is if you're great at execution, leadership does not really come naturally. Leadership requires a much different skill set than being an individual contributor.

By the way, if you haven't read this book, what got you here won't got you there won't get you there, please go ahead and read it. It is one of my favorites. So I like to think of leadership as an executive chef running his kitchen. A line cook succeeds by cooking, but an executive chef succeeds by orchestrating. Now imagine a kitchen where the chef is checking every single plate before it it goes out, fixing every garnish, approving every single plate that goes out. I mean, that kitchen is going to be disastrous. Right? Imagine the wait times. Honestly, a lot of us start leading this way when we first step into leadership. We just start cooking instead of orchestrating. Let's take a moment to reflect, guys. How many of us have said it's faster if I just do it myself?

I'm going to release a quick poll here. If you just wanna go ahead and, this is a safe space. Right? Can you guys see the wall, by the way? Cool. Alright. So, everyone here is struggling with, it's faster if I just do it myself. How about taking it a step further? Another question your way. How many of us have dedicated tasks, but in the back end have checked every single detail behind the scene? K. We got we got some pros here. Okay. Alright. Awesome. So, well, the the second one is saying something, honestly. But, see, these are the type of traits that are detrimental to you being a strong leader in the long run. Now these habits, they are not coming out of, ego or laziness. Right? They come from competence. A big part of leadership is letting that side of you go.

So I still remember my the pivotal time in my journey as a leader, it came during a massive program transformation coupled with ongoing customer escalations. And at the same time, my organization itself was going through a major digital transformation. I inserted myself in everything. I made all the decisions. I knew every single thing that was going on. I did everything I could to protect my team. I thought I was helping, but I started noticing a pattern. My calendar was booked up for weeks. PTO did not feel like PTO. I would get phone calls late evening about just things that I would expect my team to handle, and I just couldn't keep up with it. I reflected and I realized that unknowingly, I had created a team that was very dependent on me. They were not able to function.

They were not able to make decisions without me being involved. And that was honestly not sustainable for me as well as them. So I decided to, do something about it. See, as a contributor, your value comes from your own output. Right? You are the one solving problems. You are the one delivering outputs. You own the execution, and you are the expert. But when it comes to leadership, your value comes from your team's output. That that sounds really obvious when you hear it. But emotionally, it's a very hard transition because many of us have built our identity around being that reliable person and being that expert. And now suddenly, leadership requires to let go. Leadership requires you to enable instead of doing.

It requires you to create clarity instead of controlling details and building systems instead of solving everything on your own. That is a very different job. So shift one that that personally I went through was from doing to enabling. This was the biggest shift for me. I I honestly really, really had to pause and not do what, I would I would want the team to do. I would think if I would think it's just faster if I do it myself. Right? But leadership is not about being the fastest. It's about creating scale. One thing that changed for me dramatically was how I approached problem solving in the first place. So instead of jumping to solutions myself, which I very well could have done, I started giving my team the context of the ask and the impact that their actions would create.

I started bringing more transparency to them and more reasoning to the table. I would let them take their time to come up with a solution, and I was always there for reviews if they ever needed me. This approach changed everything because leaders don't just solve problems. Right? They create clarity. They they remove blockers. And one of the things that really built the confidence in my team was them knowing that their leader was always around for them to come back and ask questions. And if they ever fail, I would always be by their side. Clarity scales much better than dependency. The number two shift, was personally a little bit too hard for me, especially in technical environments where accuracy is so important.

So the second poll that I sent where I said if I delegate task, I would go back and check every single thing, every detail. That used to be me, believe it or not, for for a while when I first became a leader. I honestly preferred everything to be done the way I would do it. And I'm being very honest here. Right? That that is something that I struggled with. I would go back and check, and I would just waste so much time, making sure everything is right before I released something, to leadership or to the customer or or even internally. But then I I asked myself, if I'm spending so much time afterward, have I actually delegated anything? Obviously, no. The toughest thing for me was to realize that different is not always wrong. In fact, different is good. It challenges you. It challenges your status quo.

It makes you think in a different way. It helps you see angles that you before did not see. Once I started trusting that process and giving my team the space and allowing them to do something differently, it really, really changed the team dynamics. So shift number three, is is actually, one of the things that I I did, very purposefully and that truly closed the entire movement from contributor to leadership for me. So at some point, leadership stops being about you being the smartest person in the room. Right? And it becomes more about creating people who can lead and execute. I noticed that when I would dominate conversations, people naturally contributed less. So I started changing how I showed up. I spoke less first. I even dropped off early from meetings that my team was very capable of doing on their own.

I've reduced the frequency of joining towards the end where I would barely call into the the team calls. I made sure that my team knew who was responsible for that scope. I created more responsibilities for others, and I started being there for my team whenever they needed me rather than leading every decision and every conversation. Something very beautiful happened after I started doing that. Ownership increased. Confidence increased. Decision making improved. And people people delivered. People stepped up. Remember that people deliver most when they feel trusted and visible. I think that the transition from a contributor to leadership is more difficult because it challenges your identity. A lot of us have built our own confidence through competence. Right? We were reward rewarded for having answers. We were rewarded for being dependable and stepping in during, chaos.

But leadership requires you to step back instead of step in, and it feels uncomfortable. Leadership is not about being needed for every decision. It's about building teams that can continue executing without you. You're not losing value in the process. You're creating scale. And that itself is going to take a lot of time and a lot of reflection, for that to happen. It's a process. So today, I I want to leave you with this framework that, I walk myself through every time I feel like jumping into execution. Number one question to ask yourself is what you're trying to do? Is this ownership or control? Are you creating clarity, and is this going to help the person grow? With that team, what what I would tell you is leadership is creating act excellence across the team. Right? Imagine a struggling kitchen.

A struggling kitchen depends on one great cook, one great cook, and a great kitchen creates excellence across the entire team. Leadership is the same way. Your career your career solo is going to grow when you deliver, but your impact, it grows when others deliver because of you, and that is all leadership is about. Lastly, please don't hesitate to connect with me. I would love to hear your thoughts. And if you or or someone you know is struggling with this journey, please reach out. And, I would love to, have a conversation an open conversation about, what you're going through. Alright. Thanks, everybody.