60 The Leadership Red Flags That Signal Your Next Step

Have you ever wondered why your leadership feels harder than it should, even though you're experienced, capable, and working harder than ever?

The answer may be hiding in a few common leadership red flags.

In this episode of Joyfully Unstoppable, Becky Hamm introduces the Executive Leadership Continuum and shares the four leadership red flags that signal you're ready for your next level of leadership. These aren't signs that you're doing something wrong—they're invitations to expand your influence, increase your capacity, and lead with greater confidence.

Whether you're leading a team, a department, or an entire organization, this episode will help you identify your current leadership stage and discover the next step in your growth.

✨ In this episode, you'll learn:
✔️ The four stages of the Executive Leadership Continuum
✔️ How to recognize the leadership red flags that signal growth
✔️ Why becoming the team's bottleneck limits your impact
✔️ How to create executive capacity through effective delegation
✔️ What it takes to influence across your entire organization
✔️ How strategic leaders build organizations that thrive for years to come

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 – Welcome & Executive Leader Scorecard introduction
02:15 – Why leadership red flags matter
03:25 – Stage 1: Trusted Expert & the bottleneck red flag
08:00 – Stage 2: Capable Manager & delegation that comes back to you
12:20 – Stage 3: Emerging Executive & expanding organizational influence
16:15 – Stage 4: Strategic Executive & building leadership that lasts
20:05 – The leadership growth pattern across every stage
22:20 – Take the Executive Leader Scorecard & final encouragement

💬 Which leadership red flag resonated most with you? Share your answer in the comments!

👍 If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and share it with another leader who's ready for her next level.

#LeadershipRedFlags #LeadershipDevelopment #ExecutiveLeadership #WomenInLeadership #LeadershipGrowth #LeadershipSkills #ExecutiveCoach #WomenLeadWell #ProfessionalDevelopment #JoyfullyUnstoppable

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Transcript

Becky 0:05

Welcome to Joyfully Unstoppable, the podcast for women who are ready to succeed without the stress. Whether you're leading a team, a classroom, a boardroom, or your own big, beautiful life, I am so glad you found us. I'm your host, Becky Hamm, executive coach, speaker, and founder of Women Lead Well. Join me each week for straight talk, practical tips, and a dash of encouragement. Hello, friend. I hope you are having a great day. I am so excited the Executive Leader Scorecard is out, and if you haven't taken it yet, click the link in the show notes and girl, go take it. Over the past few months, I have taken a deep dive into what makes leaders successful at different stages of their career and how they need to grow to continue to the next level. That led me to create the Executive Leadership Continuum, which maps out four phases of executive-level leadership: the trusted expert, the capable manager, the emerging executive, and the strategic executive. And because I am a girl who loves to serve, I created a quick, easy quiz that you can take to determine what phase you're at. That's the Executive Leader's Scorecard. It just takes a minute. I think it's eight questions, maybe nine. Answer those questions and it will unlock your current leadership stage, your strengths as a leader at your current stage, as well as your executive priority, which is your key to continued growth into the next stage. And so today on the podcast, I want us to explore those four stages of the executive leadership continuum, and we're gonna do that by examining four leadership red flags. Have you ever wondered why some leaders hit a ceiling even though they're smart, they're experienced, they work harder than anybody else? Leadership growth requires more than adding new skills. Each promotion asks you to lead in a different way. And so today, by sharing these four leadership red flags, I'm giving you four different signals for how you might have outgrown your current leadership approach. Each of these red flags point to the action that will prepare you for your next opportunity. And so as you listen, pay attention to the one that kind of sounds the most familiar. That's likely to be your greatest opportunity for growth. And hey, look, complete the executive leader scorecard to really pinpoint your stage and your next step. Let's start with the first stage, and that is the trusted expert. Trusted experts earn a reputation for being capable, dependable, and knowledgeable. People will seek you out because you consistently deliver. Over time, that reputation shapes not only how you do your work, but how everyone around you does their work. Your team will come to you before making almost every decision. Every question comes to you. Every decision waits for your input. Every approval lands on your desk. Your expertise has become the center of your team's workflow. When every decision flows through you, ownership stays with you, right? But that's not what your team needs. And frankly, if you have a goal of avoiding burnout and leading for the long haul, we've talked about sustainable leadership, sustainable success before, that's not your goal either. It feels good to be the one everybody turns to, but it ain't sustainable, and you are not setting your team up for success. So that's the red flag. We've- I've done an episode on being the bottleneck before. I will try to remember to link it in the show notes, and if you're watching this on YouTube, I will try to do that thing where it just floats in the air right here. Wish me luck. It's a tech thing I'm learning. But that's the red flag. If everybody comes to you, then you are the bottleneck, and that's not good. It's not good for you, and it's not good for your team. To move to the next level of leadership, you are called to build ownership throughout the team, right? You want your team members to own the work that they're doing, not lay it at your feet for your approval. And so how do you do that? Well, you develop people's judgment. You create confidence in their decision-making, not just confidence in your own. And it's not zero-sum. By building confidence in them, you are not reducing their confidence in you. This is positive-sum. By building confidence in them, now there is confidence in your work and your judgment, and there's confidence in their work and their judgment. You also expand your team's ability to move work forward without waiting for you, right? You are no longer the bottleneck. As you do that, as you move from trusted expert into your next stage of leadership, your real focus is on building the team. And as you do that, your attention moves from the individual decisions that you were making as the leader to organizational capacity. And that's how we move to stage two along the executive leadership continuum. This is the capable manager stage. Capable managers lead people. They lead projects, priorities. They delegate work. They are no longer the bottleneck. They coordinate teams. As responsibilities grow, so does the demand on their attention. And so here's the red flag for you if you're a capable manager: you delegate work, and that work keeps landing back on your desk. What does that sound like? That sounds like, "Hey, boss, can you take a look at this? Would you review this for me? Hey, could you approve this? Hey, I think I'm at the 99%, but would you mind chopping on this? Could you edit this? Hey, boss, could you join this meeting? I would really like to have you there. Hey, could you read this proposal and let me know what you think about it?" Your team is doing the work, but your fingerprints are on nearly every project. Delegation succeeds when the work continues moving without your involvement, without your laying eyes on or reviewing or just taking a look at or you in the meeting, right? Delegation is effective if you're not in the meeting. And so for you, your executive priority is to create executive capacity. What does that mean? Well, that means building the systems, the expectations, the accountability that allows work to move forward while you focus on leading, on doing only the work that only you can do. So that's the capable manager. Now, this next transition into the third stage of the executive leadership continuum, this is where you expand your field of vision. Stage three of the executive leadership continuum is the emerging executive. Now, at this stage, emerging executives influence decisions across functions. They don't just focus on their individual, um, department or directorate or their, their individual portion of the organization, they're looking across the organization as a whole. Their perspective extends beyond the success of any one department. And so your red flag here, and tell me if this is you, most of your conversations are about your own department, right? And now, let's be honest, at this level, if you are at the emerging executive level, you know how to function well. You already advocate for your team, and you empower them. You solve the challenges in your area, in your department, and your team does, too. You're no longer the bottleneck. You delegate effectively. Executive leaders connect priorities across the organization, and they align people around shared outcomes. So if you're only minding the garden or minding the store in your part of the organization, you have not yet transitioned into that emerging executive stage because you're not looking across the organization for the benefit of the organization as a whole, recognizing the one piece that your department or your section plays in that overall whole. And so it's important to recognize that executive influence grows through an enterprise-level perspective, right? And so this is your executive-level priority, is growing influence across the organization as a whole. That means leading organizational conversations, solving organizational problems, and building relationships across the entire organization. And now there's one final stage to the executive leadership continuum and one last transition for you to experience. And that transition focuses on how much impact your leadership creates over time. Stage four of the executive leadership continuum is the strategic executive. Strategic executives shape the future of the organization. Their influence reaches far beyond today's priorities. And so the red flag there is that the organization slows down when you're away. If things grind to a halt when you're out of the office, that's a red flag for you. If major decisions have to wait for you to get back, if projects lose momentum, if people look to you before moving forward on big, high-level initiatives, then that organization has learned to depend on your presence. Your greatest leadership legacy is building an organization that keeps thriving in your absence. And so your executive priority is to multiply leaders, to develop executives, other leaders who make sound decisions, lead confidently, and strengthen the organization every single day. It's not enough that you lead well. Strategic-level executives build other leaders at different levels in the organization and across the organization that also lead well. That's legacy-building, and you're not just setting the organization up to be successful in its current mission, you are equipping the organization to be successful into the future, regardless of priority or mission So Do you see the pattern? Each stage of leadership asks you to expand your capacity and your perspective. Trusted experts build ownership. Capable managers create capacity. Emerging executives broaden their influence, and strategic executives multiply leaders. Leadership growth changes where you create value. As you move from one stage to the next, how you create value changes, and your impact grows through the people that you develop, the decisions you shape, and the leaders who continue the work. And when you are feeling those points of friction or those red flags, all that is is an indicator that you are operating in a previous stage or you are in a stage where your role or your position or your potential is moving you into the next stage. You're being invited to grow. So again, don't see these red flags as you are a terrible leader or you're a dirt bag or there's no possibility for you to continue to grow, that you've hit your upper limit of potential. It's the opposite. When you see those red flags in yourself or in colleagues, all that is is a identification of a mismatch between how you're leading today and how you are invited to be leading at the next level. So you see it as an opportunity for growth, and it is amazing. And so I'm gonna ask you, which red flag sounded most familiar to you? Reach out. You know I love it when you message me. I'm at at womenleedwell across all social platforms, so drop me a DM and let me know which red flag sounded like you, because that answer points to your next leadership opportunity. That is your growth edge, and my friend, that is exciting. And if you would like to identify where you are on the executive leadership continuum and discover the leadership priority that's gonna move you forward, take the Executive Leader Scorecard. You'll get a clear picture of your current stage and the next step that strengthens your leadership. Now, I hope that you have enjoyed today's episode. I would love for you to share it with a friend. We need more women leading from alignment, not adrenaline, and we need more women stepping into their next level. If you haven't already, please make sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss next week's drop. And if you're not on my newsletter, The Confidence Edit, what are you doing? Check out the link in the show notes and join. I send a weekly email- full of inspiration and leadership tips tailored to women. Remember, joyful, sustainable, and authentic leadership is possible, and you deserve to enjoy every minute of it. Until next time, I'm Becky Hamm, and this is Joyfully Unstoppable