In this actionable episode, Alícia Rius, Founder of Hive - Leadership & Team Coaching, shares why promoting your best individual contributor rarely creates a great manager. If you're in stage 4 frustrated that your promoted leaders are struggling and your team isn't performing as expected, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why stepping into management is a career change, not a promotion

- How to create clarity around expectations for new managers

- What the Four Ps of Leadership framework reveals about where clarity is missing

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 4 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Alicia Rius spent years inside fast-growing companies watching the same thing happen over and over—brilliant people get promoted into leadership and quietly start drowning. As a founder, co-founder, and COO of three ventures, she lived it herself. Today she runs Hive Leadership & Team Coaching, where she works with scaling companies to do the one thing that actually stops the bleeding: build clarity. Clear roles, clear expectations, clear decision-making—before the chaos becomes the culture. She's the creator of the 4Ps Leadership Framework™ and the author of Lead with Clarity, a practical guide for the new managers and founders nobody prepared for the job.

Want to learn more about Alícia Rius' work at Hive - Leadership & Team Coaching? Check out her website at https://www.hiveteamcoaching.com/

Connect with Alicia through her LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciarius/

Get a copy of her book Lead with Clarity: How New Managers Turn Confusion into Confident Leadership at https://www.amazon.com/Lead-Clarity-Confusion-Confident-Leadership-ebook/dp/B0G35ZJDDP

Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again

to the Start, Scale, and Succeed podcast-the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a

founder. I'm your host Scott Ritzheimer, and here's something

that takes most founders way too long to figure out, and that is

that you actually cannot, not shouldn't, not might not, but

cannot promote someone into management. Our guest here

explained what we mean by that. But you can give them a title,

you can give them a team, you can even bump up their salary if

you're extra generous and nice. No, I'm just kidding. But none

of that actually makes them a manager because being in

management isn't a level up from what they're doing. It's

something altogether different. We'll talk about what that is

here in just a moment. And why is this important? Because your

best people got promoted probably because they were

exceptionally good at doing the work. But now, if you're in

level four, like so many of you are, you're watching them

struggle with a job that nobody, probably including you, prepared

them for. But you're wondering why in the world this isn't

working and what to do about it. Well, if that's the case, you're

in a great spot because here with us today is Alícia Rius,

who has spent years inside fast-growing companies watching

the same thing happen over and over and over. Brilliant people

get promoted into leadership and quietly start drowning. As a

founder, co-founder, and CEO-sorry-of three ventures,

she's lived it herself. Today, she runs Hive Leadership and

Team Coaching, where she works with scaling companies to do the

one thing that actually stops the bleeding: building clarity,

clear roles, clear expectations, and clear decision making before

the chaos becomes the culture. She's a creator of the 4p of

Leadership framework and the author of *Lead with Clarity: A

Practical Guide for New Managers and Founders. Nobody Prepared

for the Job* She's here with us today, Alicia. Welcome to the

show. Really excited about this conversation because it's an

important one, you-I think you open the book, if I'm not

mistaken, with a reasonably bold statement that stepping into

management is not a promotion. If that's the case, what is it,

and why is this so important for the founders listening today?

Well, first of all, Scott, thanks for having me

today, and to go and answer your question, it's not a promotion;

it's a career change. Now, let me explain that what it means.

So, most companies, even the way we treat our best people, is to

reward them for being excellent at what they do into their next

career step, which is going into management. Now you were

exceptional at doing your job, you know your craft, all the

shortcuts, and why not? We are growing. We need to build teams,

and therefore I'm going to promote you to manage people who

does the job that you were doing. However, that is not a

step up. It's a step out. It's a career change, because now you

have to. So the new job requires you to have a new set of skills,

a mindset, and most importantly, an identity, a new identity. So

that creates a lot of confusion for people who, you know, go

into that new role and start and things starts to fall apart is

not what they expected. Things are off, but you can't pinpoint

exactly what it is. And the person who promotes them also

feels frustration because he was the best at doing that, or she

was the best. Why is not working? Why we're not, you

know, hitting targets? So there's a lot of things that

needs to be taken into account, and and is that that requires

another? I mean, the type of job completely change, and nobody

explained that to them.

Yeah, I don't know that it. We can really

overstate how important it is at this level because if you look

at the level three founder, who is the one who becomes a level

four founder, all they have are great players, right? Like

that's who. That's how you win at level three, and so the only

option for bringing a manager in from within the team is to do

exactly what you're talking about, right? To and we usually

pick our best person, and and and I think what makes this so

challenging is you do that a couple of times, but then you

think there's something wrong with the managers, like they're

all broken, they're all they've all got it wrong, but you don't

really see it going right because they're all struggling

with the same problem that you created. So that starts to

compound. Gets really confusing because now it's like your whole

management team is struggling. So someone who's in that

position, founder, business is growing. It's great. They're

trying to keep up, and they need folks to help them manage it.

Let's start with let's actually start with basics, just in case

we missed it in level three. What does good management

actually look like?

Well, that is something that they need to talk between

themselves. So what happens most of the times is that the person

who promotes them, if it depends on the size of the company, if

you have a chart, one thing, but maybe. It's the founder himself

or herself that is promoting them, and they assume that they

will understand what the job requires, and that is the first

mistake. Assumptions is your enemy. So the first thing is

about creating clarity about what do I expect from that

person. So if you are the person who promoted them, you have to

stop and think. What do I want from that person? What good

management or leadership looks like to me when it's successful,

and have that defined because then you can go into that person

and say, I'm promoting you into this, and this is what I'm

expecting you for the next three months, six and nine months, and

these are the targets that we're going to be hitting, and that's

what I expect you to do. Now, when that doesn't happen,

because as you said, you grow fast and things move very

hecticly, and we don't have time to stop and think. It's a

luxury. So what happens is that you don't see what you're. You

know what you don't want, but you haven't defined what you

really want to see. So what for me, good management looks like,

it would be it's personal to every person or every founder.

Find out what that looks like, define it, and then share that

with the person you just promoted.

Yeah, you've got literally the book on the

topic of leading with clarity. One of the challenges that I I

find with the founders I work with is that they think that it

is clear. They they don't understand how it could not be

clear. It's like I've asked you to do that. What is it that gets

in the way of founders and actually being clear, not in

what they say, but what their team understands.

What's something very interesting about that is that

for them, for the founder who's promoting the people, clarity is

extreme in their head, because what happens is that they

started the idea, they started the business, so clarity still

holds in their head, and it's easier to share when you have a

five to 15 people in your team. Now, when you pass a number,

that clarity needs to be visible, and that's when

processes needs to happen, and you have to have documentation

explaining step by step what that means for you and for the

team. Now, again, because we assume, or the clarity is very,

you know, clear in your head, then you again assume that it's

obvious. But when you are, or you have something in your head,

or you have those expectations, you are sitting in a different

chair than your team, so you don't have the exact visibility

of what your team is doing, or your lead teams, and that's why

you need to sit down and align and say, "This is what I'm

expecting. This is what I want to see. Let's have that

documented because then we can check if it it matches. And what

doesn't matter, then we have to bridge the gap, and that's how

you keep improving your processes.

Another of the big distinctions between level

three and level four, like you're talking about here, are

that you you can't you can't be the only one who's clear anymore

in your communication. Your managers have to be clear as

well, and I think it's reasonable to assume that most

of them are going to struggle in the same way that the founder

did initially when they were learning how to be clear. So,

how does a founder who's trying to coach one of the managers on

their team, and and and the founder doesn't feel like that

manager is being as clear as they think? What what would be

some ways to approach that?

Asking questions, and I think that one of the things

that founders and new managers needs to learn are coaching

skills. And for one, that is asking for help. And you've

talked a lot with experts in your podcast: is ask for help,

and then ask if the other person needs help, and that's how you

start understanding where the other person is falling short.

And also, even sometimes when your communication you think

it's very clear, then a good question to ask is, "What did

you understand about what I just said? And then that person will

give you an answer, because even when you try to be very clear,

the language that we use or the context that we we use in that

moment, the other person might interpret it in a different way,

and that's why it's so important to just try to see if the other

person got what you were intended to communicate.

Yeah, so helpful, so helpful. Something

else that I found really helpful as I was reading through the

book. Very simple, but the challenge here with a founder at

this level is there's like so many things that they have to

fix all at once, and that's really overwhelming. And so, if

we're saying, "Hey, not only do I have to learn how to lead

better, I've got to get all my managers to lead better, there's

there's this like overwhelm that might cause you to never. Even

start so one of the things I found really helpful was your 4p

framework, and I'm wondering if you could just kind of quickly

introduce those to us. Folks who want to dive deeper, we'll make

sure they know how they can get a copy of the book. But what are

these 4p's and why are they so helpful for someone learning to

manage?

So the 4p leadership framework is a diagnostic tool

to find out where clarity is missing in your leadership. So

when we I was studying leadership, the most of the

challenges that founders face fall into one of those four

buckets or multiple. It's either personal, the way you lead

yourself, people, how you lead others, purpose, which is

strategic leadership, and process operational leadership.

Because I come from systemic and I love systems, I think

leadership is also systemic. And the beauty of this framework,

and I have a drawing in the book. It's each piece is

connected in a circle. The beauty of it is that when you

have a challenge to face, or many, it feels overwhelming. But

you find out what's the first one that you need to to tackle.

Think about it as a chair that has four legs, and each leg is

1p So when one the chair is wobbly, you don't rebuild the

whole chair or throw it away. What you do is to find the leg

that's more unstable and you fix that. You focus on that first,

and because the chair is one thing, suddenly the whole chair

improves. The same happens with this framework. When something

is not clear enough, you focus on that area, and I have case

studies where then, by default, it creates a ripple effect that

other areas are improving by itself because whenever you work

on something, it impacts the others. So that's why it's. I'm

telling funders it's okay to feel overwhelmed, but you don't

have to find out where your clarity is missing, which

dimension needs your attention the most. Work on that and see

how the rest improves, and then you will go to the next.

Yeah, that's so helpful. That's so helpful,

Alicia. It sounds so easy, and to some extent, it's simple, but

it's not easy. It should be. I I think good management is

something simple to understand, but difficult to do. Right,

unless you're intentional about it and you develop the skill for

it, then it becomes then it can become second nature. So there's

this question that I'm eager to get to. It's a question that I

ask all my guests. I'm very interested to see what you'd

have to say. The question is this, Alicia. What would you say

is the biggest secret you wish wasn't a secret at all? What's

that one thing you wish every founder watching or listening

today knew?

That they need to know who they are. Find out who you

are and who you need to be, and that thing will unlock many of

the challenges that you're facing. Sounds simple, but it is

like a lot of introspection, and that's something that we don't

talk enough, and we take it for granted. We we think we know who

we are, but we go through different identity crises

throughout our life. And sometimes we are on autopilot,

and you think you know who you are, but you things have

changed. So find that out.

Yeah, so good, so good, Alicia. We cannot go

any further without talking about where folks can get a copy

of this book. So remind us what's the name of the book,

where can folks find it, and how can they reach out to you to

hear more about the work that you and your team do?

Thank you. the The book is this blue one. It's called

Lead with Clarity: How New Managers Turn Confusion into

Confident Leadership. It's available on Amazon, and also if

you are a founder or team lead, and you are curious about where

clarity is missing in your leadership, if you go to my

website, hiveleadership teamhiveleadership.com/resources,

you will find a test, a self-assessment. You answer

that, and it'll give you a rudder and a score, and then you

some next steps.

Brilliant, brilliant. Well, Alicia, thanks

for being on the show. Thanks for writing the book. I really

enjoyed it. I know those who who take the moment to to click

couple clicks on Amazon, you've got it yourself. You will not

regret it. But thanks for being on. Join us from the other side

of the pond. We didn't even say that the opening here, but just

a privilege and honor having you here. I really appreciate it.

And for those of you watching and listening, you know your

time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as

much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait

to see you next time. Take care. Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer

here. Thank you so much for listening to the Start Scale and

Succeed podcast. I hope this episode gave you exactly what

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I'll see you in the next episode.