Leanne Bridges

The MD could describe every problem in his team. He couldn't solve them.

He'd already hired a business coach before he found me.

The coach was good. Gave him frameworks for understanding his team. Talked about personality types. Ways of thinking about who does what and why.

Within a few weeks, he could describe the problem perfectly. He knew which of his people were self-starters and which needed more direction. He could label every person on the team.

But he still couldn't have the conversation with his managers about what he needed them to do differently without it going wrong.

Every time he raised something, it landed as criticism. They often got defensive, took it personally, and shut down.

So the MD stopped raising things. Started doing the work himself instead of having the conversation.

The framework told him what was happening. It didn't teach him how to fix it.

That's the gap I see over and over. MDs who understand the problem but can't change the conversations.

A framework can help you see the pattern. It can't show you how to say the thing that needs saying in a way that actually lands.

That's where the real work starts.

Have you ever had help with your business that explained the problem you had but didn't fix it?

A - Yes, it didn’t solve the problem
B - No, I've always got the help I needed
C - I don't ask for help
D - Other

Drop your letter in the comments

An MD I work with lost tens of thousands.
The work was done. It just never got invoiced.

His team were completing projects on time.
Clients were happy. Work was getting done.

But on site, clients would ask for changes.
Extra work. Different materials. Additional scope.

The site manager would crack on with it.
But he'd forget to mention some of it to the project manager.

So the project manager didn't know the extra work had happened.

And it never made it onto an invoice.

Nobody was doing a bad job.
The work was getting done well.
The gap was one conversation that wasn't happening between two people.

The MD had no idea until we started mapping how work moved between his teams.

When I asked how long this had been going on, he went quiet. "Years, probably."

Easy to fix once you could see it.
Impossible to spot from the MD's desk.
When we fixed it, those variations started getting captured as they happened.

Revenue that had been leaking out of the business was recovered within weeks.

It took none of the MD's time after that.

Fix the root cause and there was nothing else to do.

Margin improved.
And once we started looking properly, this wasn't the only gap.

Most margin problems in SMEs don't come from big failures.

They come from small gaps between roles that nobody's joined up.

And often by the time they're spotted, it's been costing the business money for years.

Your team costs you more than their salaries. You just can't see where.

Most MDs I work with know their wage bill.
They know what they're paying people.

What they don't always see is where that money actually disappears.

Not the obvious underperformer.
The smaller stuff.

The margin you lose because the same mistakes keep happening and the manager doesn’t like dealing with it.

The revenue you lose because cracks in the process don't get spotted and nobody's talking about them.

The senior salary spent on junior work because the manager can't get their team to do it, so does it themselves.

Do you think your business loses money it doesn’t need to?

The first time I managed people,
I was terrible at it.

I'd been good at my job, so I was promoted to manage a team.

I assumed managing meant handing out tasks and making sure things got done.

It wasn't as simple as it sounded.

I spent months giving feedback that didn't land, running meetings that didn't change anything, and wondering where I was going wrong.

I wasn't doing it well.
And I desperately wanted to do it better.
I just didn't know what to do.

So I tried everything I could think of.

Some things worked, some made it worse, and some of it must have frustrated the team.

I see the same thing now with managers who've been promoted, sometimes years and years into the role.

They're not sure what a good conversation with a struggling team member actually sounds like.

Or what the difference is between telling someone what to do and getting them to own it.

I figured it out eventually.
It took years longer than it needed to.

I think about that whenever I meet a manager who can't work out why it's so hard.

They're not the problem.
They just don't know what to do differently.

6 months ago this MD couldn't switch off.
Now when he's home, he's home.

He's still the MD. His business is the same size. Same team, same clients, same pressure.

What changed is that his managers know what to do with their week now.

His head of sales runs a 30-minute team meeting every Monday morning with the same five questions, and the MD doesn't have to be in it.

His finance director flags any potential cash flow or payment timing issues on a Wednesday. The MD doesn't find out when it's already a problem.

His operations manager flags anything he needs to look at on a Friday afternoon, in one message, not six.

Nothing on that list is complicated. It's just the things his managers were never taught to do. We taught them.

If you're running a business and you can't switch off when you get home, because you're still thinking about how to get your team to get things done, book a call.

We'll work out what's causing that and map out a plan to fix it.

DM me to book a call or use the booking link on my website

Empowering your team only works if they know what to do with the power.

Most MDs I talk to have read the leadership books.

They've been told to delegate.
They've been told to step back.
They've been told to give their people room to grow.

So they do.
And then they watch them struggle.

It isn't that the advice was wrong.
It's that the advice skipped a step.

You can't empower someone into a skill they don't have.

Stepping back from a manager who's never been taught how to run a team isn't empowerment.

It's abandonment dressed up as trust.

The MDs I work with don't need to step back further.

They need to teach the people they've promoted how to do the job they've been promoted into.

Then stepping back works.

Your top salesperson isn't a future Director. They might be a future ex-employee.

The MDs I work with promote their top performer because it feels like the obvious move.

They've earned it.
They want it.
Everyone else expects it.

Six months later, the top performer is exhausted, the team they're supposed to lead is confused, and the sales numbers they used to hit are down because they're spending half their week in meetings they don't know how to chair.

The best salesperson is rarely the best manager.

The skills don't transfer.

And the cost of finding out the hard way is that you lose them twice.

Once as a salesperson.
Then as a director when they quit a year later because they're miserable.

The promotion isn't the reward you think it is.

Not unless someone teaches them how to do the new job.

Your new director isn't underperforming.
They’re just not a manager.

Most MDs promote their best performer into a leadership role and find they're drowning six months in.

It’s not confidence, their attitude, or fit.

They were brilliant at the job they used to do. Nobody ever taught them this one.

Running a meeting.
Setting expectations.

Holding someone to them.
Telling someone when it's not good enough

Delegating without taking it back.
Sorting things out before they reach you.

Nobody picks this stuff up by accident

Your new director isn't failing. They're doing the only thing they know how to do.

He was the best salesperson.
Now he's the MD and barely sleeping.

He still puts in the hours.
He still cares as much as he ever did.
But the job he was brilliant at isn't the job he's doing anymore.

He's replying to emails before 7.
Approving nearly every invoice.
Still closing the biggest deals himself because nobody else can.

And at 11pm he's working on next quarter's cashflow because nobody's brought it to him.

He doesn't say it out loud, but he thinks it most days:

The team should be doing most of this.
I don’t get it.
Maybe I'm not any good at this.

He's good at what he used to do.
Nobody ever showed him how to do this.

Have you seen this happen?

A. Yes, that's me right now
B. Yes, someone on my team
C. Seen it, it’s not me
D. No, never come across it

Drop your letter in the comments.

The best person on the team got promoted.
Now they're the worst manager in the building.

One MD I work with has a head of sales who used to close half the business.

He's now spending his days copied into emails his team should be dealing with without him.

It's always the same.

Someone gets promoted because they're brilliant at the work.

Then they're expected to manage the people doing the work.

Nobody ever showed them how.

Which of these did you have when you were first promoted into a management role?

A. Training
B. A mentor
C. A coach
D. I winged it

Drop your letter in the comments.