Thriving When Your Role Expands Unexpectedly

At some point in most leadership careers, your role changes before you feel ready for it. Sometimes it's a promotion that comes faster than expected. Sometimes it's a departure above or alongside you that creates a vacancy. Sometimes it's a reorg that consolidates responsibilities in ways nobody anticipated. However it happens, the result is the same: you’re now responsible for work beyond what you were originally hired to do, and the expectation to perform is immediate. If you find yourself in this situation, how you approach the transition will largely determine how successfully you settle into the role.

You Might Get Less Support Than You Want

Leaders in new roles typically don’t get the support they expect. In fact, in a recent survey, three-quarters of ed-tech executives acknowledged that they hadn’t provided their high-potential talent the support they needed to advance. When executive leaders are managing through a period of constraint or change, developing the people stepping into expanded roles often gets deprioritized. Don’t be afraid to have a direct conversation with your manager to understand what a successful ramp-up looks like and what support you may need.

Make the Management Mindshift

Early in your career, success is largely about personal output and departmental performance. But, as the scope of your role expands, the definition of success changes. Your primary responsibility is to drive company goals, not just departmental ones. The team you collaborate with isn’t the one you manage, it's your peers in adjacent functions.

That doesn't mean abandoning the people you lead. It means understanding that your job is to align them to company priorities and remove the obstacles in their way. How you show up in cross-functional settings and leadership team conversations may actually matter more than how well your team executes. Building those peer relationships early is one of the first things to prioritize in a new role, not something to get to once the dust settles.

Get Clear on Priorities Early

One of the first things to do in an expanded role is have a direct conversation with senior leadership about priorities. What are the two or three things that matter most right now? What does success look like at 90 days? Which initiatives are non-negotiable and which ones have room to flex? Those questions seem straightforward, but they don't get asked often enough, and operating without that clarity is one of the more common reasons leaders struggle when stepping into a bigger role.

Once you have that clarity, communicate it explicitly to the people responsible for executing it. Stack rank your initiatives against company goals, be clear about what gets full investment and what needs to be scaled back, and make sure those decisions are documented and shared rather than assumed. Leaders in expanded roles often reprioritize in their own heads without realizing their team is still operating against the old plan. That gap creates confusion, wasted effort, and sometimes resentment. Getting explicit early prevents most of it.

You Were Hired to Lead, Not Be the Expert

Stepping into a bigger role often means that you’re managing individuals whose responsibilities are outside of your area of expertise and beyond the scope of work you’ve done in the past. This can feel uncomfortable when you don’t have the context to delve into the granular details with them. However, you need to resist wanting to do their job as well as they do. Your job is to provide direction, make good decisions with the information available, and create the conditions for your team to do their best work.

You're Not the First Person to Navigate This

The circumstances feel specific to your company and your situation, but the underlying challenges are ones that Functional Leaders across the ed-tech industry are navigating right now. Role consolidations, expanded scopes, and transitions into unfamiliar functions are happening everywhere. Connecting with peers outside your own organization who have been through similar transitions can give you insight into what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they'd known earlier. That perspective is hard to find internally when everyone around you is dealing with the same thing.

Embrace the Opportunity

It’s natural to feel a bit of imposter syndrome when stepping into a new role. Studies suggest that 70% of individuals will experience this at some point during their career. Despite those feelings, remember that you've already earned your organization's trust and you were chosen for a reason. Regardless of how you arrived in this role, now is your moment to stretch, grow, and prove your capabilities. The five areas outlined above are concrete steps you can take to build confidence and find your footing in the new role.

Stepping into a new role unexpectedly can be exciting and a little unsettling. Having a clear sense of what to expect and a plan for how to approach it goes a long way toward achieving early success and keeping the self-doubt in check.