Workplace Multiplier by Tola Akinsulire

July 15, 2025

Welcome to the Workplace Multiplier newsletter. Published Monday to Friday, equipping you to achieve your professional goals faster and without burnout or overwhelm by leveraging The Triple Win Method.

The Skills That Got You The Job Are Now Holding You Back

Hello ,

I need to tell you something that might sting a little.

The very skills that made you excellent at your previous role? They're probably holding you back in your current one.

I see this happen now and again. A brilliant individual contributor gets promoted to manager. And suddenly, they're struggling in ways they never expected.

Here's why this happens more often than anyone wants to admit:

When you level up in your career, everything changes. Your focus shifts from doing tasks to enabling others to do tasks. Your success metric changes from individual output to team performance. Your decision-making scope expands beyond execution to strategic thinking.

Most importantly, your stakeholder network grows, with different people, different expectations, and different ways of measuring your value.

Yet what do most people do when they get that promotion? They try to prove themselves by continuing to excel at what made them successful before. They become the bottleneck instead of the breakthrough.

Let me paint you a picture of what this looks like

At some point in my career, I was skipped for promotion a few times. How did I know? I was getting good appraisals, but it didn’t result in promotions, and some of the folks after me in other departments were moving up.

There was this appraisal period where I had it up to the top. After the email had gone out and my name was not on the list…again, I made my way to my boss’s office.

We went back and forth, but he could not explain why I was not on the list.

After my conversation with him, I made my way to his boss’s office. His boss happened to be the CEO. You don’t go in there without your facts. I think I was ready with mine.

Our conversation went on for about 43 - 57 minutes. For every point he raised, I had a fact to back my position.

The coup de grâce was when he said, “We know you are good at your job, but we expect that you should have raised people in your team to be as good as you. You are still the star performer in your team.”

The only problem was that I had my facts to back me.

I responded, “I trained so and so. He was so good, you moved him to go and head a department in a new subsidiary. The next person I trained after left the company and relocated to the UK. I now have people in my team who have spent a short time in the company and are still being trained. I have been training people to be as good as me.”

You should have seen the surprise on his face when he heard this. He responded, “There is no reason why you shouldn’t have been promoted.” They made an exception at the next non-promotion appraisal to have me promoted.

The bigger point is this - as a team leader, the game is rigged against you if you keep performing the way you were as an individual when you become the boss.

This isn't just about delegation. It's about multiplication.

You're now paid to multiply execution through others.

Think about it this way: if you can personally deliver 100 units of value, but you can enable your team to deliver 500 units of value, which version of you is more valuable to your organization?

The math is simple. The execution? That's where most people struggle.

Here's what I've learned after working across multiple continents and helping professionals navigate this transition

The leaders who thrive in their new roles don't abandon their core strengths. They evolve them. They take what made them excellent and transform it into what makes their teams excellent.

There are specific practices that separate the leaders who multiply their teams' performance from those who become bottlenecks.

You start by asking yourself, "How can my team bring more value to the people they work with?"

That's the question that changes everything.

Your success in leadership isn't about being indispensable. It's about making your team indispensable.

When you master these practices, something remarkable happens. Your team starts performing at levels you never thought possible. They take ownership, they innovate, they solve problems before you even know problems exist.

And you? You become the leader everyone wants to work for and every organization wants to promote.

This Saturday, I'm hosting a masterclass where I'll dive deep into these practices and show you exactly how to implement them in your specific situation.

“The Multiplier Effect: Leading Teams That Win” Masterclass for team leaders and department heads will give you a roadmap to transform your team's performance.

Saturday, July 19th, 2025

6 PM WAT | 12 PM EST | 5 PM GMT | 7 PM WEST

Remember this: The skills that got you the job were about individual excellence. The skills that will make you successful in the promotion are about collective excellence.

That's a completely different game. And like any new game, you need new strategies, new practices, and new ways of measuring success.

The good news? You already have everything you need to succeed. You just need to channel it differently.

Your team is waiting for you to become the leader they need. Your organization is waiting for you to deliver the results they promoted you to achieve.

The question isn't whether you can do this. The question is: When will you start?

Keep winning at work and in life,

Tola Akinsulire

Your Strategic Workplace Mentor

Sign up for " The Multiplier Effect: Leading Teams That Win" Masterclass

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Want to get in on some of the lessons I have picked up in my career? Get my eBook "21 Lessons I Learned in My Career - A Primer to Help You Become Better at Work". Get it here

Do you work in a new country, or does your work involve working with people outside your country? Get my acclaimed book "Winning Beyond Borders: Achieving Success at Work in a New Country". Get it here

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