“Leadership is not about being the best. It’s about making everyone else better—even when you’re still learning yourself.” — Adapted from John C. Maxwell and modern leadership principles
Blind Spots and Breakthroughs: Leading Beyond Your Limits
In the late 1990s, as the dot-com boom catapulted technologists into leadership positions seemingly overnight, a quiet epidemic began to surface: founders, engineers, and newly minted managers were now leading large organizations without ever having learned how. They had vision but not perspective. Talent, but not tools. What followed was a mix of explosive innovation—and equally explosive implosions.
Managing through inexperience and domain incompetence isn’t a rare or shameful phenomenon. It’s a rite of passage for anyone who rises faster than they grow. But those who endure—and thrive—are those who learn how to lead through their blind spots rather than ignore them.
The Invisible Gap: When Title Outpaces Capability
There’s a difference between imposter syndrome and being in over your head. One is psychological. The other is structural. The problem begins when leaders confuse domain ignorance with generalizable leadership or when they assume that charisma and conviction can replace competence.
Some of the most notorious examples of failure have come from this misalignment.
Take Theranos. Elizabeth Holmes was a charismatic visionary with a compelling narrative. But beneath that narrative was a lack of scientific and operational rigor. There were few checks, few experts empowered to speak truth to power, and a leadership team that lacked the medical and technical expertise required for the space.
Contrast that with Satya Nadella at Microsoft. When he stepped into the CEO role in 2014, he inherited a culture riddled with fiefdoms and stagnation. Rather than pretending to have all the answers, he did something radical: he listened. He spent time with engineers, marketers, and customers. He read, studied, invited outside perspectives, and elevated technical voices. He acknowledged what he didn’t know—and changed anyway. The result? A cultural and financial turnaround that repositioned Microsoft as one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Learning to Manage Up, Down, and Sideways
To lead through inexperience, you must master three things:
- Self-awareness – Know your blind spots.
- Surrounding yourself with experts – And then actually listening to them.
- Commitment to learning – Relentless, structured, and humble.
This isn’t about fake-it-till-you-make-it. It’s about admit-it-till-you-fix-it.
What it looks like in practice:
- A CTO without security chops hires a CISO and asks them to teach the board about risk modeling.
- A VP of Product who’s never worked with developers learns agile fundamentals, shadows scrum rituals, and attends architecture reviews—not to micro-manage, but to learn the vocabulary.
- A first-time manager gets a leadership coach, enrolls in structured feedback training, and asks their team for anonymous input quarterly.
The Path to Becoming a Well-Rounded Executive
There’s no silver bullet, but there is a playbook. Here’s what it looks like when done well:
1. Develop Your T-Shaped Leadership Profile
You can’t go deep in every domain, but you must go broad. The best leaders are T-shaped: deep in one area, broad across many.
- Learn the language of finance, product, engineering, marketing, and HR.
- Sit in on team meetings outside your wheelhouse.
- Ask “what does success look like here?” in every department.
2. Practice Radical Candor—Starting With Yourself
Kim Scott’s Radical Candor teaches us how to give feedback well, but it’s just as valuable when applied inward. A well-rounded leader confronts their weaknesses head-on.
- Admit what you don’t know.
- Reward people who tell you the truth.
- Normalize failure as long as it’s in the pursuit of growth.
3. Create a Feedback Infrastructure
One-on-ones aren’t performance reviews—they’re learning loops.
- Ask your reports: “What should I start, stop, or continue?”
- Use 360 reviews to get a full picture of your performance.
- Look at outcomes, not effort. Learn what your decisions cost.
4. Seek Patterns, Not Hacks
Borrow from Andy Grove’s High Output Management—learn how systems think, how information flows, and how good decisions get made.
What Bad Looks Like
Bad leadership through inexperience follows predictable patterns:
- Over-indexing on control to mask discomfort
- Dismissing or minimizing expert input
- Avoiding strategic conversations by defaulting to tactical wins
- Hiring a clone army instead of building a diverse, complementary team
A VP of Engineering who doesn’t trust their architects and rewrites code on weekends is not leading—they’re avoiding. A head of sales who insists marketing is “just fluff” will fail to create pipeline predictability. These are signals, not just flaws.
Growing Into Leadership, Not Just Position
Leadership is earned daily, not conferred by role.
The best leaders don’t need to be the smartest in the room—they need to know how to ask the smartest questions and how to build the room itself.
Being well-rounded isn’t about mastery in all things. It’s about respect, curiosity, and deliberate effort across domains. It’s asking the finance team to walk you through cost modeling. It’s attending user research sessions even if you’re in ops. It’s being willing to say: I don’t know—but I’m here to learn.
Wrapping up…
Inexperience and domain incompetence are not indictments. They’re invitations. Every leader hits their edge. What separates great ones is how they respond when they do. You don’t have to know everything. But you do have to care enough to learn.
