What Is an Emerging Leader?
A clear definition of emerging leaders, how they differ from high potentials and emergent leaders, and why this transition is one of the most consequential moments in a person's career.
The term "emerging leader" gets thrown around a lot in organisations. It appears in job titles, development programs, and talent reviews. But what does it actually mean? And why does it matter?
This article defines emerging leadership clearly, distinguishes it from related concepts like high potential and emergent leadership, and explains why this transition is one of the most consequential moments in a person's career.
Defining "Emerging Leader"
An emerging leader is someone transitioning from individual contributor to people leader. They're no longer purely responsible for their own output. They're now responsible for enabling others to succeed.
I had always found it strange that managers can't seem to do the obvious... To be honest, though: now that I'm here, I feel very uncertain.
— First-time manager, CCL research
Your definition of success must now include the success of others. Rather than focusing on your own performance, you need to be considering questions such as: How does the group or team accomplish its work?
— Center for Creative Leadership
This typically includes:
- First-time managers
- Newly promoted team leads
- High-potential employees being prepared for leadership
- Technical experts stepping into people management
- Frontline supervisors taking on direct reports for the first time
The first two years in a leadership role shape your trajectory. Habits form. Confidence builds or erodes. People who struggle early often never fully recover.
— Leadership research insight
The key word is transitioning. Emerging leaders aren't established leaders with years of management experience. But they're also no longer individual contributors focused solely on their own work. They occupy the space in between, learning to lead while doing the job.
What unites emerging leaders across industries and functions is this fundamental shift: from doing the work to enabling others to do the work. That sounds simple, but it represents one of the most significant professional transitions most people will ever make.
Emerging Leader vs High Potential vs Emergent Leader
These terms often get confused. Here's how they differ.
Emerging leader
Refers to someone actively in the transition to a leadership role. They've been promoted, given direct reports, or formally moved into people management. The transition is happening now.
High potential
Often shortened to HiPo, refers to someone identified as having leadership potential. They may or may not be in a leadership role yet. High potentials are a talent pool: people the organisation believes could become leaders in the future.
Emergent leader
An academic term from leadership research. It describes informal leadership that arises naturally in groups, without formal titles or authority. Someone who naturally takes charge in a meeting or project might be called an emergent leader by researchers studying group dynamics.
Emergent leadership and emerging leadership sound similar but describe different things. Emergent leadership is about informal influence without formal authority. Emerging leadership is about the transition into formal people management. Someone can demonstrate emergent leadership for years before becoming an emerging leader, or never make the transition at all.
Who Counts as an Emerging Leader?
The concept is broader than first-time managers, though that's the most common application.
Typically includes
First-time managers are the classic example: someone promoted from individual contributor to managing a team. This is where most emerging leader programs focus, and for good reason. It's the transition where most people struggle and where organisations see the highest failure rates.
Senior individual contributors stepping into team lead roles also qualify. These are often technical experts who've been promoted for their expertise but now need to develop people management capabilities.
Project managers taking on people management fit the definition when they move from managing work to managing people. The skills don't automatically transfer.
High performers given leadership stretch assignments are emerging leaders in development. They're not yet in formal roles but being prepared for them through increased responsibility and exposure.
Typically doesn't include
Experienced managers moving to a new company aren't emerging leaders. They're established leaders in a new context. The transition challenges are different.
Senior leaders taking on bigger scope face real transitions when they move from managing a team to managing managers, or from a department to a division. But they're not emerging into leadership. They're growing within it.
Individual contributors with no leadership responsibilities, regardless of seniority, aren't emerging leaders. Having a senior title doesn't make someone a leader. Managing people does.
The common thread is the first significant transition into people leadership. That's what makes someone an emerging leader.
Why This Transition Matters
The emerging leader transition is consequential for both the individual and the organisation. Getting it right creates compounding benefits. Getting it wrong creates compounding problems.
For the individual
This transition is an identity shift, not just a skills upgrade. The capabilities that made someone successful as an individual contributor (technical expertise, personal productivity, being the one with the answers) often work against them as a leader. Success now means developing others, not outperforming them.
The research on this transition is sobering.
Source: CCL citing Gartner research
Source: Center for Creative Leadership
They're promoted based on technical performance and left to figure out people leadership on their own.
The first two years in a leadership role shape your trajectory. Habits form. Confidence builds or erodes. Relationships with direct reports are established. People who struggle early often never fully recover. They either leave management or plateau at lower levels than their potential suggested.
Getting it right accelerates a career. Leaders who succeed in their first management role get access to more responsibility, bigger teams, and faster advancement. The emerging leader transition is a fork in the road.
For the organisation
Gallup's research consistently shows that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. The single biggest factor in whether employees are engaged or disengaged is their direct manager. And most of those managers were once emerging leaders who either developed the right capabilities or didn't.
Source: Gallup
Bad first-time manager experiences create retention problems that compound over time. When an emerging leader struggles, their team members suffer. The best performers leave first. They have options. What remains is a less capable, less engaged team that's harder to turn around.
The leadership pipeline depends on this transition succeeding. Organisations can't develop senior leaders if they can't first develop frontline leaders. Every gap in emerging leader development creates a gap in the leadership bench years later.
The financial cost of getting it wrong is substantial. Replacing a manager costs 50 to 200% of their salary when you account for recruitment, onboarding, lost productivity, and the impact on the team. And that doesn't count the harder-to-measure costs of disengaged employees, missed targets, and cultural damage.
What Emerging Leaders Actually Need to Succeed
Understanding the definition is useful. Understanding what emerging leaders need is actionable.
The capability gap
Technical skills got them promoted. But technical skills won't make them succeed as leaders.
Emerging leaders need to develop capabilities they've likely never been formally taught: self-awareness, communication, influence without authority, delegation, giving feedback, coaching others, managing performance, having difficult conversations, building trust, and leading through change.
Research from DDI, the Center for Creative Leadership, and others consistently points to learning agility and emotional intelligence as critical predictors of leadership success. These aren't innate traits. They can be developed. But they require intentional effort and the right support.
The identity shift
Beyond skills, emerging leaders need to navigate a fundamental shift in how they see themselves and their role.
- From "I do the work" to "I enable others to do the work." This means letting go of tasks they're good at and finding satisfaction in others' success rather than their own output.
- From being the expert to developing experts. Many emerging leaders were promoted because they knew more than anyone else. Now their job is to develop that capability in others. That means tolerating imperfection while people learn.
- From personal achievement to team achievement. Success is no longer individual. It's collective. That requires a different way of measuring progress and a different source of motivation.
The support gap
Most emerging leaders get promoted and left to figure it out. They're given responsibility without preparation, then judged on outcomes they weren't equipped to achieve.
One-day workshops don't create lasting change. Research on learning retention suggests that people forget 50 to 70% of new information within 24 hours without reinforcement. A single training session, however good, doesn't build capability.
Emerging leaders need sustained development over 6 to 12 months. They need opportunities to practice, reflect, get feedback, and try again. They need support that matches the duration and difficulty of the transition they're navigating.
Read about the specific challenges emerging leaders face →
Are You an Emerging Leader?
If you're reading this and wondering whether the term applies to you, here's a quick assessment.
You're likely an emerging leader if:
You've recently been promoted to a role with direct reports. "Recently" typically means within the last 18 to 24 months. This is the core definition.
You're managing people for the first time. Even if your title hasn't changed, if you've taken on formal responsibility for others' performance and development, you're in the transition.
You're moving from technical expert to people leader. This is common in engineering, medicine, law, finance, and other expertise-based fields. The technical-to-management transition is one of the most challenging versions of emerging leadership.
You're being groomed for a leadership role. If you've been identified as high potential and given stretch assignments, leadership exposure, or formal development, you're an emerging leader in preparation.
You might not be an emerging leader if:
You've been managing for three or more years. At that point, you're either an established leader or you've exited the role. The "emerging" phase is time-limited.
You're an established leader in a new company. Changing organisations creates real challenges, but they're different from the challenges of first-time leadership. You're not emerging into leadership. You're adapting established capabilities to a new context.
You have a leadership title but no people responsibility. Titles like "team lead" or "senior" don't make someone a leader. Managing people does.
What Comes Next
If you're an emerging leader yourself, understand that the challenges you're facing are normal. Most new managers struggle with similar things: the identity shift, leading former peers, delegating instead of doing, giving difficult feedback, managing up while managing down. You're not uniquely bad at this. You're navigating a transition that's genuinely hard.
If you're responsible for developing emerging leaders in your organisation, understand that promotion is not development. The moment someone moves into a leadership role is the moment they most need support. And the moment most organisations provide the least.
The emerging leader transition is a high-stakes, high-leverage moment. What happens in those first 18 to 24 months shapes leaders, teams, and organisations for years to come.
Continue Reading
The 12 Challenges Emerging Leaders Face →
How to Develop Emerging Leaders →
Emerging Leader Characteristics: How to Identify Future Leaders →