A conversation with Anja van Beek, Leadership Strategist and Director of the WholeLeader Collective
Published in the Cape Times 23 July 2026
There’s a moment many professionals quietly recognise. You’ve worked towards the promotion. You’ve earned the trust, delivered the results, and stepped up when it mattered. And then it happens: Your title changes, your responsibilities grow, and for a brief moment, there’s a sense of “I have arrived”.
It is also usually in this moment, when the realisation hits.
“The emails change first,” Anja van Beek says. “Then the expectations, and also, very quickly, the feeling that you’re no longer doing the work that made you successful in the first place.”
It’s a transition that looks like progress on paper, but often feels like disorientation in practice.
van Beek has worked with countless leaders navigating this exact moment. What strikes her most is how rarely it’s spoken about openly. “We celebrate the promotion; however, don’t talk about what it (actually) costs.”
The shift no one explains
“What I often tell my coaching clients is that a promotion is rarely a continuation of the same work at a higher level. It is a fundamental change in your role, identity, and how value is created”.
“You move from doing, to leading. From being the expert, to enabling others. From control to influence and those are not small shifts,” she explains.
It’s here that many leaders begin to feel the tension. The part of them that built their success, their expertise, their hands-on capability, is suddenly less central. In its place comes a new set of demands. From leading people to navigating complexity and also managing energy, not just output.
Without realising it, many try to lead the new role with the habits of the old one.
More than just capability
“They stay in the ‘hands’ of the work,” van Beek says, “because that’s where they feel competent, but leadership at that level requires something different. It asks for clarity of thinking, emotional awareness, and behaviour that is aligned with both.”
In other words, it calls for a shift across head, heart and hands:
- The head brings perspective. The ability to step back, prioritise, and make decisions in uncertainty.
- The heart brings emotional maturity. The ability to read a room, regulate responses, and hold space for others without losing yourself.
- And the hands reflect behaviour. What you consistently do, model, and reinforce in your team.
“When one of those is out of balance, leaders feel it,” she says. “And so do their teams.”
When it starts to feel personal
Leaders start questioning themselves. Did I make a mistake? Am I actually good at this? Why does this feel harder than it should?
van Beek is quick to reframe that thinking. “Discomfort is not always a signal that you’re in the wrong place. Sometimes it’s a signal that you’re in a new place, and you haven’t yet built the capacity to lead there.”
The uncomfortable middle
This distinction matters. The early weeks in a new role are often a mix of cognitive overload, emotional pressure, and behavioural adjustment. The meetings multiply, the decisions carry more weight and the margin for error feels smaller than before. Quietly, many leaders start to overcompensate.
They work longer hours or they stay closer to the detail than they need to. They try to prove themselves through output, instead of shifting into leadership.
“It’s a very human response,” she says. “But it’s also what keeps them stuck.”
The human side of the transition
What often gets overlooked in this transition is the very real human response happening beneath the surface. Even positive change can be experienced by the nervous system as a form of threat, activating the body’s stress response. Leaders may notice racing thoughts, difficulty sleeping, irritability, self-doubt, or a persistent sense of feeling overwhelmed.
“I see this often in my work,” van Beek explains. “Leaders assume something is wrong with them, when in reality, their system is trying to make sense of increased responsibility, uncertainty, and pressure.” This is not a failure of capability but rather a normal human reaction to change.
The key is not to eliminate stress, but to learn how to regulate it. When leaders are able to regulate their nervous system, they move from reacting to responding. And that changes the quality of their leadership significantly.
She points to small, practical shifts that make a meaningful difference.
Slowing your breathing between meetings or by taking brief pauses instead of moving from one decision straight into the next. Naming what you are feeling instead of pushing it aside. Prioritising recovery through sleep and movement. And, breaking complex challenges into smaller, more manageable steps.
“These are not big, dramatic changes,” she says. “But they create enough space for leaders to think more clearly, stay grounded, and lead more intentionally.”
Equally important is the mindset shift. Growth rarely feels comfortable in the beginning. In fact, it often feels unfamiliar, messy, and uncertain before it begins to feel natural.
With time, support, and intentional self-regulation, the nervous system begins to settle. What initially felt like a threat starts to feel manageable. Eventually, it becomes an opportunity to expand into a more capable version of yourself.
Finding your footing again
So, what helps? van Beek suggests starting with honest reflection – not a reaction.
“Before you decide something has gone wrong, take a moment to understand what has actually changed.”
Is the discomfort coming from the role itself, or from the stretch of learning something new?
Are you missing the nature of your previous work, or are you resisting the identity change that comes with leadership?
There’s also a practical layer. “Get specific about what energises you and what drains you in the new role,” she explains. “Then have a conversation. Many roles have more flexibility than people assume, but only if you’re willing to engage in shaping them.”
Too often, leaders accept the role as fixed, rather than something that can be refined.
Beyond performance
There is also the deeper work. The work of integration. “What I see in strong leaders is not perfection, but rather alignment,” van Beek says. They think clearly about what matters, and they stay aware of how they show up emotionally. And ultimately, their behaviour reflects both.
That alignment creates steadiness, especially in the uncertainty that comes with new responsibility. This also creates trust. “Your team is watching less what you say, and more how you show up,” she adds. “Especially in those early months.”
When it really isn’t the right fit
Of course, there are moments where the role genuinely doesn’t fit. Where the work no longer aligns with what gives you meaning, or where the demands pull you too far from your strengths.
“In those cases, stepping back is not failure,” she says. But more often than not, what looks like the wrong role is actually an unintegrated transition.
A leader who has not yet shifted how they think, feel, and act in the role they’ve stepped into, and that takes time.
“A promotion is not only a change in title,” van Beek reflects. “It’s a shift in how you lead, how you relate, and how you see yourself.”
Van Beek concludes that “The real work begins after the celebration. It isn’t in proving you deserved it, but in becoming the leader the role now requires, and that is a very different kind of success.”
