How Do You Know if a New Director Has Really Made the Step Up?

Someone gets promoted to director. They’re experienced, well regarded and working extremely hard. But a few months in, you find yourself wondering: have they really made the step up?

It can be an awkward question to answer. They may be attending the right meetings and carrying a bigger title, but that doesn’t necessarily tell you how they’re operating. Equally, they may still be finding their feet while making important progress that’s easy to miss.

When I’m coaching someone through a move into greater responsibility, I want to get beyond the broad labels. “More strategic”, “greater presence” and “more ownership” may all be fair aspirations, but what would you actually notice if those things changed?

There isn’t one universal definition of director-level leadership. It depends on the business, the role and what the organisation needs at that point in time. But I would look closely at four things: the decisions the person makes, what happens in their team, how they work across the organisation, and what they contribute when the discussion moves beyond their own area.

Are they making decisions at the right level?
A capable senior manager often knows their function in considerable detail. That expertise doesn’t become less valuable after promotion. The question is how they use it.

Can they step back from the immediate issue, see the wider implications and form a view? Can they make a recommendation when the information is incomplete, explain the trade-offs and take responsibility for the decision? Or do they stay in the detail until someone more senior makes the call?

During my years in commercial leadership at CHANEL, I saw how much a decision in one area could affect a retail partner, a team, the customer experience and the wider business. The more responsibility you have, the more you need to hold those connections in mind. Being right about your own patch is only part of the job.

One new director I coached was enabling a significant change to the organisation’s operating model. An important change she needed to make to how they were leading was being able to step back, form a position and contribute to the discussion at Board level. That gives us something much more useful to look at than whether they felt more confident: how did they prepare, what did they say, and how did they participate in the decision?

What can their team now do without them?
This is often revealing. If the director is still personally resolving every difficult team issue, approving every decision and holding all the important relationships, their own capability may be masking a problem. The team hasn’t gained much capacity, and the business still depends too heavily on one person.

I’ve worked with a leader whose instinct was to take on problems brought to them by managers. Through coaching, they began to put more specific ownership of the resolution with the relevant manager, who then handled the issue. That’s a change you can observe. It can be evidenced in who brings forward a solution, who makes the decision and whether the same kind of problem still travels upwards next time.

I wouldn’t expect a new director to disappear from the detail altogether. Sometimes they absolutely need to get involved. What matters is whether they’re able to be selective about where their involvement adds value, rather than being pulled into everything by default.

Can they make progress beyond their own function?
A director’s work often depends on people they don’t manage. They may need to influence peers with different priorities, understand why another team is resisting a proposal, or work through a disagreement without asking the CEO to settle it.

So I would ask, which relationships have they built? Are cross-functional decisions moving forward? Are they bringing other people with them, or does a senior leader still need to mediate every difficult conversation? If so, why?

This was a large part of my experience in national accounts and retail development. Results depended on relationships and decisions across teams and partner organisations. You couldn’t simply instruct everyone involved to see the issue your way. You had to understand what mattered to them and find a workable route forward.

What do they bring to the wider conversation?
A new director doesn’t need to have an opinion on everything, but they do need to contribute more than a report on their own function.

When a wider business issue comes up, can they identify a risk others may have missed? Connect what they’re seeing in their area to a broader priority? Ask a question that improves the discussion, or put forward a considered view even when they aren’t the expert in the room?

For someone who has built their reputation on deep expertise, this can feel really exposing. It takes practice to contribute before you have every detail. But it’s often one of the clearest signs that they’re beginning to operate beyond the boundaries of their previous role.

Look for evidence in the work itself
When I assess a leadership transition, I’m interested in the difference between intention and what is happening day to day. The leader may feel they’re delegating more; their managers may still feel that every decision needs approval. Their manager may want more strategic contribution but may not yet have explained what that means in this particular role.

That’s why it helps to gather examples from both sides. Choose a decision, a team issue, a cross-functional project or a senior meeting. What did the leader do? What happened as a result? What would they do differently next time? Revisit the same questions after a few months.

A title tells you that someone has been given greater responsibility. To know how they’re growing into it, look at the decisions that no longer need escalating, the managers taking more ownership, the relationships moving work forward and the contribution they make to issues beyond their own function. Those are the changes that show up in the business.

About Kate
Kate Rainford-Foakes is an executive and leadership coach based in London, an EMCC Senior Practitioner, and holds an ILM Level 7 Diploma in Executive Coaching and Mentoring. Before becoming a coach, she spent 15 years in senior commercial roles at CHANEL, including retail development and national accounts. She now works with leaders navigating promotion and greater responsibility, combining coaching with practical business experience to help them grow into the demands of their roles.