First‑Time Team Leader in Architecture: Three Lessons from Football’s Leadership Classroom

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” 

- Jack Welch

Imagine this.

It’s a packed stadium in the second half of a top-flight football match. The game’s in full flow and suddenly the football manager runs onto the pitch, grabs the ball, dribbles past defenders - and tries to score himself.

Ridiculous, right?

The players would stop, watching in disbelief - and so would the audience. You can only imagine the headlines the next day. Total chaos.

And yet ...

This is exactly what happens in professional life so often. A project architect jumps back into the drawings, the team leader writes the report themselves, the prject manager jumps into every email, the director runs every meeting - and then wonders why the team isn’t performing.

The Common Trap for First-Time Leaders

As a leadership coach working with architects and built environment professionals, I come across these situations often. In many cases, the leader in question is a first-time people manager, promoted on the merit of their outstanding design or technical skills. One day they are a star performer, consistently delivering excellent work - reliable, high-performing, trusted. The next day, they’re in charge of a team.

And often I can sense the uncertainty and insecurity, with questions like: What is my role? How do I add value if I’m not producing work myself? How do I prove my worth?

After years of knowing exactly how success was measured, leadership can feel vague. With the result that many new leaders fall back on what feels safe and familiar: they keep doing the work instead of leading the people doing the work.

In this article, I want to share three shifts every first-time manager - in fact, every leader - needs to make.

And I'll stick with the football analogy to explain the principles. Not because I'm a football expert - I still don't understand offside :-) - but because team sport is a perfect leadership classroom. Where you can easily recognise a high performing team - there's no grey area - you just look at the league table.

Shift 1: From Output to Outcome

Redefine what success looks like.

In football, it’s quite straightforward. A striker is judged by goals scored. But a manager is judged by team results. And, as we so often witness in the Premier League, when the team consistently underperforms, it’s the manager who loses their job, not the players. Because in football, the manager’s success is no longer measured by the goals they score. It’s measured by how many goals their team scores.

The same shift needs to happen in professional life.

As an individual contributor in the built environment, success is easy to measure: stunning designs, clever technical solutions, effective reports, innovative problem solving. Your personal output defined your value.

But once you lead a team, it’s critical that your definition of success changes. Now it’s all about the team’s success - project delivery, team performance, client satisfaction and business results. Your leadership success is no longer about what you personally produce. It's about what your team delivers.

Shift 2: From Doing to Enabling

Create the conditions how team success is achieved.

Again, it’s quite simple in football. Managers aren’t on the pitch scoring goals. On match day they’re mostly on the sidelines, while it’s the players who perform and deliver. The manager’s real work happens between matches - developing tactics, preparing players, fixing team weaknesses, assigning roles and building confidence. The manager’s job is to create the conditions for team success.

Exactly the same applies in professional practice.

Yet this is where many leaders - especially first-time managers - struggle most. They’ve built their careers on producing the work and solving problems personally, so when pressure rises, they jump back into delivery mode.

But leadership is no longer about doing; it’s about enabling.

For leaders in architecture and the built environment, enabling means creating the conditions for team success by:

• Creating a strategy

• Delegating ownership, not just tasks

• Clarifying roles and expectations

• Removing obstacles for the team

• Supporting decision-making

• Developing team capability

• Making sure the right people work in the right roles

• Creating an environment where people can perform at their best

Your value shifts from producing outstanding work yourself to making outstanding work possible through others.

Shift 3: From Master Skill to New Skillset

Who do you need to become?

Football shows this perfectly. Many world-class players fail as managers, while some outstanding managers were average players. Jürgen Klopp is a good example - my personal hero - he apparently never really stood out as a professional player, yet has become one of football’s most successful managers.

And that points to an uncomfortable truth in professional life as well:

The skills that got you promoted are not the skills that will make you a great leader.

Outstanding designers or technicians aren't automatically outstanding managers.

Leadership demands a new skillset - for example: strategic thinking instead of operational focus, effective delegation, communication and influence, giving feedback, motivation and engagement, the ability to handle difficult conversations, and decision-making under uncertainty.

And perhaps hardest of all:

You have to become comfortable being a beginner again.

After years of being confident and competent as individual contributor, leadership puts you back into learning mode. And that’s okay.

The Three Shifts in Summary

Every first-time leader - and in fact, many seasoned leaders - must go through these shifts if they truly want to become effective leaders of consistently high-performing teams:

Shift 1 - From Output to Outcome

Redefine how success is measured.

Shift 2 - From Doing to Enabling

Focus on creating success through others.

Shift 3 - From Master Skill to New Skillset

Develop the capabilities leadership actually requires.

Because here’s the paradox:

When you stop playing, your team starts winning.

A Final Thought

If your team isn’t consistently performing, it may not be about them. It might be about which leadership shift still needs to happen for you.

And if you’d like support making that transition, I work with practice owners and leadership teams across the built environment through coaching and workshops to strengthen leadership capability, unlock team potential and elevate practice performance. If that sounds helpful, please get in touch for a free consultation to discuss your options.

Remember - sometimes all it takes is getting the manager off the pitch.

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All photos courtesy of Unsplash.