Why New Leaders Should Not Expect to Know Everything
Sep 23
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Gena Cornett, MBA, CPC, CPB, CPB-I, CPCO, RCMS, CRCR
Starting a leadership role can make an accomplished professional feel like a beginner again. That feeling is normal. Leadership requires a different set of skills, and those skills develop through experience, reflection, feedback, and repeated exposure to real situations. New leaders should expect a learning period rather than assuming that the title comes with immediate mastery.
The Uncomfortable Beginning of a New Role
In nearly every new role I have taken on in my career, it has taken me about a year before I truly felt that I knew what I was doing. I could understand the job description and begin performing the responsibilities much sooner, but confidence took longer. I needed time to understand the people, the organization, the unwritten expectations, and the problems that were not visible from the outside.
During that first year, I was also learning which issues needed my direct involvement, which decisions could be delegated, and which concerns were symptoms of a larger problem. I had to learn who held important information, how leaders made decisions, and how one change could affect other parts of the revenue cycle.
Many new leaders interpret this period of uncertainty as evidence that they are not ready. They compare their internal uncertainty with the outward confidence of more experienced leaders. They may hesitate to ask questions because they believe a manager or director should already know the answers. That expectation is both unrealistic and counterproductive.
What the Novice to Expert Model Explains
Patricia Benner explored professional development in her 1984 book From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice. Benner described how nurses develop knowledge and judgment through education and experience. Her model identifies five stages of development: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert.
Although Benner applied the model to nursing practice, its central idea is useful far beyond nursing. People do not become experts simply by collecting information or spending a certain number of years in a role. Expertise develops as they encounter varied situations, recognize patterns, understand context, and learn which information matters most.
The stages should not be treated as a rigid timeline or a permanent label. A person may demonstrate expertise in one area and function as a novice in another. Development also depends on the quality and variety of experience, not only the passage of time.
Expertise In Revenue Cycle Does Not Automatically Create Leadership Expertise
Revenue cycle leaders often earn promotions because they have strong technical knowledge and a record of solving problems. A successful biller may become a supervisor. An experienced coder may begin managing a coding team. A high-performing analyst may be promoted into an operational leadership role. These individuals bring valuable knowledge to the new position, but the position changes what success requires.
The new leader is no longer responsible only for producing excellent individual work. The leader must establish priorities, communicate expectations, develop employees, address performance problems, allocate resources, and represent the team to other parts of the organization. Technical expertise remains useful, but it does not provide automatic answers to questions involving people, influence, competing priorities, and organizational judgment.
This creates an uncomfortable combination: the person may be highly experienced in revenue cycle operations while still being new to leadership. New leaders sometimes respond by retreating to the work they already know. They solve the team's problems, correct employees' work, and remain involved in every operational detail. Those activities feel productive because they draw on established expertise. They may also prevent the leader from developing the skills the new role requires.
The same principle applies when an experienced revenue cycle leader moves into a higher-level leadership role. A successful manager promoted to director, or a director promoted to vice president, brings valuable leadership experience to the new position. Even so, that person may still be a novice in the new role. The scope is broader, the decisions carry greater organizational impact, and success depends more heavily on strategy, executive communication, financial judgment, and influence across departments. A leader can be highly proficient at managing a team or department while still learning how to lead at the enterprise level. Recognizing this does not diminish the leader's previous experience. It provides a realistic explanation for why each advancement requires another period of learning and adjustment.
Why the First Year Often Feels So Difficult
A leadership role contains responsibilities that cannot be mastered by just reading a policy or completing a course. A new leader can learn a performance management process, but using it well requires judgment. The leader must determine whether expectations were clear, whether the employee had the necessary training, whether the problem is isolated or recurring, and whether coaching or formal corrective action is appropriate.
The same is true of delegation. The concept is easy to understand, but applying it requires knowledge of each employee's capabilities, workload, confidence, and development needs. Effective delegation also requires the leader to define the expected result, establish appropriate checkpoints, and resist taking the work back at the first sign of difficulty.
Revenue cycle operations add another layer of complexity. A change intended to improve one metric may create problems elsewhere. Accelerating claim submission without adequate edits may increase rejections or denials. Raising productivity expectations without considering account complexity may reduce work quality. Reducing staff may lower expense while increasing aging or creating timely filing risk. Leaders learn to see these relationships through experience.
It is reasonable, then, for a new leader to need time before the whole role begins to make sense. The first year often includes several cycles of planning, implementation, evaluation, and adjustment. Those cycles create the experience needed to recognize patterns and anticipate consequences.
What New Leaders Should Expect From Themselves
New leaders do not need to lower their standards, but they may need to change the standard they use to judge early success. Immediate mastery is not a reasonable expectation. Responsible learning is.
Learn the context before changing the process. Ask how the work currently functions, why the process developed, and what previous attempts have been made. A process may still need to change, but understanding its history improves the decision.
Ask questions without apologizing for learning. Thoughtful questions demonstrate responsibility. Pretending to understand an unfamiliar issue creates greater risk than acknowledging what you still need to learn.
Separate urgent decisions from important learning. Some problems require an immediate response. Others allow time to gather information, consult experienced people, and consider the effect on employees and operations.
Seek feedback on leadership behavior. Ask whether expectations are clear, meetings are useful, decisions are timely, and employees have enough support. Feedback helps leaders identify blind spots before habits become established.
Reflect on decisions instead of only moving to the next problem. Consider what information influenced the decision, what happened afterward, and what you would repeat or change. Reflection converts experience into learning.
Notice where technical expertise is becoming a refuge. If you are doing work that belongs to employees because it feels easier than coaching or delegating, the familiar work may be delaying your leadership development.
What Organizations Should Provide
The novice-to-expert perspective also changes how organizations should support new leaders. A promotion and a brief orientation are not enough. New leaders need clear decision authority, access to relevant information, regular feedback, and opportunities to discuss situations with experienced leaders. They need practical development that addresses the work they are doing now.
Organizations should also avoid expecting new leaders to perform like experienced leaders without allowing a learning period. Accountability remains important, but expectations should reflect the difference between learning a role and neglecting it. A leader who asks questions, seeks feedback, and adjusts is demonstrating growth even when every decision is not yet polished.
Confidence Grows From Experience
The point of the novice-to-expert model is not that every leader will become an expert or that progress happens automatically. Its value is that it gives people a realistic way to understand development. Competence grows through practice. Judgment improves as leaders encounter more situations, observe the results of their decisions, and learn from people with greater experience.
If you are new to leadership and do not yet feel fully confident, that does not mean you are unqualified. If you moved from a supervisor role into a director position and feel like a beginner again, your earlier leadership experience has not disappeared. You are applying it in a broader and more complex context.
Give yourself permission to learn the role. Stay curious. Ask for context. Make thoughtful decisions with the information available, and be willing to adjust when you learn more. You do not need to know everything when you accept a leadership position. You do need to take responsibility for continuing to learn.
Reference
Benner, P. (1984). From Novice to Expert Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice. Addison-Wesley.
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