Here's how you can navigate the challenges of transitioning from intern to full-time leadership roles.

Focus on building credibility and trust within your team. From my experience, taking the initiative on projects and demonstrating consistent reliability helped me gain the respect of my colleagues. Seek out mentorship opportunities and be open to learning from those around you. Additionally, hone your communication skills to clearly articulate your vision and expectations. Balancing confidence with humility is key—acknowledge what you don’t know and be willing to learn!

As Bobby Unser wisely said, success hinges on preparation meeting opportunity. To successfully transition from intern to leader, it's crucial to position yourself for advancement. Demonstrate initiative and a strong work ethic. Eagerly seek out additional responsibilities and prove your ability to handle complex tasks. Foster strong relationships with your team and mentors, using their input to accelerate your growth. Develop essential leadership qualities like communication, sound decision-making, and problem-solving. Continuously expand your knowledge and skills. Prove your ability to overcome challenges and deliver successful projects. By consistently demonstrating your capabilities, you'll seamlessly step into a leadership role.

One key skill is your willingness to openly question and invite input. Everyone has a different vantage point, experience set and the easiest way to creat value is by expressing and questioning your own assumptions and inviting your counterparties to do the same. Leadership is an expression of courage to calculate risks and then taking wise bets that allow you to stay in the game. Assumptions are bets, and often have downsides that are difficult to recover.

**From Intern to Leader: Navigating the Leap** Transitioning from intern to leader is a thrilling yet daunting journey. Embrace the challenge as an opportunity for growth. Build strong relationships, seek mentorship, and develop a keen understanding of the organization. Hone your decision-making skills and cultivate emotional intelligence. Remember, leadership isn't about authority, but influence. Lead with humility, empathy, and a relentless pursuit of knowledge. Your journey from intern to leader is a testament to your potential; seize it with both hands.

Seeking a mentor and coach is key to help navigate your leadership journey. You are stepping into a role from having to be responsible for your own objectives to responsible for a team. A mentor has been in that role and able to support and guide you on the journey. Potentially point out areas of improvement and strengths.

The leap from intern to leader is a significant one, demanding adaptability and a willingness to embrace new challenges. Leadership requires stepping outside that comfort zone, taking on greater responsibility, and making decisions with broader impact. A leader's actions affect not just your own work, but the performance and morale of your team and potentially the organization itself. This heightened responsibility is a core aspect of leadership. There's no one-size-fits-all leadership style. Be prepared to adapt your approach based on the situation, your team's needs, and the organization's goals. The learning curve doesn't end with a promotion. It just begins here . So embrace the new position and leap towards the role.

In a leadership role, continuous learning and growth mindset is key. You need to always looking to enhance your own skills and that of your teams. Staying abreast of new ways of supporting, leading and empowering your team. As well, any training and support that is required for your team.

As you would perhaps with your clients, you would need to create a web of influence; especially with others from cross-functional teams. Having a network of those that are peers and senior leadership. This provides a diverse perspective of input and collaboration opportunities. As you want to have well rounded view vs creating hive-mind. Using the opportunity to learn from each other, support on providing outside unbiased perspective on topics and forming informal structures and alliances. Being able to view your role from the vantage of another leader to be understand if there is miss opportunities that should be addressed.

As most interns will likely not directly assume managerial roles, the notion of shifting from intern to a 'leader' assumes that the organization values informal leadership that is not tied to supervisory roles. I'm a huge fan of informal leadership, but it requires formal leaders and supervisors to recognize and draw on a new employee's talents, interests, and skills beyond filling a slot in the org chart. It also requires a certain organizational culture that transcends positional authority. I have found that informal leaders have an opportunity to make meaningful contributions without formal responsibility - an invaluable strategy to experiment and gain experience, build relationships, and add value to your organization.

Regular reflection serves as a potent tool for personal growth in leadership roles. Consistently evaluate your performance, decisions, and their resulting outcomes. Contemplate the lessons learned from each experience and their application in future endeavors. Consider maintaining a journal to monitor your progress and thoughts. Cultivating the practice of self-reflection keeps you grounded and intent on continuous improvement as a leader.