The Thin Air of Promotion: Going Higher Requires a Time of Acclimation

Welcome to The Concrete Leader Weekly — a weekly leadership and personal growth newsletter where I share inspiring stories, practical insights, and motivational lessons to help you start your week with purpose and clarity.

Issue #138

The Thin Air of Promotion

The hotel’s ground-floor elevator lobby was packed. Day one of The Precast Show in Denver had just ended, and a slow, restless line wrapped around the corner.

Ed saw the bottleneck and shook his head. My room was on the tenth floor, where I was waiting to give him something from my suitcase. Proud of his fitness, Ed didn’t hesitate.

He and his wife had been training for hikes in the Smoky Mountains by climbing more than 100 steps on each side of the dam at Hoover Reservoir near their home. Ten flights of stairs? No problem. To Ed, it wasn’t a challenge; it was a shortcut.

He pushed through the heavy stairwell door and took the concrete steps at a brisk pace.

For the first four floors, he moved quickly. By the seventh, an unexpected heaviness settled into his legs. By the ninth, he was breathing hard. When he reached the tenth-floor landing, his lungs felt as if they were burning from the inside out.

I opened the door to my room to find Ed leaning heavily against the doorframe, bent at the waist, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

“I don’t… get it,” he wheezed, wiping sweat from his forehead. “I’m in shape. I climb steps every week. Why on earth did ten flights of stairs just completely destroy me?”

I smiled and motioned for him to come in and sit down.

“Well, Ed,” I said, “normally when you’re powering up those steps and hills back home, you’re about a thousand feet above sea level. Right now, you’re standing in the Mile High City. You started this climb at over 5,000 feet. Your body didn’t suddenly fail you—your environment completely changed.”

The Invisible Altitude

Ed’s climb up those hotel stairs came back to me long after he caught his breath. It’s a vivid illustration of something that happens in organizations every single day.

Consider what happens when a top-performing employee gets promoted into a supervisory role.

On Friday, they are a star player—an elite individual contributor who knows the job inside and out. On Monday, they step into a leadership position. They bring the exact same intellect, the same work ethic, the same drive, and the same technical talent that made them successful in the first place.

Yet, within weeks, they find themselves exhausted, confused, and struggling to stay afloat. They are huffing and puffing at their desks, wondering why tasks that used to feel effortless now feel agonizingly difficult.

Just like Ed in the stairwell, they often blame themselves. Did I lose my edge? Am I not cut out for this? Was I overhyped?

What they fail to realize is that the “elevation” changed overnight.

The Shift in Atmospheric Pressure

When you move from an individual worker to a supervisor, the fundamental mechanics of your job undergo an atmospheric shift.

At ground level—as an individual contributor—the feedback loop is direct. You execute a task, you see the result, and you get the credit. Your energy maps directly to your output. If you work harder, you produce more. It’s like walking at sea level: oxygen is abundant, traction is straightforward, and your efforts yield predictable results.

When you step into a leadership role, the air gets thinner. The environment changes in three profound ways:

From Execution to Orchestration: You are no longer responsible for doing the work; you are responsible for guiding the people who do the work. The instinct to jump in and “just do it yourself” is like trying to sprint up a mountain—it will burn you out instantly.

Delayed Feedback: Success is no longer measured by what you personally checked off your to-do list today. It is measured by team morale, long-term project milestones, and coaching conversations whose ROI might not be visible for months.

Invisible Complexity: You are suddenly exposed to cross-departmental politics, budget constraints, organizational strategy, and human dynamics. The atmospheric pressure of responsibility is significantly higher.

The work didn’t necessarily become harder in terms of human capability, but the environment now demands a completely different way of moving.

Learning to Breathe at a Higher Elevation

If you try to run up a high-altitude mountain using a sea-level stride, your body will rebel. To survive and thrive in thin air, you have to adjust your pacing, your rhythm, and your mindset.

The same is true for a newly promoted leader. Reaching the next level isn’t about working harder at your old habits; it’s about intentionally developing new ones.

Trade the Star Role for the Coach’s Whistle
The hardest shift for high performers is giving up the spotlight. You can no longer be the person who saves the day with a brilliant individual play. Your new job is to build a team of players who can save the day without you.
Pacing Over Power
At sea level, you can power through a crunch week on pure stamina. In leadership, relentless brute-force effort leads straight to burnout. You must learn to delegate, prioritize ruthlessly, and protect your mental bandwidth.
Normalize the Oxygen Deprivation
Feeling out of breath during your first few months as a supervisor isn’t a sign of weakness—it’s a sign of acclimatization. Your brain and body are adapting to a new ecosystem. Expect the friction, respect the altitude, and give yourself permission to learn the terrain.

Adjusting Your Mindset

Ed didn’t need to go back to the gym and rebuild his cardio from scratch; he just needed to respect the Denver elevation and adjust his pace.

If you find yourself stepping into a new role—or if you’re managing someone who just made the leap—take a step back before panic sets in. Look around at the new landscape. The talent, capability, and drive that got you here are still intact. You haven’t forgotten how to climb.

You just need to give yourself time to adjust to the thin air, tune your mind to the new environment, and learn how to navigate the mountain ahead.