Critical Traps for First-Time CEOs

Critical Traps for First-Time CEOs

Last week, I wrote about the traps that catch even experienced CEOs in their second or third CEO role (Critical Traps Even Experienced CEOs Shouldn’t Fall Into).

The response was interesting. Readers reached out asking: "But what if this is my first time as CEO? The situation will be different then, right?"

This got me thinking, and I put together some thoughts from my experience to address this specific target group.

I believe the answer is - yes and no. Some traps are universal - the loneliness, the time pressure, the talent risk. But first-time CEOs face an additional and fundamentally different challenge: you're not just learning a new company, you're learning a new job. The transition from functional leader to CEO is bigger than most people realize.

First-time CEOs face an additional challenge: you're not just learning a new company, you're learning a new job.

So here are the traps specific to first-time CEOs - the ones I often see in leaders making this leap for the first time.

The Background

You've spent years preparing for this moment. You've been CFO, COO, or a business unit leader. You've proven yourself. The board has chosen you to lead the company.

And now, suddenly, the job feels completely different from what you expected.

Almost every first-time CEO is surprised by how different the role actually is.

Almost every first-time CEO is surprised by how different the role actually is. The skills that got you here - your functional expertise, your execution ability, your track record - are necessary for this next step, but not sufficient.

One of the biggest surprises always is the profound loneliness of the role.

One of the biggest surprises always is the profound loneliness of the role. You'll be surrounded by people all day but discover you can't be fully honest with anyone in your normal orbit. It's one of the things nobody tells you until you're living it. (If you would like to read more, I've addressed this in It's lonely at the top: What it's like to be CEO).

The good news: many of the the traps that derail first-time CEOs are predictable. And if you know what to watch for, you can avoid them.

The Traps

Trap 1: Trying to Prove You Deserve the Job

Here's what happens: You feel like you need to prove the board made the right choice. So you work incredibly hard. You dive deep into details. You try to show mastery of everything. You want everyone to see you're capable. Basically, you are trying to be CEO on top of doing your old job brilliantly.

Why this may backfire: The CEO job isn't about proving you can do everything. It's about enabling others to do everything while you focus on the few things only you can do.

What to do instead:

• Accept that you can't and shouldn't master every detail anymore.

• Get clear on what only the CEO can do: set direction, make key people decisions, manage the board, represent the company externally.

• Delegate everything else - actually delegate, not just assign while staying involved.

• Measure your success by the team's performance, not your individual output.

Trap 2: Leading with Excessive Toughness

Here's what happens: You want to be taken seriously. You're conscious that some people might see you as too young, too inexperienced, or not tough enough for the top job. So you overcompensate. You become excessively hard. You make harsh decisions quickly to show strength. You create distance to establish hierarchy. You shut down dissent to demonstrate authority.

Why first-time CEOs may fall into this: The transition to CEO can feel vulnerable. You're no longer one of the team - you're the boss. Some of your former peers now report to you. You worry they won't respect your authority. You fear being seen as weak or indecisive.

So you lean hard into authority. You think: "I need to establish who's in charge. I need to show I'm not someone to be pushed around."

Why this may backfire: Leading with excessive toughness doesn't earn respect - it creates fear and distance. And fear-based cultures don't produce great results.

What to do instead:

• Recognize the difference between firmness and harshness. You can be clear and direct without being harsh. You can hold high standards without creating fear. You can make tough decisions without being cruel.

• Be tough on issues, not on people. When something goes wrong, address the problem directly. But treat people with respect. "This isn't working, and we need to fix it" is different from "You failed."

• Build authority through competence and fairness, not fear. 

• Ask yourself why you feel you need to be tough. Is it because the situation demands it, or because you're insecure about your authority? If it's the latter, work on your confidence instead of compensating with toughness.

• Get feedback on how you're showing up. Ask trusted advisors or team members: "How am I coming across? Am I being too harsh?" You might be surprised by what you hear.

• Remember who you were as a leader before. What made you successful enough to become CEO? Probably not harshness. Don't abandon the leadership qualities that got you here.

• Watch the leaders you respect. The best CEOs I know are firm, clear, and demanding - but they're not harsh. They create cultures of high performance and high support. Study how they do it.

Trap 3: Not Realizing You're Learning a Completely New Job

Here's what first-time CEOs don't realize: The transition to CEO isn't just a promotion. It's not even just a bigger leadership role. It's a fundamentally different job than any you've done before.

As a functional leader - whether you were CFO, COO, or head of a business unit - you succeeded through deep expertise, solving specific problems, and managing execution in your domain. You had a clear scope. You knew what success looked like. You could point to concrete results.

The CEO job is different. Completely different.

Why this is so hard to grasp: From the outside, it doesn't look that different. You're still in leadership meetings. You're still making strategic decisions. You're still managing people. The trappings feel similar.

But the actual work? It's fundamentally changed.

What's actually different:

• Your value isn't in having the answers anymore. As a functional leader, you were often the smartest person in the room about your domain. People came to you because you knew the answer. As CEO, you need to orchestrate people who know more than you do in every functional area. Your job is to ask the right questions, not provide the right answers.

• You're leading through influence, not control. As a functional leader, you controlled your domain. You could dive in, fix things, make decisions that stuck. As CEO, most of what you need to accomplish requires influencing people and systems you don't directly control - the board, external stakeholders, cross-functional dynamics, culture.

• Everything is ambiguous, all the time. Functional leadership has clear metrics. Revenue, costs, product delivery, whatever. CEO leadership is constantly navigating ambiguity - when to change strategy, who to promote, which risks to take, how to position the company. There's rarely a clear "right" answer.

• The timeline is much longer. Functional results are quarterly or monthly. CEO impact plays out over years. The decisions you make today might not show results for 18 months. This requires a completely different mindset.

• You're performing, not just leading. Every interaction matters. Every communication is scrutinized. You're representing the company to multiple audiences constantly. This performance aspect - managing your "CEO persona" - doesn't exist in functional roles.

The trap: You try to do the CEO job using your functional leadership playbook. You dive into functional details because that's where you're comfortable. You try to solve problems yourself instead of enabling others to solve them. You measure your success by functional metrics instead of overall company performance.

What to do instead:

• Accept that you're learning a new craft. You're not bad at being CEO - you're new at it. Give yourself permission to learn. Study what good CEOs actually do with their time.

• Stop trying to be the expert. Your value now is in:

  • Setting direction even without knowing all the details

  • Enabling others to solve problems you don't personally understand

  • Orchestrating across all functions, not excelling in one

  • Making decisions with incomplete information

  • Building the team and culture that can execute

• Notice when you slip into functional mode. Catch yourself. Are you solving this problem because you're the right person to solve it, or because it's comfortable? Are you diving into details because they need your attention, or because you miss doing what you're good at?

• Build CEO-specific skills. Most of these are things you didn't need as a functional leader:

  • Strategic thinking across the entire business

  • Board management and stakeholder relations

  • External representation and communications

  • Enterprise-wide culture shaping

  • CEO-level decision-making under ambiguity

• Get coaching specifically on the CEO role. Not just on leadership in general. The CEO craft is specific. Find someone who can help you develop it.

• Be patient with yourself. It takes most first-time CEOs 12-18 months to really internalize that this is a different job and to adapt their approach. You won't master it immediately. That's normal.

Trap 4: Underestimating Your New Relationship with the Board

The trap: You think your relationship with the board stays roughly the same. You were their trusted executive. Now you're their CEO. Not that different, right?

The reality: Everything changed. The board isn't always your supporter anymore. They're your manager, your evaluator, and the people who will decide when your tenure ends.

When you were a functional leader, the CEO was the buffer between you and the board. Now there's no buffer. You're in the spotlight. And unlike your previous roles, there's no higher authority to appeal to when things go wrong.

Why first-time CEOs may miss this: You've probably had good relationships with board members. Maybe they championed your promotion. But now the dynamic is different. They're friendly, but they're watching. Every board meeting is a performance review.

What to do instead:

• Invest time in individual relationships with each director. Learn their priorities, concerns, communication preferences.

• Never surprise your board with bad news in meetings. Call them beforehand.

• Understand that board management is now a significant part of your job - maybe 20-30% of your time and energy.

• Ask your CEO peers how they manage their boards. Learn from people who've figured this out.

Trap 5: Staying in Your Comfort Zone

What this looks like: You were promoted from CFO, so you spend lots of time on finance. Or you came up through sales, so you're constantly in customer meetings. Or you were the product leader, so you're deep in product decisions.

Why this happens: It's natural. You're excellent at this function. You love it. People respect your expertise there. It feels productive. And frankly, the other parts of the CEO job - the ambiguous, political, strategic parts - may feel less comfortable.

The problem: While you're spending time in your comfort zone, the rest of the company isn't getting the leadership it needs. Your head of sales doesn't need you in customer meetings - they need you to help them think about strategy, build their team, clear obstacles. Meanwhile, the functions you're less familiar with aren't getting enough attention.

What to do instead:

• Track where you spend your time. Look at your calendar from the past month.

• Ask yourself honestly: Am I spending time where the CEO should, or where I'm most comfortable?

• Force yourself to engage deeply with the functions you know least. Schedule regular time with those leaders.

• Remember: you don't need to be the expert. You need to ask good questions and support strong leaders.

(If you would like to read more, I have illustrated this point in a recent article From CFO to CEO on the transition from CFO to CEO).

Trap 6: Thinking You Have More Time Than You Do

The trap: First-time CEOs often think: "I need to spend my first six months learning the business, understanding the organization, building relationships. Then I'll start making real changes."

The reality: You don't have six months. Your first six months define your entire tenure.

Your stakeholders are watching closely from day one. Your employees are deciding whether you're the right leader. Your board is assessing whether they made the right choice. Your customers and competitors are watching for signals about your direction.

What to do instead:

• Have a clear 30-60-90 day plan before you start. Don't figure it out on day one.

• Identify 2-3 quick wins for your first 60 days. Not major transformations - just proof points that you can diagnose problems, make decisions, and deliver results.

• Seriously over-communicate in your first six months. People are making up stories about your plans. Fight this with clarity.

• Balance learning with action. You need both.

Trap 7: Underestimating How Much Your People Are Watching

Here's what many first-time CEOs may not realize: Every single thing you do is being watched and interpreted. You are the boss now. Of course people talk about you behind your back.

That casual comment in the hallway? Someone will tell three other people, and it becomes "the CEO's new priority." That meeting you skipped? People wonder what it means about your commitment to that function. That executive you spent extra time with? Others notice and draw conclusions.

As a functional leader, you had room for imperfection. People understood you were human. As CEO, everything gets amplified.

What to do instead:

• Assume everything you say will be repeated, amplified, and interpreted.

• Be much more careful and deliberate in your communication than you've ever been.

• Pay attention to symbolic actions. Where you spend time, who you meet with, what you celebrate - these send powerful signals.

• Get 360-degree feedback at 90 days to understand how you're actually being perceived. External stakeholder interviews and external feedback might give people the safe space they need to share honest opinions.

Trap 8: Neglecting Your Leadership Brand

What many first-time CEOs don't realize: Your first 90 days as CEO are when people form lasting impressions of who you are as a leader. These impressions are incredibly hard to change later.

Unlike your previous roles, where you had time to build your reputation gradually, as CEO you're being evaluated from day one. Every interaction, every decision, every response shapes how people see you. And because you're new to this role, you're building your CEO leadership brand from scratch - even if you had a strong reputation as a functional leader.

Why this matters more than you think: The leadership brand you establish in your first few months becomes your permanent reputation. People will describe you in shorthand: "She's the strategic one." "He's detail-oriented." "She's accessible." "He's demanding." These labels stick.

And here's the challenge: the brand you think you're building and the brand people actually perceive can be completely different.

The amplification effect: As a functional leader, your actions affected your team and your domain. As CEO, everything gets amplified and interpreted company-wide.

As we have discussed in trap 7, a casual comment in a hallway becomes "the CEO's direction." An offhand decision becomes "the CEO's priority." One frustrated moment becomes "the CEO is angry." You attend one sales meeting, and suddenly "the CEO only cares about sales."

What shapes your leadership brand:

• How you handle your first crisis. Everyone's watching. Do you stay calm or panic? Do you blame or solve? Do you include people or go it alone? This one moment shapes months of perception.

• Who you spend time with. People notice. If you're constantly with your CFO, they conclude finance is what matters. If you're rarely in operations, they assume it's not a priority. Your calendar is a signal.

• How you respond to bad news. The first time someone brings you a problem, your response sets the pattern. React badly, and people stop sharing problems. Handle it well, and you create psychological safety.

• Your consistency. Do you treat people the same way every day, or does your mood swing? Inconsistency creates anxiety. People don't know which version of you they'll get.

• Whether you share credit. When things go well, do you highlight your team's work or take credit? This shapes whether you're seen as a team builder or self-promoter.

• How you handle disagreement. Do you welcome challenge or shut it down? Are you curious about different perspectives or defensive? This determines whether people will tell you the truth.

What to do instead:

• Define your intended leadership brand explicitly. Don't leave this to chance. Ask yourself: How do I want to be described in six months? What three words would I want people to use about my leadership?

• Get 360-degree feedback at 90 days. This is critical. Create a safe way for people to tell you how you're actually showing up. You might be surprised - or even shocked - by the gap between your intent and their perception.

• Consider using an external person to gather this feedback. People are more honest when they're not talking directly to the CEO.

• Be intentional about every interaction. Especially in your first 90 days, treat every meeting, every email, every hallway conversation as a leadership brand moment. Because it is.

• This doesn't mean being inauthentic or "on" all the time. It means being thoughtful about how your natural style is being perceived at this amplified CEO level.

• Model the culture you want to create. Your behavior sets the tone much more than your words. If you want a culture of accountability, hold yourself accountable publicly. If you want collaboration, demonstrate it. If you want transparency, be transparent - even when it's uncomfortable.

• Pay attention to the small signals. How you treat support staff. Whether you're on time for meetings. If you look at your phone when people are talking. Whether you remember details about people's lives. These small things shape your leadership brand as much as the big decisions.

• Adjust when you learn you're off-track. When you get feedback that there's a gap between your intent and others' perceptions, don't get defensive. Acknowledge it and adjust.

• Remember: patterns become permanent. The leadership style you establish in your first months becomes what people expect. It's much harder to change perception later than to build the right one from the start.

If you're distant in your first 90 days, people will see you as distant. If you're collaborative, they'll see you as collaborative. If you're transparent, they'll expect transparency. These early patterns become your reputation.

Trap 9: Not Building Your Advisory Network

The trap: You think asking for help is a sign of weakness. You're the CEO now - you're supposed to have the answers.

The reality: Here's something nobody tells you until you're in the role: being CEO is profoundly lonely. More lonely than you can imagine from the outside.

It's not that you're physically alone - you're in meetings all day, surrounded by people. It's that you can't be fully honest with anyone in your normal orbit:

• You can't be completely vulnerable with your board. They're evaluating you, deciding if they made the right choice, considering when your tenure should end.

• You can't be entirely open with your team. They need to see confidence from you. They're looking for certainty. And you're evaluating them too, which changes the dynamic.

• You can't talk freely with your peers in the company. There's always a political dimension.

• Your spouse, partner or friends care deeply but might not understand the specific challenges you're facing.

This isolation often is one of the biggest surprises for first-time CEOs. You reach the top and discover there's no one to talk to about the weight you're carrying.

I've watched brilliant first-time CEOs struggle not because they lacked capability but because they tried to carry everything alone. The best CEOs all have the same thing: trusted advisors they can be completely honest with. These might be other CEOs, executive coaches, consultants, or former bosses who've become mentors.

Why first-time CEOs often resist this: You want to prove you can handle it yourself. You don't want to appear uncertain. Maybe you think it's expensive or time-consuming. Or you simply don't know who to ask.

What to do instead:

• Set up your advisory support early, ideally before you start. Don't wait until you're drowning.

• Find at least one person with no agenda except your success - someone who isn't on your board, isn't on your team, understands what you are going through and who will be brutally honest with you.

• Use them to reality-test your thinking, not just as a therapist

• Join a CEO peer group if you can. Learning from others in the same position is invaluable.

Trap 10: Making Big People Decisions Too Fast

You've been in the organization for years. You know these people. You know who's good and who isn't. So when you become CEO, you're ready to make changes.

The trap: You move too fast based on incomplete information.

That executive who seemed ineffective might have been dealing with constraints from the previous CEO that you'll now remove. That rising star everyone loves might be politically savvy but operationally weak. That person who never spoke up in meetings might have been ignored by the previous leadership but has brilliant insights.

Why first-time CEOs may fall for this: You've been frustrated for years watching the previous CEO not make obvious changes. Now you have the authority. You want to act decisively. And frankly, making people decisions feels like a clear way to put your stamp on the organization.

What to do instead:

• Give yourself 90 days before making major people decisions unless there's a clear performance crisis.

• Your perspective changes when you're sitting in the CEO chair. Give yourself time to see people from this new vantage point.

• Use formal assessments, especially for roles critical to your strategy.

• When you do make changes, do it decisively and respectfully. Don't drag things out once you're certain.

Trap 11: Neglecting Your Talent Risk

What happens: You're focused on strategy, operations, board relationships. You assume your key people will stay because things are going well.

The reality: Your promotion to CEO immediately creates talent risk. There will be people who wanted the CEO job but didn't get it and are now reassessing their futures. Key leaders are wondering if their roles will change. High performers are getting calls from recruiters who see a new CEO as an opportunity to lure top talent away. And everyone is uncertain about the direction you'll take.

People might already be on the lookout for other opportunities. Your arrival either accelerates this or prevents it.

What to do instead:

• In your first two weeks, map your 15-20 most critical people. Not just your direct reports - include key technical experts, major client relationship owners, culture carriers.

• Be transparent about your plans and your approach. Your people are making up stories to fill the vacuum. Fight this with honesty.

• Have proactive retention conversations. Ask about their concerns, their career goals, what would make them stay.

• For your most critical talent, consider retention agreements, expanded roles, or special projects that signal their importance to you.

Trap 12: Assuming Your Team Is Aligned

You inherit what looks like a functional executive team. They’ve worked together for years. Everyone's professional in meetings. They're polite to each other. Decisions seem to get made. The meetings run smoothly.

Why this assumption is dangerous: What you're seeing isn’t always teamwork. It might be professional courtesy masking dysfunction. And the team might not be a real team, but a collection of individuals who have learned to coexist.

Your inherited executives might look aligned on the surface, but underneath:

• They barely speak to each other outside formal meetings

• They've learned to avoid conflict rather than resolve it

• Some actively dislike each other but hide it well

• Information doesn't flow between functions - everything goes through you

• They've built fiefdoms, not collaboration

• Real decisions happen in sidebar conversations, not in your meetings

Why new CEOs may miss this: You've run teams before. You know what good teamwork looks like. And in meetings, this team seems fine. You have seen much worse. They're not openly hostile. They're not dramatically dysfunctional. They're just... polite.

But polite isn't the same as functional. And what worked for your predecessor - or what they tolerated - isn't necessarily what you need.

What to do instead:

• Test for real collaboration early. Don't just watch how they behave in meetings with you. Watch how they interact when you're not there. Give them a complex problem that requires them to work together and see what happens.

• Have individual conversations. In one-on-ones, ask each executive about the team dynamics. Not "do you all work well together?" but "Tell me about your relationship with [specific peer]. What works? What's difficult?" You'll learn more from these individual conversations than from any team meeting.

• Observe the small moments. How do they interact before and after meetings? Do they ever have lunch together? Do they celebrate each other's wins? Or is it just professional distance?

• Run a team assessment within 60 days. Bring in someone external who can surface real dynamics that won't emerge in normal conversations. You need to know what you're actually working with.

Trap 13: Ignoring Culture While Focusing on Strategy

You're a strategic thinker. You've developed a clear vision for where the company needs to go. You're excited to execute.

The trap: You treat culture as soft, unmeasurable, something you'll address later. Strategy is concrete. Culture feels fuzzy.

But the reality is: Culture determines whether your strategy actually gets executed. A misaligned culture will quietly kill your best plans. You may have designed the right strategy. You may have communicated it clearly. And the organization may quietly ignore it - because the existing culture rewards the opposite behaviors.

What to do instead:

• In your first 60 days, diagnose your actual culture. Not what the values poster says - what behavior actually gets rewarded.

• Identify 2-3 cultural attributes that need to shift for your strategy to work.

• Be specific.

• Use your own decisions to reinforce the culture you want. Who you promote, what you celebrate, how you spend time - these shape culture more than speeches.

• Address culture detractors directly, even if they deliver results. One toxic leader can undermine everything.

Trap 14: Not Managing Your Energy

What first-time CEOs often think: "I need to work incredibly hard. This is the most important job I'll ever have. I'll sacrifice whatever it takes."

The reality: The CEO job is a marathon, not a sprint. If you burn out in your first year, you can't lead effectively.

The CEO role is different from any you've had before. It's not just the hours - it's the weight. You're carrying decisions that affect hundreds or thousands of people. You're navigating complex politics. You're on stage all the time. It's mentally and emotionally exhausting in a way other roles aren't.

What to do instead:

• Establish routines that sustain you: exercise, sleep, family time, whatever recharges you.

• Protect some white space in your calendar for thinking, not just reacting.

• Learn to say no. You'll get pulled in a thousand directions. You can't do everything.

• Watch for warning signs: chronic stress, poor sleep, irritability, loss of perspective. If you see these, adjust before you're in crisis.

The Challenge

Being a first-time CEO is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

Being a first-time CEO is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. You have the opportunity to shape an entire organization. You also have the responsibility for hundreds or thousands of people's livelihoods.

The transition from functional leader to CEO is bigger than most people realize. It's not just a promotion - it's a fundamentally different job.

The transition from functional leader to CEO is bigger than most people realize. It's not just a promotion - it's a fundamentally different job. The good news: the traps are predictable and avoidable.

The best first-time CEOs are humble enough to know what they don't know. They bring their functional expertise but recognize they need to learn the CEO craft. They ask for help. They invest in their own development. They don't pretend they have all the answers.

Your first six months in the CEO role will be among the most consequential of your career.

Your first six months in the CEO role will be among the most consequential of your career. With the right preparation, support structures, and mindset, you can navigate this transition successfully and build a foundation for a strong tenure.

The question isn't whether you have the capability - the board already believes you do. The question is whether you'll give yourself the support and structure to succeed.

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Marion Heil is the founder and managing director of Board+CEO Advisors. She is based in Vienna.

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If you're navigating your first CEO role and want a confidential conversation about your specific situation, reach out. After 20 years of working with executives through transitions, we've learned that the best leaders are the ones who seek input early, not the ones who wait until they're struggling.