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One of the biggest challenges in any career comes most powerfully to those who have done really well as a manager: the challenge comes when they make the switch from management to a leadership role.

Why is this so difficult? Simply this: everything that mattered most when you were a manager - turning up for every meeting full of energy, keeping people focused on the immediate problem, giving direction, sticking to the plan and so on - is now going to be the problem.

As a leader, you aren't being paid for these things; quite the opposite. Now you need to know where your team or function should be going, now you need to see the bigger picture and not just the immediate priorities, now you need to influence because you cannot exercise simple line authority, and so on. Many people never successfully make the switch; if they don't completely crash and burn, they limp along as a 'might-have-been'.

Birkman.me can help you make the switch. None of these things are set in stone; although organisations often try to 'pick winners', with high-potential programmes and the such-like, the truth is that most people can lead - provided they get the personal insight required, and have the willingness to do the hard work required. Birkman.me will help you identify the gaps in your own perceptions of yourself and others - and, most importantly - find the levers that will enable you to make the necessary behavioural and perceptual changes.

And this is going to matter, more than you may realise. Yes, being a visibly better leader is good for your career; but becoming a leader whom others trust and with whom they feel safe, is the key to releasing the talents, and discretionary effort, of those you you lead. A leader who genuinely empowers and enables those they lead is.. well, really a leader!