Learning to Let Go as a Newer Customer Success Leader

Folks who are successful in CS tend to be relationship-oriented and hold themselves personally accountable to own outcomes regardless of their level of authority. This style is incredibly useful as an individual contributor and earns long-term customer trust. These highly invested, emotionally intelligent people are often promoted quickly, and suddenly find that they need to let go of some of the very habits that made them amazing in their previous roles. When you lead a CS team, staying too deeply hands-on can both undermine your team and overwhelm you.

As a new CS manager, letting go of what feels like your superpower can be tougher than you expected. It's pretty straightforward to give your team space to deliver on, say, QBR prep, internal coordination, and reporting. But when risk signals arise in one of your team members’ accounts, it can be wildly tempting to jump in, sometimes even before your direct report has had a real chance to work through it. While this feels like protecting the customer, it's destabilizing to your team and conveys a lack of trust.

That impulse isn't really about the customer, nor is it necessarily about how much you trust your team. The customer relationship work was validating, made use of your people-reading ability and highlighted your trustworthiness. When you hand it to someone else you have to watch them manage situations differently and at first maybe less smoothly than you would. This is hard, deeply personal stuff. It's an identity issue more than a management problem, but it can be solved with conscious investment in being self aware. The gratification that used to come from owning the customer outcome doesn't disappear, it just starts showing up in your team's wins.

Managers who make this transition well don't stop caring about customers; they get comfortable with the idea that their fingerprints don't need to be on the work. When you feel the urge to jump in on something your team is handling, ask yourself whether they can get there on their own, whether they need a nudge in the right direction, or whether there's something in their way that only you can remove. Most of the time, you’ll find that they've got it.

(Photo: my view as I did my writing in the sunshine during a little weekend Puget Sound escape)