In this introductory episode of Season 2, Christophe Bodin launches the “Irreverent, Bold, Unfiltered” leadership podcast and outlines the framework for the series: six sequential management passages that map a career from individual contributor to enterprise‑level leader. He cites the early‑2000s book The Leadership Pipeline as his primary inspiration and recommends it for deeper study. Bodin warns listeners against pursuing management for superficial reasons such as status or salary, emphasizing that true managers must have a genuine passion for leading people. He suggests practical self‑testing methods—team‑lead roles, cross‑functional project leadership, or entrepreneurship—to gauge suitability before committing to a management path. The core of the episode is a concise description of each of the six passages, highlighting the new responsibilities, skill shifts, and mindset changes required at each stage (planning work, hiring/firing, coaching; scaling span of control and orchestration; cross‑functional strategic thinking; leading a function outside one’s expertise and building culture; capital allocation and portfolio management; and finally, enterprise‑wide group leadership). Bodin shares personal experience across all passages except the enterprise level, provides high‑profile examples (Andy Jassy, Bernard Arnault, Koji Masa) to illustrate the top tiers, and invites the audience to suggest which passage they want to explore next. The episode ends with a call to action for listeners to engage and a teaser for the next deep‑dive on the individual‑contributor‑to‑manager transition.
Chapters
Good morning, leaders. Wake up, smell the coffee. It's 6:30 in the morning somewhere in the world. Welcome to the Irreverent, Bold, Unfiltered podcast and videocast about leadership. You want to move your career to the next level? Look nowhere else. You found the right place. Let's get going, shall we? All right, all right, all right. Good morning, everybody. So, as I said in the on LinkedIn, you know, let's explore those passages with management. And as I was about to enter season 2, episode 1 on the first passage, I got a lot of pings saying, hey, you're talking about those 6 passages and asking for people potentially to come and discuss with you those topics. What are the passages? And I realized that, yeah, maybe I should start here before we embark upon each and any single passage. How— what are they, right? What do I mean by those 6 passages? So, that's what we're going to talk about today. My inspiration. And I said inspiration because the book is about roughly something else. But my inspiration comes from that book here. The Leadership Pipeline was written in early 2000s. So, 20-odd-something years ago. I used that book many times along my career, how to build a leadership-powered company. Not Not in the context of exactly what the book is written for and about, which is how you build the pipeline and how you make sure that you have enough in each of any single passages, but more around what does it take to make it more successful at each and any single of them. So that's my inspiration. I highly recommend that book for all the other topics that the book is talking about, but that's where I got my inspiration. And also the 6 passages. But before we go there, so, you know, chapter 1 is going to be about that big question that I'm about to bring on the forefront. That's going to be chapter 1. Chapter 2 is going to be about the 6 passages and a very short summary of each and every single passage that you can better understand what they are, maybe go straight to the passage that you'd like to learn about. And also, if there is a passage that really is exciting to you, then ping me fast because I'm going to record very soon. Ping me fast on which one you want to do with me potentially. Okay. 6 passages. But before we go there, why embarking in a management career? It's something I have to be very honest with all of you here. It's something that always puzzles me is that people say, hey, I want to be a manager. And more often than ever, it's for the wrong reason, is that people want to be manager because of the perceived social elevation, because of the potential financial rewards. And that's wrong. You have to become a manager for the right reason. And becoming a manager requires a passion and an ability to lead and manage. And the difference between managing and leading, I send you to one of the first podcasts I did around that. It's really a cool one that I strongly encourage you to listen to or re-listen to in the context of what we're going to talk about. But it's not for everybody. Please don't embark upon a management career because you're going to make more money. First, in most cases, if you're not good at it, you're not going to make money, more money than staying an individual contributor. Believe me, especially if you're in the sales function, a lot of sales account execs are making a lot more than managers, right? And if you're doing manage— if you, if, if you're choosing the management career for the wrong reason, it's going to be very painful and you're not going to make the money, right? So I strongly encourage everybody to think about that before they say, hey, I want to be a manager, which seems to be like what everybody wants to do at some point. Again, most of the time for the wrong reason. And think about, okay, what does it take? And nothing is at school or in college prepares you to become a manager, even when there is management course. That's BS, because the only thing that prepares you and that confronts you to understand whether or not you could be a good manager and a good leader is by trying, right? And you don't try at school. So try becoming a team leader if you already started your career to see if you really enjoy leading people. Try to be the project manager for a cross-functional project to see if you can lead people from different organizations. Try to be an entrepreneur when you're in college, sorority, fraternity if you're in the US, or enterprise, small enterprise, college enterprise as we call them in Europe. If you can, you test yourself. And if you don't like it, that's okay. That's okay. That's okay not to be a manager. Trust me, there is nothing worse. And I've seen so many people in management roles that have nothing to do in management roles. And it's going to be painful for 35 years and you're not going to be successful. You're not going to make money. But if you like it, if you want it, if you think you can lead people and that you have some proof that you can do it successfully, then please do so. And then you're going to be having all those 6 passages. Individual contributor to manager, passage number 1. Manager to managing manager. Right? Each passage builds from the previous one. So, individual contributor to manager, manager to managing manager, managing manager to function manager, and we'll talk about what it means, functional manager to business manager, business manager to group manager, and group manager to enterprise manager. These are the 6 passages. Hopefully, that part 1 was useful. Now, we're going to explore Each of the passages very, very briefly, right? Because then we're going to do an episode on each and any single of them. So, first one, individual contributor to team manager. Honestly, with another one, it's one of the hardest passages, that passage of becoming a manager/leader when you were an individual contributor. Why? Of course, there is the obvious, right? It's like, oh, well, now I need to lead potentially the team that I was belonging to. It's not because I'm an expert. In doing, that I'm an expert in managing. Okay, fine. We've all heard about that, and we'll talk about that in the next episode. But it's also because it's the first time that you're going to have to do essentially 3 things that you haven't done necessarily up to that point. Number 1 is planning work. You have to plan work for the team, for the team, not for you, for the team. Then number 2, and think about that one too, very, very carefully. Now you're responsible for hiring and firing. It's not easy. And then you have that responsibility of motivating and coaching people. So it sounds kind of exciting, but it's 3 very complex tasks, as well as things that you haven't been trained necessarily for. And we'll talk about that in the next episode. And that maybe you don't like it. And believe me, and this is where people are sometimes not successful in becoming a manager, is that they don't understand or capture that those new tasks, they are valuable time. So yeah, it is valuable, but you have to value something that is not producing something right away. If you used to be a developer, a coding person, or an accountant, planning work, hiring and firing, and motivating and coaching does not produce. result at the moment you're doing it. That's a big difference. So, IC to manager, we'll talk about that and how you have to transform yourself from your success being your success to your success being the team success. All right, managing manager. We'll discuss that in details in episode 2. Around that passage, it's no more or very little operational work anymore, right? So, you really have to like leading and managing because this is the only thing that you're going to do, right? And you're moving from, if you take a span of control, usually around 7 people, you're moving to managing 7 people as a manager of individual contributors to managing 7 teams of 7, 49, right? And that factorial and exponential number is going to go up, right, because each passage takes from the previous passage, but you're moving from managing a team of 7 to managing 50, usually, right? No more ops work. Now your work is about communication skills because you have to penetrate multiple levels. It's about orchestration. You're not managing a team, you're managing multiple teams. So you have to orchestrate. Everything is still here, right? Firing, hiring, motivating, coaching, planning work. And then now you had, as I said, communication skills of managing multiple levels, orchestration, as well as picking up the next leaders, right? That's the new things as well. So, we'll talk about that managing manager, level 2 manager, as it's called in many organizations and corporations. That's episode 2. Functional manager, a lot tougher than it seems, a lot tougher than it seems. It's so— why? Because it's all about leadership maturity. It's the passage where you stop thinking about what's in front of you. If you're a sales manager, for instance, it's where you stop thinking about just making your number, just quote unquote, because it's not easy, but just making the numbers, but thinking about long-term and trade-off that you're going to make between this and that, between Asia-Pac and Europe, between Western US and Eastern US, right? Between that team and this team. And then this is also where you're going to start learning and appreciating not only working with other functions, which you kind of did in the previous passage, but in that passage, this is how you become successful or not, your ability to be cross-functional. That's the functional manager passage, right? Short-term versus long-term, working with others that you have no control whatsoever. Okay. The next passage that we'll talk about is functional manager to business manager. And arguably, this is the first passage where you could be a CEO as well. A lot of CEOs are actually business managers, especially in startups, smaller companies. So, I would argue that the vast majority of chief executive officers are business managers. Business manager is the most satisfying Passage and the most challenging. Like, the first most challenging is IC to manager versus the second one, or equally challenging. Why? Because you're responsible for a function you are not an expert on. Think about that thing. You're responsible for something that you're not an expert on, that you've never done. You heard about it, you work with them, but you've never done it, and now you're responsible for it, right? So you have to learn that skills of leading an organization and people who know a lot more than you do on their responsibility, on their function, because they're a functional manager, right? Communication is key at that level. This is where also you start thinking and working on culture and values and how you bring that together, because this is the glue between functions. And you work a lot on team chemistry. And remember, everything we said before still applies. It's heading up, right? It's incremental. And then you start really working on bench work, right? On how you solidify and build your bench work. It's after IC to manager. It's the step that most people fail. Yeah. on because they don't understand that they have to acquire those skills. They don't understand that they need help. They don't understand that it's different. They stay functional manager and they're in a business manager slash CEO position and they fail, right? So we'll talk about that and how to be successful at that stage. Then you have the group manager. You are managing multiple businesses. Why is it complicated to become a group manager? Because you have to learn something, which is valuing success of over people business. You probably come from one of the business and you were leading that business. You were the CEO of that business, whoever or not you were a CEO or not, you were the CEO of that business, right? And now you have to value that actually your success can be dependent on the business you used to have to be not successful and another business being more successful. Think about it. It's not as easy as it May sound, it's actually very, very complicated from an emotional standpoint. But it's also where you have to learn new skills about capital allocation. Now, you—it's not like you say, "Hey, you know, I'm gonna have a little bit more people here and there," like you did when you were a business manager. No, now it's cutting business, acquiring business, starting new business, allocating capital, making decisions that impacts. Hundreds, if not thousands of people's life every day, right? And this is where you start to learn something very important, which is the portfolio management, how you manage a portfolio. A great passage, some places where people also are failing, but if you're a good business manager, then you learn also something is that you ask for help when you need it. And you— I don't know any group manager who don't have a coach, basically. Last one is becoming an enterprise manager. So multiple group. There's not a lot of people. So basically, you can be a CEO as a business manager, you can be a CEO as a group manager, and you can be, of course, you are a CEO if you're at the enterprise manager level, right? It all depends on the size of the company that you're leading, but you can be CEO in those 3 stages. This one is the most complex one is that you're managing multiple groups. If you have A bit of difficulties in getting your head around what it means. It's what Andy Jassy is as the CEO of Amazon, but in the U.S., right? And all this usually they're multinational company, but I'm taking an example that people can relate to in the U.S. Andy Jassy for Amazon. Bernard Arnault at LVMH, Louis Vuitton, right? And Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy is an enterprise manager, and that's the example that. I can think about in Europe. And in Asia-Pac, I'm going to take a Japanese company, Koji Masa. If you're not familiar with him, he is the CEO and chairman of Hitachi. And Hitachi is multiple groups holding, right? So this is a very small number of people compared to the rest of the workforce. The place, if you— I'll talk about I haven't been an enterprise manager. I've been a group manager. I've been a business manager. I've been a functional manager, but I haven't been an enterprise manager. So we will talk about that based on others' experience. So that's the 6 passages. I will bring my own experience. There are passages that I have a lot of experience on and passages that I have just a little experience with. But outside of enterprise manager, I touched everything. And also I read a lot, a lot, a lot about it. Yeah. Again, that was just to outline what those passages are that you can start getting your head around, understanding which one you like, which one you're at, which one you'd like to hear and learn about, because we're going to do one episode for each. So, there are 6 episodes in front of us. So, that's going to be season 2 of 7 episodes in total, including that one, about how you go through all this management layer. If you so choose to embark upon a management career. I hope it clarifies. And again, calling on you, if there is a passage that you'd like to be sitting with me in order to talk about, you're more than welcome to ping me. We'll start recording, I would say, in the week after listening to It was great talking to you. It was shorter than usual, just an intro. I can't wait to talk about the first passage in the next episode, how you move from being an individual contributor to being a manager. Bye, everybody, and knock it out of the park, okay? Bye.
