“You need to think like a leader.”

What Cassian Andor teaches us about becoming the leader no one feels ready to be

It’s not shouted. It’s not even emphasized. But it lands like a quiet ultimatum.

Luthen looks at Cassian and says, “You need to think like a leader.”

Cassian isn’t ready yet.

But that’s the thing about leadership: readiness rarely appears before responsibility.

At this point in the story, he’s reactive, distrustful, and highly competent. In other words, like many first-time leaders, they are exceptional at surviving on their own terms and are deeply resistant to the vulnerability of leadership demands.

Luthen isn’t asking him to fight harder. He’s asking him to see differently.

He is asking him to stop thinking like an individual contributor and start thinking like someone who shapes the system, not just survives it.

Have you ever been asked the same thing, without anyone ever saying the words?

From Expert to Leader: The Hardest Shift We Don’t Talk About

In leadership development, this shift is known as the Expert-to-Achiever transition- the moment you move from being valued for your output to your influence.

It sounds simple. It isn’t.

The expert mindset says: I do the work. The leader's mindset says: I create the conditions for work to happen through people.

Cassian resists this shift. Like many new leaders, he wants to contribute by doing more himself. But over time, through prison, loss, and reflection, he learns that leadership is less about action and more about alignment.

It’s not Luthen, but Ferrix - the people, the protest, the purpose - that completes the transformation. Cassian finally sees what courage, clarity, and shared vision can spark. That’s when he stops hiding and starts leading- not with orders, but with presence.

What This Teaches Us About Real-World Leadership

We see Cassian's arc repeatedly play out in our work with new leaders, especially those promoted from technical or expert roles.

At first, they:

• Avoid visibility, hoping competence is enough 

• Hesitate to delegate, fearing quality will suffer 

• Stay in the weeds, because they haven’t yet redefined what “value” means

They haven’t internalized the truth that what made them successful can’t sustain their success as leaders.

But once they start to reframe leadership as influence, not control, things shift:

• Delegation becomes a trust exercise, not a risk 

• Feedback becomes a development tool, not a confrontation 

• Strategy becomes something they shape, not something they wait for

Like Marcus, a brilliant technical expert I coached, who froze the first time he had to “just listen” instead of jumping in with solutions. His breakthrough? Realizing the team needed space, not answers.

In the GoodeStart Onboarding Program, we build for this exact transformation, not by handing people a checklist, but by guiding them through the mindset shifts that leadership demands. We draw on their CliftonStrengths to activate natural influence, use the EQ-i 2.0 to deepen emotional intelligence, and combine structured reflection with real-time coaching to close the gap between authority and actual impact.

Leadership Doesn’t Begin with Clarity- It Begins with Discomfort

Cassian’s transformation isn’t linear, and neither is yours. And that’s not a flaw - it’s the work.

Most leadership doesn’t look like a heroic speech. It looks like sitting in the discomfort of being seen but not yet certain, holding space for conflict, choosing progress over popularity, saying the thing that might be unpopular, and holding the line when it would be easier to do the work yourself.

Leadership begins long before you feel like a leader.

It starts when you stop asking “What do I need to get done?” And start asking, “What does the team need from me to move forward?”

Weekly Reflection

What part of your day still runs on expertise, when it’s your leadership that your team truly needs?

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