Ever notice how the person who built the spaceship rarely gets picked to captain it? There’s a fascinating phenomenon in professional environments where technical virtuosos—the ones who can write flawless code, design revolutionary systems, or fix any IT problem—somehow transform into bewildered managers when handed their first team. It’s like watching a chess grandmaster suddenly forced to play poker: same game room, entirely different rules. When Expertise Becomes the Enemy The Peter Principle suggests we rise to our level of incompetence, but for technical experts, the transition to leadership often feels more like teleporting to an alien planet. Their technical brilliance—the very quality that earned