Winning a promotion is a great achievement. Your hard work and dedication have been recognized, and you know your company trusts you to take the next step up the career ladder.
However, stepping into a manager role also comes with complications and sensitivities. One of the most difficult to navigate is the change in relationship with your former team members. Once peers and friends, these same people are now your direct reports and look to you for leadership.
If you’re finding this transition challenging, you are not alone. When a group of CFOs was surveyed about the biggest hurdles faced by first-time managers, the second most mentioned issue was supervising friends or former peers.
Like any change, the move from buddy to boss takes a while to settle into and there may be some tricky waters to navigate while everyone gets used to the new normal. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to make the process easier for everyone involved.
1. Acknowledge the Transition
One of the first actions you should take when your promotion is confirmed is to talk to your team about the changes. Even before you take up the role, the way your former peers see you will start to shift, so it is important to acknowledge the change and start to lay the groundwork for becoming their manager as soon as possible.
Ideally, take time to meet each team member one-on-one, so you can gauge how they are feeling about the change and start to establish yourself as a manager instead of a peer. Meeting with each person separately gives you a chance to address any tension or resentment before it takes root.
This is especially important if others went for the same role and have missed out. It might feel awkward to talk about, but it is far better to get everything out in the open as soon as possible. Let them know you value their skills and want to establish a good working relationship with them.
Don’t skip over your friends either. Acknowledge your existing close relationship and ask for their help and support as their manager. Take this opportunity to set some boundaries – although you value their friendship, they need to know that you can’t act the same way as their manager as you did when you were their peer.
2. Expect Relationships to Change
It is hard to see friendships change, especially if you’ve worked side by side for years. Unfortunately, your relationship with your former peers will shift when you’re promoted above them, no matter how dedicated you all are to keeping friendships strong.
It is entirely possible to keep a close and friendly relationship with your team members, even as their manager. Setting boundaries at the start can help with this. Becoming a manager doesn’t mean you can’t be a “friend” anymore. But your new role requires you to act in a more formal capacity as a representative of the organization. Remember that actions or requirements of your new role that that might be seen as “negative” toward your friendship aren’t personal toward your friend. They are about performance.
If you previously bonded over complaints or issues with the organization, this will obviously have to change. Now it’s your job to help create a great place to work. You won’t be able to turn a blind eye to issues or slacking off, even if it is a friend of yours.
Knowing that your existing relationships may need to change helps you get off on the right foot from the start. Instead of trying to hold onto the way things were, you can speak honestly to the people you are close with and enlist their support as you all adjust to the new normal.
This goes for people you don’t like too. Someone you preferred to avoid as a peer is now a direct report that you need to manage effectively. Just like with your friends, acknowledging the previous relationship and setting clear expectations for the new dynamic can do wonders to clear the air and help you all work together.
3. Be Fair
Though it may be tempting to favor your friends, try to stay fair and even-handed with your team once you’re promoted to manager. Your other team members will be watching carefully to see if you show signs of favoritism or bias and will be quick to note unfair treatment.
Equally, try not to go too far the other way and wind up not giving your friends the rewards they’ve earned. Part of being a good manager is staying objective and assessing your team’s performance based on their output and results, not how you feel about them as people.
4. Be Confident, But Not Arrogant
Earning a promotion is a great achievement and you’ll probably be feeling rightly proud of yourself. However, it is important to not let your success go to your head and change your behavior at work.
There’s nothing more off-putting than rubbing a promotion in the faces of former co-workers. Save any boasting about your success for your friends outside work. In the office, concentrate on demonstrating the qualities that won you the promotion in the first place.
As a new manager, you want your team to see that you feel confident in your ability to lead them. However, you also want to find that tricky balance between confidence and arrogance. You’re on a new learning curve in your new role too, so remind yourself you don’t know everything and be open to opportunities for professional growth.
5. Settle in First
One of the benefits of being an internal hire is that you’ve had plenty of time to notice areas for improvement and make plans for how to do things better. You can become the champion of improvements you and your previous peers found necessary. However, the flip side is you can come on too strong, too fast.
It can be tempting to rush in and start on all those changes you’ve been pondering on day one. But resist the urge to shake things up too quickly and don’t try to implement too many changes at once. Both you and your team need time to adjust to the new dynamic. Your team also needs to trust you as a manager before you start making radical changes to how they work.
When you do start to make changes, give your team members a chance to have their say too. Make it a collaborative process and demonstrate that you respect their knowledge and expertise, instead of forcing your own vision on them. Where you disagree, stay respectful and explain your reasoning. Listen to counterarguments, but make it clear the final decision (and responsibility) lies with you.
6. Establish Influence Through Competence
You were promoted for a reason, and it probably has a lot to do with your skills, expertise, and way of working. While becoming a manager adds an extra level to your role, the qualities that made you successful in the first place are still very much needed by your team.
One of the best ways to establish your influence over your former peers is to use those skills and experience in the service of your team. Be generous with your knowledge and help others learn the skills they need to succeed.
While delegating is a necessary management skill, you also want to demonstrate to your former co-workers that you are still prepared to work just as hard as them (if not harder). Being promoted is no excuse to take your foot off the peddle.
You’ll earn the respect and trust of your team members much quicker as a leader who gets stuck in and shares their skills than someone who barks orders or isolates themselves from their reports.
7. Be a Cheerleader for your Team
As an internal hire, you have a big advantage over anyone from outside the organization. You already know your team. Having worked alongside them, you know their strengths as well as their weaknesses.
That knowledge can help you establish yourself as a kind of manager that will always cheerlead for their team. Take the opportunity to acknowledge each team member’s strengths publicly, especially if other managers are present.
If you feel someone is being underutilized in their current role, this is your opportunity to empower them with new responsibilities. Don’t forget to be fair here – lift up team members you aren’t close with when they deserve it, as well as your friends.
Equally, you might have inside knowledge of who is struggling with certain aspects of their role. As a new manager, you can use that information to arrange training for those who need it or to give staff members a little extra support until they feel more comfortable in those areas.
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Being promoted to manager can be a difficult transition to navigate when you suddenly find yourself in charge of your friends and former peers. With time, everyone will settle into the new dynamic, but how you conduct yourself in the first days and weeks can make a big difference to your long-term success as a new manager.
By communicating openly with your new team, demonstrating fairness, and being the kind of manager who inspires trust, you’ll soon find success in your new position. With luck, you’ll keep your friendships too, but be prepared for your relationships to change as you take on this new role – perhaps even for the better.
What’s most important to remember is that if you have the best interests of the organization at heart, you’ll have your friend’s best interests at heart as well. Even if you can’t be the same “friend” you used to be at work, you can be the best “friend” your friend’s (and employee’s) success has ever had. If they are successful, the team will be successful, and you will be fulfilling your role as manager. And your friends will be happy to have you at the helm as their leader!