Congratulations on snagging that promotion that you’ve been working for the past few months or years to get! It’s normal if you have a small voice in the back of your head that’s asking you how you’re supposed to behave at the office with the people that you used to spend time in the break room with discussing the latest workplace happenings. Can you even do that anymore? Should you do that anymore? How do you handle the transition from being friends with your co-workers to being their manager?
1.There’s usually at least one person on the team who will struggle with your promotion
Why? Because it’s change. And people have a tough time with change. Realistically, it’s likely that your relationship with people will have to change too. You previously may not have had much control over what projects your team worked on or who got to take the lead when it really mattered. But with your promotion, you’re one step closer to the decision makers, if not a decision maker yourself, and may now become a topic of your team’s conversations. They should be professional about how they treat you based on your new role and responsibilities. Your team also shouldn’t expect to receive special treatment or think you’ll opt out of giving criticism because you’ve been friendly previously.
If you’re getting the cold shoulder, or being left out of actual work related conversations, consider ignoring it at first to see if it stops. However, if it doesn’t, you’ll need to have an open conversation about your new role and what you need to get from your team.
One way to approach this with the team, or one on one is: “I wanted to get us all together today because it’s really important to me that we have a good working relationship and that the team is successful. I feel like part of my job is to make sure that the right person is working on the right thing, and I need to see that you support me to get that accomplished. I feel like things are running off course lately because there are conversations that I haven’t been a part of and decisions being made without consulting me. I know it’s a change to have me running the day to day, but you all are really important to me, and I need to ask for more support from you. What are your thoughts?”
2.Ask for Feedback
As a follow up to the open conversation where you address what’s not going well, and/ or ask for more support, ask for feedback. This is more appropriate for a one-on-one conversation. The goal of getting feedback and asking how each member of your team is feeling is not to make you both feel like you’re leading a therapy session, rather building the foundation of a different kind of relationship with open communication. A good, honest question you can kick off the conversation with is: “I know there’s been a lot of transition with me moving into this role. What can I do, or avoid doing that would make it easier to work with me?”
3.Resist your urge to take it all very personally
You may hear feedback that isn’t related to you, or something that hits way too close to home. Your initial reaction will likely be to judge the person saying it to you and question their motives or what they want out of the conversation. However, you’re going to have to figure out how to be humble and confident enough to address concerns without getting defensive. After you hear feedback that is troubling, take a step back and figure out what to do with it. Is this team member really upset about not getting the promotion? Is this person just looking to vent? Or did they give you marching orders on what you need to do better? Whatever the outcome, another part of being in this role likely means you’ll need to seek out a new person in your life to have conversations with about what you’re struggling with as a new manager or as someone who now has to manage their friends.
4.Focus on the good stuff
What are the people on your team doing well? Take notice. Give praise often—publicly and in a meaningful way. The more specific you can be about what’s going well, the better.
Your team is really happy that you got the promotion, they just might have a not-so-encouraging way of showing it. Having a conversation with your team or the members of the team that seem to be having the most difficult time with your promotion might not feel like the easiest thing to do, but ignoring what’s going on will only bring on the potential for other behavioral issues to take root that could tear at the seams of the team you’re trying to build. Congratulations on your promotion! You can do this!