Managing Former Peers: The Leadership Challenge Nobody Talks About

Relationship challenges are often at the heart of leadership transitions. Recent research shows that 52% of unsuccessful leadership transitions involve a failure to build effective teamwork with staff and peers.

Successfully managing former peers is therefore not simply a personal leadership challenge as it can have a direct impact on team performance, engagement and long-term leadership credibility. 

This therefore requires an intentional mindset shift. Understanding why problems arise and learning to spot the warning signs can help smooth the transition and set everyone up for success.

The challenging dynamics of managing former peers

Leadership transitions involving former peers can be deceptively difficult. Even highly experienced leaders can find that relationships, expectations, and perceptions of authority don't automatically reset when they assume a more senior role. What worked as a peer may no longer be appropriate as a leader.

When handled poorly, these transitions can undermine team performance and engagement. When handled well, they can strengthen trust, accelerate collaboration, and position both the leader and the team for long-term success.

Given the significant shift in your relationship with your former peers, your interactions with them must also change:

• You need to hold them accountable for meeting their job objectives and enforce the consequences if they don’t.
• You need to deliver candid feedback about their job performance.
• There will be confidential information you can’t share with them.
• You need to work with everyone objectively, putting aside friendships, alliances, or knowledge of their personal situations.

The circumstances around your promotion can add further obstacles. If several of your peers also raised their hand for the job, they may resent that they weren’t selected. Or if you’re taking over for a manager who damaged morale, you’ll need to win over a disgruntled team.

Recognising the transition red flags

To prevent the transition from derailing team performance, watch for these warning signs:

• Your team is openly pushing back on everything from simple tasks to more substantive changes.
• You’re experiencing passive resistance, ranging from body language that conveys disengagement, to doing the bare minimum to stay employed, to not doing the assigned work at all.
• Performance and productivity are dropping off.
• HR is receiving complaints that you’re playing favourites or bending the rules for certain employees.
• You’re witnessing more conflict, even among people who once got along well.
• Your manager has noted you’re neglecting your new job responsibilities (which is likely because you’re reverting to the comfort of doing your old job tasks).

Best practices for a smooth transition

While waiting and hoping the situation will change is a natural inclination, it isn’t effective. 

Proven best practices like these can help.

Acknowledge the issue

While it may feel uncomfortable, having a frank conversation with your team about the change in your relationship dynamics can be very effective. Ask them to take an active role in mapping out a “new normal” for working together, both at the team level and individually. If one of your team members was a close runner-up for the position, have a private conversation to acknowledge the situation and offer to help them to advance their skills and capabilities so they’re ready for the next opportunity.

Tap your new peer group

Over time you’ll form relationships with a new peer group – the coworkers who have similar roles as you, in different operating groups or divisions. Identify specific individuals you feel you can trust and seek their advice on making the same transition you’re now undertaking. What worked for them when they first began managing their former peers? What do they wish they had done differently?

Get to know your leadership style

Consider taking an assessment to understand your leadership profile, including your strengths and areas for improvement. The more self-awareness you have about the skills and attributes it takes to manage people, the better you can adapt your approach.

Find a mentor or a coach

Mentors, executive coaches and team coaches can provide valuable perspective, help leaders navigate difficult conversations and support teams as they establish new ways of working.

Consider team coaching

Talk to your manager about bringing in a team coach to help the group operate effectively as a cohesive unit within the context of a new relationship. By collaborating as a group to establish new norms and expectations for working together, you’ll gain a much stronger mandate for change.  

Managing former peers is one of the most challenging leadership transitions because the role changes overnight, whereas relationships, perceptions and expectations rarely do. The most successful leaders are those who proactively establish new expectations, communicate openly, maintain objectivity to turn a potentially difficult transition into an opportunity to strengthen performance and positions their teams for long-term success. 

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