How do I manage my friends?

Hey Morris, I just got promoted and now I have to manage people who were my peers/friends. How do I do this so that my friendships don’t get awkward?

-Friendly Manager

Dear Friendly Manager,

Congratulations on your promotion! The question you asked is something that inevitably happens in a promising talent’s career. As you go up the ladder, you often have to change peer-friend relations to manager-subordinate relations. At the same time this is happening, you also have to develop relations with new members of the team who don’t know you. According to a recent Gallup poll, 75% of workers who left their jobs did so because of their bosses, not the position itself. Hence, the stakes are high for you, and you don’t want your peer-friends to become unfriendly. If they stay supportive, they can be a source of strength for you and the team. But there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach for this. What you can do to increase your chance of a successful transition is to consider the following: the context, the people, and the company.

Context refers to how things have been with your peer-friends. Specifically, shared routines, successes, failures, gripes, complaints, and embarrassing information you may have on each other. Your shared history can be a strength, but it can also be a weakness. To ensure it’s neutral to positive, you’ll need to address unresolved aspects and feelings, and also any major changes that will happen as a result of your promotion. In particular, changes that perpetuate or create an us vs. management mentality which make you the sellout and no longer a part of ‘us.’ Own the narrative and address potential conflicts proactively; make sure it reflects how you really feel and what you want the new context to be.

People refers to your peer-friends, especially each’s influencing power and competitiveness. You probably already have an idea of who the opinion leaders are and how competitive they are. How does your promotion affect the career development plan they had in mind for themselves? While some will be genuinely happy for you, others may perceive your promotion as a personal setback or defeat. If they’re influential, they may then sway opinions to your detriment, making your promotion about what they didn’t get as opposed to what you earned. The best way to neutralize this type of whining and get to a new normal is to communicate ways in which your promotion can benefit them and do things to make your win a booster for their future wins. Some people need time to adjust to the new reality that they now report to you, so as long as their performance remains at the same level, be patient. However, if performance drops or whining drags on, then you’ll need to take action, which may include managing the peer-friend(s) out of your team and giving notice to the ones who have been negatively impacted by their influence. As the new manager, you don’t have the luxury of accepting poor performance and tolerating whining due to hurt feelings; being overly accommodating sets a bad precedence for both new and existing members on your team.

What about a supportive peer-friend who isn’t meeting performance expectations? Tough as it may be, you’ll still need to have an open conversation with the peer friend and explain why his work isn’t cutting it. It’s not fair to use poor performance examples while he was under a previous manager, but it is fair to focus on what happened since you took over. In your discussion, you’ll need to be specific about the performance improvement plan as well as the resources that you’ll make available to help him, and you’ll need to be direct about the consequences of not meeting performance standards. Do this in a way that’s fair and respectful, but don’t avoid taking action in the hopes that things will get better. Most of the time, they won’t, so don’t let the situation drag on. Poor performance isn’t something that can be ignored.

Company refers to how your employer expects you to perform, and the consequences thereof. Was it a newly created role, or are you replacing an existing manager? What are the stated and hidden objectives? What do success and failure look like? Who can mentor you besides your manager? How long is your grace period? What does the future look like if you do well, or badly? Assess the company’s agenda to fully understand the stated and unstated intentions, as well as consequences on both ends of the spectrum. While replacing someone may provide better visibility than stepping into a newly created role, those expectations will surely evolve along with the business. Hence, it’s important to fully understand what the company’s aspirations are for your team, and to use the grace period to implement changes so that you can pivot the team towards the achievement of those aspirations. Here, peer-friends who are competent, influential, and supportive can be extremely helpful in accelerating the team’s success if they buy into the vision.

On the other hand, there are times when a promotion occurs because a warm body is just needed to do something hidden and difficult, for example, downsizing and laying off your peer-friends. While you’d rather know this before you took the job, some employers keep their real intentions hidden and only expose them at their convenience. If you find this to be the case, what you need to do is to manage their expectations based on what you think could happen. To prevent being the scapegoat from a highly negative event that’s beyond your control and knowledge, manage the team’s expectations steadily and develop everyone’s understanding of the range of things that could happen, both good and bad. Keep in mind, if your company or manager sets you up in this bait-and-switch way, you’re probably not safe there in the long run either.

Finally, as to your concern to make sure things don’t get awkward with your peer-friends as a result of your promotion: whether this happens or not will be an outcome of your context with them and how you begin your new role. If you set up a solid foundation quickly, there won’t be lasting awkwardness. Therefore, I’d stop thinking about that; instead, focus on how to be a great manager for your team every day.

Is there something else on your mind?

Please send it to questions@heymorris.com and I’ll do my best to be helpful in a future post.