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Managing former peers after promotion is one of the most disorienting challenges new managers face. One day you're venting in the parking lot, the next day those same people report to you. The relationship hasn't just shifted; it has fundamentally changed, and most advice treats it like a tactics problem when it is really something much deeper.

In this episode, I walk you through why the peer-to-boss transition is actually an identity shift first, and a skills challenge second. Until you do the identity work, no script or technique will hold. I share the four-step Peer-to-Boss Reset framework I use in leadership workshops, and each step is built around what actually moves the needle when you're navigating this very specific kind of transition.

We cover how to mourn the old relationship without making it dramatic, how to have the explicit conversation about what changes now that you're the manager, how to build authority through your behavior rather than your title, and how to redefine loyalty so you're protecting the whole team instead of your former favorites.

I also talk about something most people skip entirely: your new peer group. You now have a set of peers at the management level, and building those relationships is part of the identity work too.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

I just got promoted, and now I'm managing my former peers-the same people that I used to complain to, grab lunch with, and vent about my old boss with, yeah, they now all report to me. How am I going to make this transition without destroying every relationship that I have spent years building? This question comes up constantly in management workshops on leadership and leadership communication that I teach, and it starts as like a side question that somebody kind of quietly asks, but then it becomes the question, the pinnacle that the ones who have just gone through it or are currently going through it want to know more about, because almost everyone who gets promoted internally faces this moment when suddenly the people that they used to cavort with, maybe go to the bar with, or at least complain in the parking lot with, are now their own staff, and you just can't can't you just can't do it the same way that you did it before. Now most advice treats this like a tactics problem.

Do this. Say this thing. Try this technique. But what I've seen, and what I want to talk through today, is that this is actually an identity shift that you're going through.

That's right. It's an identity shift, and until you solve the identity piece, no tactics will put a dent in it. No tactics will get you any further along in the process. So today we're going to dive into that identity shift, and then don't you worry, there will be some tactical things that you can do.

But we're going to explore the identity side of this first because that is what's going to set you in the right direction. Now the visible problem here is that the relationship feels awkward, and maybe it's the relationship with all of the people that you now manage, or maybe it's just one or two that you were the closest with when you were peers. Along with that, your authority over them feels shaky because you haven't been their boss before, and the rules feel like they have just completely shifted and changed right from underneath you. Okay, but the real problem is an identity one, as I mentioned.

So you now hold two identities at the same time: peer and boss, and they're in direct conflict with one another, especially if you were a close peer and a close work friend, so what nobody tends to tell you when you're making this transition is that your team needs clarity from you. When you're ambiguous about your own role and your relationship with the folks on your team, well, they fill the gap with their own assumptions, and most of the time, that goes badly, and it goes in your disfavor. Now, the truth is that trying to stay one of the team is probably the most least loyal and the most least effective thing that you can do to the people that you now lead. They need a manager.

They need a leader. They need somebody who is going to step up to bat for them, not a peer who happens to sign their performance reviews. Now that may feel counterintuitive at first, but this is the identity work that I'm talking about, and this is the work that, when you do it, is going to be best for your team. Now that identity work involves some reflection, and it involves some growth, and it involves some rethinking who your peer group is now.

Now let's go back to the folks that you used to be peers with. This transition, this identity shift, it is a loss, and it's worth naming that, especially if you were really close, because a lot of folks have their work friend who became their real friend who now is maybe one of their best friends, so there is a sense of real loss. And the first part of the identity shift is to honor that loss. And skipping that step is where most people get stuck or go wrong.

There's a real history with folks. I mean, again, it started off as your coworker, and then they became your work friend, and then they became your real friend, and maybe you're even real friends outside of work. And that is a really challenging place to be in. So first of all, you have to just honor that, and to a certain extent, mourn the loss of that relationship.

Now, it doesn't mean that you can't be friends with them outside of work. What it does mean is that you have to draw some different boundaries, and we'll continue to talk about that as we go along. When you think about the loss of that close relationship with your work friends, I want you to also remember that as part of this identity work, you're growing into this new role, and you now have a new set of peers. And again, as your identity shifts and changes, you need to uplevel to start to form the relationships with the new set of managers who are at the same level that you're at now.

They may have been doing it for years, maybe decades even, and maybe you feel like you know, like you don't know them. You're the new kid on the block, and that's okay. Now some of them will really embrace you, and they will, you know, show you the ropes, so to speak. And others might be a little bit more cold, and they might take more warming up to establish those relationships with.

Remember that that's not about you. Okay, if I need to repeat that, that's not about you. As you start to form those new relationships with your new set of peers. Now that you have been promoted, you need to think about what was it like when you were a new employee.

I'm sure there were some folks who opened you with welcome arms and embraced you and showed you all the ropes and and helped you prevent from you know making certain mistakes. And then there were others who maybe gave you the cold shoulder. Those others who gave you the cold shoulder maybe eventually became close friends, so just be patient as you develop these relationships with your new peers. There's no need to rush it, but just remember that they are your peer group now.

And again, as you start to think about that identity shift, it is a bit like going from being a caterpillar to being a butterfly. At some point, when you're in that chrysalis, you know those first couple of weeks or maybe even months of being in that new management role. If we were to cut you open, you know, and you were going from being the caterpillar to the butterfly, it would just be cellular goo. And it's okay if you feel like, and by all means, do not cut a chrysalis open to see what it looks like.

Just trust me on this. I've heard about it from scientists. Okay, there's cellular goo in there, and it's nothing that looks like half butterfly, half caterpillar. Okay, but just remember that that's where your identity is.

Your identity will be melted down to cellular goo, and it's going to take some real work on your part to do the heavy lifting to move from being a caterpillar through that cellular goo to emerge as the butterfly to emerge as the new version of yourself and embrace that new identity of you as manager. Or you may have gone from a certain level of management to now a senior, more senior level of management. Again, remembering that these folks who used to be your boss and your boss's peers are now your peers. That can really take some doing.

It can take some heavy lifting. And I want you to spend the time reflecting. Spend the time immersing yourself in the identity work because when you get to the other side of the identity work, then the tactical pieces are all going to play well together and fit nicely together. So, I want to give you the peer to boss reset.

So we're going to do this in four steps, and I've already been hinting at several of the steps as I've been teeing this up. Okay, so step one is you are going to mourn the old relationship, so it changed. That's real, and it's okay to feel that. You cannot manage this transition well until you have privately acknowledged the loss.

Now, if you have a work BFF, like this person is so close with you at work and outside of work, then it's going to merit a slightly different approach. You need to do some mourning with that person as well, and draft some new boundaries around what you talk about at work, what you talk about about work when you're not at work, and how the relationship is shifting and changing. Okay, now overall, your relationships are not going to disappear, but they're going to evolve. Even that one with your work BFF, who you are super tight with, and that evolution needs to start with you.

You're not going to wait for them to approach it you about it. You need to be the one to initiate that conversation not only with your work BFF that you're super tight with, but with the rest of your staff as well. And if you skip this step, you will unconsciously try to protect the old version of the relationship at the expense of your effectiveness. That's right, at the expense of your effectiveness.

That is what's on the line if you don't actively address that the relationship has changed, if you just try to float along, either that it hasn't changed or that it changed, but it's just sort of a given, and you're not going to talk about it, then you're definitely setting yourself up for some failure. Okay, so what mourning actually looks like, and I don't mean to be all dramatic about it. I just want you to be honest about it, and I want to be honest with you about it, because what that can look like again is going to differ based on the relationship that you have with the person. So again, if it's you used to go to happy hour with the team, you know, on a regular basis.

Well, now you're not going to go to happy hour with the team on a regular basis. In fact, I'd recommend that you don't go to the happy hour with the team for quite a while. And then, if you do resume going to happy hour with the team or lunch, whatever it may be, I want you to just do it once in a while, because the nature of what gets talked about when the boss is present is different, and you don't want to deprive your staff of that. Now, it's easy, I know, to jump to the conclusion that they're trash talking you.

I want you to assume that they have positive intent about whatever it is they're talking about. There will be some complaining and cavorting about whatever's happening at work. I mean, that's just the nature of peer relationships. But you're not part of that anymore.

You have a new circle of peers, and again, you want to start establishing the relationships with them because then you will have your own group to complain and cavort with, and you know, celebrate the wins as well. I know it's not always negative, but somehow we do tend to bond over negativity. But again, that's not your space anymore. What your former peers are doing together after work or when they go to lunch together is none of your business.

Sometimes it probably will be about you, especially early on. They will be sizing you up, and what's this going to be like with this person as our new manager? So again, the more integrity that you have around your new role, the more favorably they're going to look upon you and speak about you. Okay, step two is to have the what changes as a result of this conversation, so again, you're going to have a an explicit conversation about now that I'm your manager, these you know these following things will change.

So don't let your team guess. They're already talking about it. They're already sizing you up. That this conversation needs to be direct.

It needs to be brief, and you need to initiate it. So, what you want to name in this conversation is what the working relationship looks like now, how decisions will be made, what you need from them, and you know it's okay to admit to them that there's part of you that's a little sad about the nature of the relationship changing. Now, here's what not to say: Don't say, "Oh, nothing will really change. We're still friends.

Don't worry. Don't say those things. Those types of statements completely undermine your authority, and it leaves your team guessing about whether or not you're going to be able to go to bat for them, everybody on a team wants a manager who will ask the tough questions on their behalf, who will fight for resources on their behalf. And if you're just like one of the gang, you're not going to come across as somebody who has that authority or the confidence to execute on that authority.

Now, you don't have to have all the answers, but you do have to be honest about where you stand as you're still figuring it out. Now, as you think about having this conversation, I want to especially note that this is for one-on-one conversations first, and the reason it's for one-on-one conversations first, as opposed to a team meeting, is that each different relationship that you have with your former peers is going to be a different type of relationship, a different degree of closeness. So it's not a one-size-fits-all conversation. I would imagine that, especially if you have somebody that you spend time with outside of work who is now your former peer, that that will be a longer conversation, and there will be more boundaries, and there will be times when you slip or when they slip and want to complain to you about something that you really have no business talking with them about.

In which case you'll need to be doing some redirecting to them back to their peer group in order to have those conversations, and you just simply say, "This is one of those things that I was mentioning when we talked about how the boundaries are shifting and changing now that I'm the manager of the team. This isn't really-I'm not really a space to have that conversation, and I know it's different, and it's awkward. So there are going to be those moments. Sometimes you're going to be the person who slips up.

Hopefully, you catch yourself mid-slip up, correct? Shut it down and move on. Sometimes it's going to be the other person who is, you know, coming to you with something to complain about or wanting your ear for something that just is no longer appropriate. Okay, then you also do need to have the team conversation, but that team conversation shouldn't just be about the nature of the relationship that you have with the folks on the team changing.

That team conversation is also going to include other things about what will change, not just this. So don't over-index to the team relationships or the individual relationships that you have with team members in this conversation when you're addressing the team, there are probably a number of things that you're going to do differently than your former supervisor or manager did, and so this would be a time to call out. You know, I'll be putting in a different, implementing a different decision-making process for these types of things, and a new escalation process for these types of things, and maybe the cadence of some meetings will change, and so on. So I want you to address that all at once in a team full team meeting, and then as part of that, you'll say, and of course, I used to go to the bar with y'all, or I used to go to lunch with you every Friday, and that will change too.

Just as a nature of this relationship, I'd like to be invited once in a while, but it's probably not appropriate for me to be there all the time. Okay, so at the team level, you're going to address it as part of a bundle of things that are changing. But again, you will have already had the one-on-one conversations with employees. Again, for some of them that will be just a short, like five minute or less blip in a one-on-one, and for those that you have had really close relationships with, that will be a longer conversation.

And again, it doesn't preclude you from still being friends with them. It just does preclude some of the the boundaries that you're going to put upon what you what's okay to talk about and what's not okay to talk about. Okay, on to step three. Here's where you start to rebuild your authority through your behavior, not through your title.

Okay, the title absolutely gives you positional power. That is real, but if you don't act the way you need to act, if you don't walk the walk the walk and walk the talk, both, then it's it's going to backfire. So the authority that your team will actually follow is going to come from consistency, from you doing what you said you were going to do, the follow through, making those tough calls, having those tough conversations, giving difficult feedback, and being honest even when it's uncomfortable-that's how you build your authority with the team. So the former peers who are watching you most closely, well, they already know how you operate, and that's an asset if you use it.

They've seen you at your best. They know that you're made of the stuff that is going to make for a good manager. Now, remember, they've also probably seen you at your worst. But the first hard call that you make as a manager, the one that they disagree with, the one that they maybe push back on, and maybe not all of them, but some of them, that is the moment that the transition either lands or slips from underneath you.

The difference between positional power and earned authority is how you address real situations. It doesn't matter what your title is if you don't stand up and deal with the tough stuff, then you've basically undermined yourself. Okay, so this is probably where you know this might some days feel like pushing a big boulder up a steep hill, but again, it's those tough conversations. It's being straight with people.

It's advocating for what's best for the team, even if sometimes they disagree with that. Okay, and then on to step four. Step four, we're going to think about loyalty. Okay, now it might feel like staying friends with them is loyalty, but no, no, no, no, no.

Loyalty to your team does not look the same as it did when you were peers. Specifically, who you vent to-remember, that's not going to be your direct reports anymore-and what you share about organizational decisions and things coming from up above, who gets the benefit of the doubt and a conflict-all of those kinds of things need to address or need to have underneath them your loyalty to the team, not your loyalty to this person because you were better friends with them when you were peers, not because of any of those dynamics. But you have to think of the team as the whole, and you have to be thinking about what's best for the team, and you're going to put your loyalty there in the team. Now, when you're a manager, or especially if you're a new supervisor, this can feel like a weird, messy middle because you're also loyal up the you know up the org chart as well.

You need to have some loyalty to your boss, but you also need to be incredibly loyal to your team, but not to the individual members of your team as individuals. I hope that makes sense because if you you know if you've sort of tuned out, this would be a good time to like tune back in and listen. Because I'm going to say that again: your loyalty is to the team as a whole, so you're doing what's best for the whole team, not what's best for this individual on the team or that individual on the team, and that can be a tricky space to navigate, especially because you maybe had your favorite peers when you were peers. As the manager, you need to have more impartiality in that space, and your loyalty needs to be to the team as a whole.

So you're trying to do all the things that make the team better and make the team succeed. Okay, so there's a difference, and again, you've got that loyalty up the org chart as well because you need to be loyal to your boss, and sometimes those things will feel like they are almost in direct conflict. Okay, now the social dynamic is going to shift too, and you don't have to stop being human, and you don't have to stop being friends, but you do have to stop being the center of the conversations that go. Oh my gosh!

Can you believe this company? Can you believe that we don't have the resources, the funding, the time that you know whatever it is? All that cavorting and complaining. You don't get to have those conversations with your former peers anymore.

And again, that's part of your loyalty to them as a team, you're no longer one of them. You are about them getting everything that they need to do their jobs and do them well, and then you get out of the way. I'll talk more about that in a second. Okay, but this is the step that most new managers will resist the longest, and it's one that costs them the most because that loyalty.

I mean, you were loyal to these folks. You've been in the trenches together. You have bonded through, you know, trauma. Hopefully, trauma with a lowercase t.

You know, when your favorite manager got a promotion, or when something unjust happened, and you all, you know, trauma bonded over it. But you've got to transcend that now. Again, that is one of the steps that most new managers resist the longest. And what this new loyalty looks like in practice is this: okay, specific situations where it gets tested, team lunch, group chat, someone pushing back on a decision, someone inviting you to go to the happy hour.

That's where you need to say no, thank you to those things, and if it is like say pushing back on a decision that you made, you need to stand firm in your decision, explain why, and then let it go. Like I was just mentioning before, your loyalty to them can look like giving them all the resources that they need to do their jobs and do their jobs as well as they can, and then getting out of the way and letting them do the work. Then give them all the credit when it goes right, and you're going to have to take the blame, or at least some of the blame, when things go wrong. And that is what loyalty looks like when they see you stepping up to bat for the team, when they see you taking a fall for the team, that builds their loyalty to you, and that demonstrates your loyalty to them.

Harder than it might sound, I know, but also remember you have this new set of peers to establish relationships with. Go seek. seek them out. Ask to go to lunches with them. Maybe one on one at first, and maybe if they don't already go to lunch or do a happy hour or a regular, you know, more partly social, partly work kind of meeting.

Then maybe you become the person who organizes those, or at least you suggest it, and oftentimes it's not because people don't want to do it. It's just because nobody's thought of it, or that just hasn't been the norm. Now you're a new person in the mix, and so you might be exactly the one to create that new norm. All right, now here we are at the end of the episode.

I need to give you something to put it to work. It is time to put it to work. So this week, I want you to identify one relationship on your team that feels the most unresolved since your promotion. If you are newly promoted, that's your first conversation.

It's not going to be the easiest one, but it is the most necessary one. Schedule it before the week is out. Now, if you happen to be on the other side of things, that your work friend just became your boss. Here's your put it to work.

Share this episode with them, and have their back. Have their back any which way you can. Again, not to try to become their favorite or stay the favorite or anything like that, but have their back because that's what they would do for you. Now, if you're not there yet at all, and you haven't been recently promoted, or you haven't had somebody who is a close friend of yours promoted above you in the organization, you're going to want to bookmark this episode so that you can find it when you need it.

All right, getting promoted means that the relationship has changed. Becoming a great manager means that you are the one who is leading that change. That's right, my friends. You are the one who is leading that change.

If this episode resonated, or if you know somebody who is in a similar situation, go ahead and share this episode with them. You can find the show notes and the links to Spotify and Apple Podcasts for this episode on the show notes page. That's at Janel Anderson J A N E L A N D E R S O n.com forward. forward slash 279 for episode 279 Again, share this episode with a friend who might just need this very thing. All right, my friends, I'll catch you right here next week on the Working Conversations podcast.

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