There is a particular kind of promotion that I think can be much more difficult than it looks from the outside.
On Friday, you are one of the team. You work alongside the same people, complain about the same frustrations, perhaps have lunch together and help each other out when things go wrong. Then you are promoted.
On Monday, technically at least, you are their manager. The people haven’t changed, and you haven’t changed, but the relationship has. And that can be surprisingly uncomfortable.
I think one of the traps for technically minded people is expecting there to be a clear set of rules for what happens next. Unfortunately, people don’t work quite like that.
Perhaps someone who used to be your equal is now unhappy that you were promoted instead of them. Perhaps a friend expects the relationship to continue exactly as before.
Perhaps you find yourself reluctant to challenge poor work because you don’t want people to think the promotion has “gone to your head”.
Or you can go in the opposite direction and become unnecessarily firm because you’re trying to prove that you really are the manager.
Neither extreme is particularly helpful.
You don’t have to become a different person
I don’t think becoming someone’s manager means you suddenly need to become distant, authoritarian or important.
But something has changed. You now have responsibilities that you didn’t have before.
There may be times when you have to allocate work someone doesn’t want, question a decision, address poor performance or make a choice that disappoints somebody you like.
And this is where the people side of leadership can become much harder than the technical side. You can behave entirely reasonably and somebody can still be unhappy with you. That doesn’t automatically mean you’ve handled the situation badly.
For me, a more useful test is something like this:
Was I clear?
Was I fair?
Was I respectful?
Did I listen?
Did I take responsibility for the part that was mine?
If you can answer yes to those questions, another person’s disappointment or irritation does not necessarily mean you need to undo the decision.
That’s an important distinction.
Engineers are used to checking their work. When you move into leadership, you still need a way of checking yourself — but the test is different.
You cannot always ask: “Did everybody like my decision?”
Sometimes a better question is: “Did I handle my responsibility properly?”
The promotion may change your role. It doesn’t require you to stop being yourself.
But it may require you to become comfortable doing things that the old relationship never required of you.
If you’ve ever been promoted above former colleagues, what did you find hardest about that transition?
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