Firstly, congratulations on your promotion! If this is your first role as a manager you are now at the start of an exciting development in your career. And the first set of skills to master is how to manage your team when they use to be your colleagues and friends. Here are some tips to help you in your transition:
The very first thing to recognise is that true friends will celebrate your promotion and will be respectful and understanding of the two roles you now hold. If others feel ‘upset’ when you exercise your managerial position I would question whether they are a friend. Maybe they were hoping that you would place friendship above your increased responsibilities, sacrificing your professional standards for their benefit. Unfortunately, some friendships will probably be lost, or changed, but the true ones will remain.
Be clear which role you are holding any one time. Use the phrases ‘Speaking as your manager ….’, or ‘As a friend ….’ when there is the possibility of confusion. For greater clarity you may wish to maintain a clear line between the two roles by only conducting managerial conversations in formal workplace locations whilst keeping friendship conversations for the coffee machine or out of work. If someone introduces a conversation in the wrong location say ‘That is really interesting, can you tell me more when …’ Taking this approach can be useful to clarify your new status when you are first promoted and you may wish to relax it once your new position is well known and accepted.
As a manager you will now be included in some discussions that should not be shared with your reports. Learning to keep confidential knowledge to yourself is important and your new colleagues and bosses will certainly need to know that they can trust you. I know of one individual who was promoted and then subsequently demoted because of their inability to keep confidences – not a good experience for anyone to go through just for the inability to keep quiet!
Although some friendships will continue you will not be able to offload all of your stresses with them in the way you used to. They do not share your experience of being a new manager nor can they share the confidential information you now have access to. Therefore take steps to make friends with your new managerial colleagues as they will be able to offer you much needed support and have plenty of valuable advice and experience to share.
And one final tip – do not be tempted to get drunk with your reports, even if they are still your friends. It is hard to respect someone as your manager when you have had to pick them up off the floor and persuade a taxi to take them home! To say nothing of the stupid things that can be said and done when drink has been flowing. So go out, have a drink or two (maybe three!) but remember to go home early and thereby retain your new managerial dignity!
