Executive Podcast #248: I Was Your Peer, but Now I’m Your Boss

Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. I am Perry Holly a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Cody. Thank. Executive vice president with Maxwell leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. There’s two things I just want to bring up as we get started today. One of them is around an event that we do every year called Exchange.

Perry Holley:

Exchange.

Chris Goede:

And it’s one of my favorite events of the year that we do. It’s titled exchange. John has been doing it for over 22 years now, and we really talk about how do we exchange business ideas with leaders that are leading organizations and leading teams. This year we’re going to be talking about creativity and innovation in leadership. We’re going to be doing it in November. We’re going to be hosting this year’s exchange at the Waldorf Astoria in Las Vegas. And man, we would love to have you there. If you’re interested, I want you to go to Exchange.Maxwellleadership.com. There you can find out a bunch of information. There’s a form if you want to learn more, and our team will follow up with you on that. The second thing is we always start is you’ve created some show notes that go along with today’s lesson or if you want to learn more about either engaging in some leadership coaching or having Perry or one of our facilitators and coaches spend time with your team. If you’ll go to Maxwellleadership.com/Podcast, you can fill out a form there and we’ll follow back up with you. Okay, today’s topic. As you guys know, we talk a lot about different topics that really come from the field. What are we hearing? What are we learning from coaching calls, being in the room, facilitating conversation, doing some consulting, and this is exactly that right, perry, you’re bringing this to us where today’s topic is, I was your peer, but now I’m your boss. That feels good just to say that, right? I’m going to say that to my peers when we get done recording. But this is something that happens at some point in time, probably to a lot of us, and it came up on a coaching call. And now we’re going to talk a little bit about how do you handle this, what does this look like? So give us a little more context on the call that you receive this question and then how we’re going to work through some of this.

Perry Holley:

Today comes up more and more. I’m not surprised any longer when I hear someone say it, but I reflected on when I came up in the 80s through IBM, I was a salesman and then got promoted to be a sales manager. And what happened when you got promoted in those days in an IBM world, they moved you to another city. That’s why they thought IBM stood for I’ve been moved, so that you would be moved. I thought it was almost as I reflect, it was kind of like witness relocation. They could move you away from to a whole new group of people that didn’t know any of your past sins and anything about you. So you started fresh with a new group. Well, that’s not the way anymore. The world’s very flat and small, and we don’t need to do that. So it’s very common now that you would be promoted on a team. That where you used to be a peer and now you’re the boss. I wonder, have you seen anything like this or experience it yourself?

Chris Goede:

I’ve experienced it on both sides. I’ve had friends and peers of mine that have become my leader, and then on the other side of it, where I have become the leader in that situation. And so it’s a delicate balance, right? As a leader, you have to then begin to make decisions versus you are talking to the team about the decisions that were made. You got to talk about compensation. You got to go from maybe the friend zone at times to now the leader. So it is definitely something we all experience, and it’s a delicate situation to walk through it. So today we have five strategies for a new leader to consider when this happens.

Perry Holley:

And I’ll tell you, I was at a location with a client, and this young lady, I was asking her what the challenges were, having a coaching conversation during a lunch break. And she said, I’ll tell you the problem I have. And it was this exact thing, and it was hurting. And it hurt me to see that the goes, I just want to do so well, but they just won’t give me the break. I say, you know what? I’m going to write something on this, because I just know this has come something more and more. So I thought we maybe go back and forth. I designed this kind of what you should do, what you shouldn’t do. I’ll take what you should do. Maybe you could just reflect on what maybe you don’t want to do. And the first one, I would say number one, I just called it get Your Mind Right. And Get your Mind Right would say that when you’re first promoted to this position of leadership on an existing team, examine how you see yourself. And if you show up and try to remain one of the gang, be one of the group that you were in before. You don’t see yourself as the new leader. You don’t have the mindset of, I’m now the leader of the group. You’re setting yourself up for failure. I think that you really need to just agree with yourself that I am now the leader. I’ll let you tell what to not to do because there’s definitely a downside. But you absolutely must see yourself as the leader, or you’re going to fall back into, I just want to be one of the gang, but I’m in charge. That’s not a winning solution.

Chris Goede:

And what we don’t want you to do is come in and have the mindset of I’m the boss, as we talk about in five levels of leadership, often at level one, there’s a lot of command and control, and you’re really managing people versus truly leading people. And so don’t come in with that mindset and that shift of, hey, I’m the boss, people are going to be watching you during this transition. They’re going to be evaluating you under the microscope more than they did when you were a peer. And so you don’t want to come in with that posture because that’s more of a power posture. And if you’ve listened to one of our podcasts, you will know that we talk about and define leadership as influence. It’s not about the title. It’s not about the power. And so if you come in with that mindset of, hey, I’m the boss now, I finally I’ve arrived, you’re going to decrease your influence. And so it really is the foundation. I was thinking a little bit about this as you had sent these notes to me about man. As this happens, they really need to think about the five levels of leadership and then how do they reengage all of their relationships from that model. And so you’ll get stuck at level one, and you won’t increase your influence if you have that mindset of I’m just a boss.

Perry Holley:

Yeah, very good. Number two, strategy number two. I said open up. This is potentially uncomfortable for everyone, not just for you, but for the team as well. And that just realize the discomfort or the new situation that’s arisen. You’re not responsible for their attitudes or their responses to it, but you can just have a little empathy with the people that are on the team. That this is a little weird, that you used to be part of the group, the team, the gang, and now you’re leading the group, the team, the gang, and just talk about it. I think most people would be open to sharing and want to hear it from you, but listen to the team, hear what challenges they see, how do they face it, and this will be the first great test of being a leader. Is it okay to dissent? We just did. Is it okay to disagree with you? Is it okay to not be happy about something? Sure it is. We’re on the same team.

Chris Goede:

Well, I love that it not only is good advice in the beginning, but to your point just a minute ago, that’s part of leadership in general, like listening to the team and opening up about that. Well, what not to do under this topic is don’t act like nothing has changed, because it has. And there may have been other people on the team that were up for that same opportunity, that same promotion, and they didn’t get it. They may be questioning why not them, and they may be questioning why you, which may be something that’s very real. And so, to your point, Perry, you just need to talk about it. And it is going to be the elephant in the room initially. And so don’t act like nothing has changed. Have that conversation, talk about it with the team. When you do that, it will increase team engagement. It’ll help the environment of the team, and it’ll help people open up to talk about it.

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Perry Holley:

Great point. And just a note on the if you got promoted and someone got mad, by the way, we did a podcast on Chris. It was a long time ago, I think episode 25, but that’s a leader problem. And so you may if you got promoted in your peer group and now you’re the boss and people are mad, that’s not on you. That is on that leader. And I just said everyone on the team, I’m just talking to them. If you’re promoting people on your team to be the boss over the peers on their team, that’s on you. To know that. Have you done the work? Does everybody on your team? Everybody on your team should know where they stand? There should be no surprises that, wow, I should have been me. They should know why it’s not them. They should know. Everybody should know where they are in your view of progression in their career on this team. And if you promote one person and somebody else gets upset, then I think it’s on the leader. You didn’t do a good job of explaining that along the way. Have you seen that? Yeah.

Chris Goede:

And I also think this is an interesting point. If, as a leader, this is happening to one of your teams, you should be out in front of that communication, to the team as a whole, in addition to what you’re talking about, whereas it should be happening on one on one basis with that team. We’ve talked about this before to where anytime you have to have a difficult conversation, an annual review, a promotion, to your point, if at the time of that decision, individuals on your team are surprised, that’s on you as a leader, there’s a gap there. And so you need to make sure that you’re going and communicating not only to the team as a whole to set up that individual, but then also you should be doing it one on one for those that didn’t get the role, so that they’re not surprised why they didn’t get the role at this time. Right? At the time.

Perry Holley:

Strategy number three, I just called it know your role, that embrace your role as the leader. This means that you think like a leader, talk like a leader, walk like a leader, that it goes back to having that leader mindset. But we talk about doing the things that only you can do when you’re an individual contributor, you have a role and a responsibility. When you become the leader, you have a different role and a different responsibility. Making that shift from being a soloist to being the conductor that we talk about. So are you embracing the role? Do you start talking about mission and vision? Do you communicate roles and responsibilities to other? Do you set a standard for performance? Do you look for holding people accountable? Do you have the difficult conversations you start to do the things that leaders do when they’re leading a team? I think it’s so tempting here to say they’ll laugh if I start talking mission and vision. No, it’s now your role. And I think just recognizing that your role and responsibility has changed, embrace it, know your role.

Chris Goede:

Yeah. And don’t try to do what you used to do as an individual contributor as well as lead the team. Let me give a little bit of caveat. I think you still need to keep your toe in the water in regards to that. What I mean by that is we talk often about five levels of leadership. We talk often about level three, where you gain influence by the team because of what you have produced for the organization, not only individually, but in and through your team. And so let’s talk from a sales standpoint. You’ve talked about from IBM and other sales organizations that we’ve worked with, we often see sales leaders that have been promoted to that position because they were the number one individual contributor. It’s probably not always the best decision, but that ends up happening a lot in teams. Well, you can compound that being a problem if that’s not the right person, if that individual thinks they now need to also be the number one individual contributor and lead the team. I think you called it a super teammate, right? A super salesperson. Whereas to your point, you still need to understand the climate, the economic situation, the customer. You still need to do that. And the best way to do that is to keep your the in the water of what’s going on from a sales standpoint. But you got to back up a little bit to your point and you got to start thinking at a 30,000 foot view for the team and leading from that, while still just barely staying in touch with what’s going on with the client, not the other way around, not trying to be the number one sales producer and the sales leader.

Perry Holley:

A lot of people I just was reading, we were doing some coaching around. Simon SENEC had done a video for us and talking about this promotion from being a soloist who does really a great job. Then you get promoted to be the conductor. You don’t know how to conduct, so you go to being solo. That’s why we get managers, not leaders. We’re focused so much on managing the business and the process. We don’t think about leading the people. So I’ll just jump in and go deep on what I know is my expertise. Lots of challenges there. But number four strategy was balance relationships and boundaries. Most likely you were on this team. You had great relationships on the team. It’s tempting when you become this leader to treat people in the relationships differently that you say, well, I need to act differently. So some may actually be expecting you to be different. They may be looking for you, oh, now you’re the boss. See how you act on doing that. But don’t be different. Be you. I think you should be you when you’re on the team. You should be you when you’re leading the team. And I think the single greatest thing you can do to remain and really grow those relationships is to be authentic and be true to who you are. And just because you became the boss doesn’t mean you’re smarter or better looking, well, sometimes for you than you were before you became the boss. So thinking about boundaries and knowing where to draw lines and put fences may become the most important thing you do. But I think so it’s tempting to, well, gosh, you’d really change when you became the boss. I don’t want to hear that. I want to still be true to who I am.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, you probably have a group of peers or friends that maybe you’re closer to than others that are on your team. And when this happens, one of the things that we want you not to do is to let one person on the team become really maybe too familiar with you or you are too familiar with them. Then you get the whole outside of work, extra friendly favoritism, whatever that might look like. Let’s say you’re a sales director and a leader, and maybe there’s a queue in how you’re pushing out leads, and people are like Perry and him having a beer twice a week, and they’re talking about, just be aware of that. Don’t become too familiar with one individual on the team. Be yourself. Right. You grew your influence with the team. Now you got to think about your influence a little bit different as you’re leading and you may have to set up some boundaries. Not saying that we need to kill the friendship and to never do that. I believe we should be doing work with people that we enjoy doing work with. And I think it’s just really kind of setting up those healthy boundaries.

Perry Holley:

It also goes back to just talking about it to someone, say, hey, I know we have a great relationship. We’ve been friends on this team for a long time. I don’t want that to change. However, as we’re at work and maybe you wait till you notice that they’re being a little familiar, calling you by your buddy softball name, that your nickname, locker Room. Maybe you take them aside and say, you really help me out if we could not be too familiar at work. But I want to still have that relationship. I’m not making it like this is the easiest thing in the world. It’s odd to do that. But finally, number five strategy. I just said, can you balance care with candor? That holding people accountable, having difficult conversations, addressing performance needs and performance failures, overcoming setbacks and mistakes, that’s all part of being a leader and being able to have those difficult or direct conversations. But now you’re with people that you really know really well and it could be difficult, it could be challenging with people who used to be your peers. So I said that I want to step up to these difficult conversations. I don’t want to let them linger because they never get better. But can I balance the statement John left us with in the five levels of leadership about balancing care with candor? Is that instead of being all care, I don’t want to hurt the relationship, which could be dysfunctional. I want to reveal some candor be straight with people, talk straight. If you’re all candor, though, if you get really overtop top, it becomes distance between you, and we don’t want that either. So if you can balance the care and candor, it’s going to be odd for a bit, but you need to do it.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, absolutely. And under this point, what not to do is don’t allow those situations to fester with someone who used to be a peer and just think, it’s going to get better. This is good for me to hear at times. I’ll be like, oh, we’re buddies, we’ll figure it out. I’m not going to address it. I think as you move into a position like this, to your point with the Karen candor, there’s a way to go about it so that it doesn’t just fester over time. Because eventually what’s going to happen is we’re going to have a big blow up because we’ve had several things that have festered over time. So just make sure that you now know kind of the structure there and you want to be able to address that well as we wrap up. And as I was thinking about this, as you just mentioned, this is not easy, right. It happens to most of us that have been in our organizations or career for a long time, and it’s something you got to work with. And so I’m going to leave you with three things as kind of a takeaway from what we talked about today. Number one, speak with humility and act with strategy. That goes back to what we were just talking about. Have conversations, have that humility side of you. You’re not better than them. It was an opportunity for you to step up in leadership, but make sure that now you’re acting not necessarily just as a peer and a teammate, but with strategy behind what you’re doing, establish a tone. I think we could probably all benefit from that. Even if you weren’t being promoted from just your peers, right, as a leader and then finally stay patient during this transition process. It is, as Perry mentioned early as we started with IBM, hey, drop you into a new team. You don’t necessarily have to be patient with your leadership and that transition. This one you do. You’re not going to walk in on Monday after you’ve been promoted and all of a sudden have the influence of the team that were your peers. It’s going to be a lot of questions. It’s going to take time. And so I just want to encourage you to stay patient as you have this opportunity. It’s a privilege to lead people. Congratulations on getting promoted. Now it’s time to get to work, so be patient with it.

Perry Holley:

I just gave another idea. There was that it’s really how important it is, even while you were a peer developing your influence. When they dropped me in a new city, I became level one with all eleven of my new reports. I was starting at one. We knew nothing about it. I had to start from scratch. When you get promoted with your peers, you have a little bit of a leg up. If you’ve been working from an influence mindset, you are developing influence with your team and you have level two, level three, with you’re producing results together. You may even be level four, helping each other develop and become better. When you get promoted, you still have that influence. You have to overcome some of these challenges we talk about, perhaps, but you should be way down the road than somebody that got parachuted into a new city and started from a one all the way across. But that should be the work you’re doing today. Before you get promoted, be working on your influence. So when you do get promoted, it’s a positive influence that will go with you into your new role to do that well. Thanks, Chris. And just reminder, if you want that learner guide, you want to learn more about our offerings, you want to leave us a comment or a question, you can do all of [email protected], podcast. We’d love hearing from you and very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership executive podcast.