Managing for the first time: how your relationship with former colleagues changes

“Are we still going for coffee, or have you got no time for us now?”

It is said as a joke, in the doorway, with half a smile. A week ago you would have laughed and gone along. Today you know that you have a meeting with the director at ten, that on Friday you will have to say which of them gets the project everyone wants, and that one of them is Tina, with whom you spent two years being annoyed at the previous boss. You go for coffee. And for the first time in your life you sit at that table as someone people can talk about once you get up.

Moving from colleague to manager is one of the most common career changes and one of the least described. You get a new title, perhaps a higher salary and access to new information. What nobody explains is that in that same moment something else changed that you did not choose: your place in the system of relationships you lived in until yesterday. That is what this piece is about.

When your role changes overnight

People who take over leadership of their own team for the first time often describe the same confusion to me. Nothing has happened, and yet everything is different. Conversations in the corridor go quiet when you walk past. Jokes that were shared yesterday are a little more careful today. Someone with whom you shared every frustration now tells you things “officially”, by email, with others in copy. At the same time the opposite happens too: some people suddenly come closer than before, tell you things about others and expect you to “know”.

At first glance this is a matter of organisation. At second glance it is a matter of relationships — and this is where my part begins. As a therapist in training in marriage and family therapy, I am trained to see people in systems: in a family, in a couple, and also in a team. And when one person in a system moves, everyone moves. Not because they are spiteful or envious, but because the system is looking for a new balance.

What we know about the first year of leading

Linda Hill of Harvard followed new managers through their entire first year and found something that sounds simple but has large consequences: the move into management is not a new task but a change of identity. The people she followed had been promoted because they were excellent at their work. Most expected that managing would mainly mean more authority and more control. In reality they discovered that the title does not make them leaders, that people do not follow them because they have to, and that their success no longer depends on what they do themselves but on what they make possible for others.

Large workplace studies show why this matters. In its report on the state of managers, Gallup wrote that the direct manager accounts for at least 70 per cent of the variance in engagement between teams. In other words, the relationship you have with your team is not a private matter. It is one of the main reasons people stay at work, make an effort — or quietly leave.

This is the weight a new manager carries without anyone saying it out loud. And that is exactly why it matters so much how you get through the first months — not only operationally, but emotionally.

A workplace is a system, not a list of people

In family therapy we see the family as a system: a whole in which everyone has a role, in which there are boundaries and alliances between people, and in which a change in one person triggers a response in all. A team works in a very similar way. It has unwritten rules about who talks to whom, who is the “voice of the team”, who calms things down, who complains on behalf of others.

As long as you were one of the colleagues, you had a familiar place in that system. Perhaps you were the one who said out loud what others were thinking. Perhaps the one who showed newcomers the ropes. Perhaps the one you could have a good moan about the boss with. When you become the manager, that role does not disappear by itself. The others still expect it from you — and at the same time they expect a new one. And you yourself will sometimes keep playing it without meaning to, because it is familiar and safe.

The most typical shift is this: before, “they” were the boss and “we” were the team. Shared irritation with someone above brought colleagues together. Now you are the one above. The alliance between colleagues does not vanish; you are simply no longer in it. It hurts, but it is not personal. It is a consequence of the position.

Loyalty: who you belong to now

One of the hardest questions for a new manager is the question of loyalty. Until yesterday it was simple: you belonged to the team. Today loyalty is expected both by senior management, who trusted you with the role, and by the team, who expect you to “defend them upstairs”. Organisational psychologists call this role conflict: different people expect things from the same person that cannot all be met at once.

We know this well from families. A child who has to choose between mum and dad has no good option. Every choice is a betrayal. A new manager often experiences something similar: if they back a management decision, they have “crossed over”; if they criticise it in front of the team, they undermine the system they are meant to lead. The answer is not to pick a side. The answer is to recognise that your loyalty is no longer to one group but to the work and to fairness — and that this will sometimes leave both sides dissatisfied.

It helps to say this out loud. You can tell the team that you will pass their concerns on and stand up for them, but that once decisions are made you will also represent them. You can tell management what the team needs in order to carry a decision through. You are no longer one of “us”, and you are not one of “them”. You are someone on the border between the two — and that border is your workplace.

The triangles you will be pulled into

Murray Bowen, one of the founders of family therapy, described a phenomenon I notice in almost every team: triangulation. When there is tension between two people, one or both pull a third into the relationship. The tension is spread out and becomes easier to bear — but it is not resolved.

As a new manager you will suddenly be a very attractive third. A former colleague will tell you “just between us” how another colleague dodges work. Someone will ask you to tell the director “informally” that the team is unhappy. Someone else will expect that, as an old friend, you will be on their side in a dispute that has been going on for years. Each of these roles is tempting, because it makes you important and trusted. And each pulls you out of the place from which you can lead.

What can you do? Kindly but clearly, return the conversation to where it belongs: “I hear that this bothers you. Have you told him?” Or: “If this is a problem for the team, let’s put it on the agenda.” I have written more about how a team splits into camps and why you end up in the middle in Office coalitions.

A friendship that cannot stay the same

The most painful part of the transition is often friendships. Not all of them, but those that grew out of a shared position: a shared office, shared grumbles, a shared boss. When you become a friend’s manager, something uncomfortable happens: you have power over their pay, their tasks and perhaps whether they stay. Power changes relationships even when you do not want it to — I have written about how in How power changes relationships. This does not mean the friendship cannot survive. It means it has to take a new shape.

What this sounds like in practice is shown in this short conversation (composite, not a real person):

“You know you can tell me if anything’s coming with the reorganisation. We’re friends, after all.”
“We are. And that’s exactly why I don’t want to promise you something I’m not allowed to keep. If I can say anything, you’ll be among the first to hear. But I won’t tell you before the others.”
“So you don’t trust me any more.”
“I do trust you. I just don’t want anyone ever to think you got something because we’re friends. For your sake too.”

A conversation like this is uncomfortable and probably will not be finished in one go. But it is honest. In her research, Hill describes how new managers often tried to keep good relationships with each person individually and in the process lost their sense of the team as a whole. A friendship built on one person getting more than another is not safe for the friend or for the team. I have described a similar dynamic — how a promotion changes old relationships outside work — in When you move up faster than your friends: what it does to old relationships.

Boundaries without a wall

Salvador Minuchin, the founder of structural family therapy, described boundaries in a family along a scale. At one end are diffuse boundaries: everyone knows everything about everyone, parents are their children’s friends and confidants, nobody can be alone. At the other end are rigid boundaries: everyone lives behind their own wall, contact is rare and formal. Healthy boundaries lie somewhere between — clear enough that everyone has their own space, and permeable enough that the relationship can flow.

New managers often swing between the two extremes. First they try to stay “one of us”: they share every piece of information, make no demands, apologise for every decision. When that does not work and the team begins to take advantage or ignore them, they retreat behind a wall: they become formal, cold, everything goes by email. Neither extreme helps. The first wears you out, the second isolates you.

Healthy boundaries in a management role mean that you stay warm and approachable but clearly separate what belongs where. You can go for coffee, but you cannot discuss over coffee who will get a pay rise. You can take an interest in someone’s life, but you cannot gossip with one team member about another. You can admit that a management decision is hard for you too, but you cannot mock it in front of the team.

Loneliness that comes with the position

Many new managers are surprised by how lonely they are in the first months. Not because people reject them, but because they have lost the place where they could openly grumble, doubt and laugh. New peers at the same level are often still strangers. And old colleagues can no longer be confidants for everything.

I have devoted a whole piece to this, Between the board and the team: the loneliness of the middle position, so here just one point: a new manager’s loneliness is not a sign that you are doing something wrong. It is a sign that you need new sources of support. These might be managers at the same level in other departments, a mentor, someone outside the organisation, or a space where you can think aloud without sending anyone a message by doing so.

It also helps not to expect the team to look after your feelings about the transition. Their job is to work and to get used to the new situation. Yours is to find a place where you can set your doubts down — and not to look for it among the people you lead.

What you bring from home

In relational family therapy, which I am training in, we start from the idea that the patterns of relating we learn in our family of origin travel with us into all later relationships — including work. This does not mean that everything that happens in the office is a repeat of childhood. But it does mean that a new role often awakens old family roles.

If you were the eldest child who looked after the younger ones, as a manager you may take on too much and not let the team grow up. If you were the one in the family who smoothed over conflicts between your parents, you may try to calm every tension in the team before anything can even be said about it. If you grew up with a strict or unpredictable parent, you may be so afraid of becoming “that kind of boss” that you cannot set any expectation at all. And if you were a child who had to be good in order to be accepted, every bit of discontent in the team may hit you as personal rejection.

You do not need to understand everything in order to lead well. But it helps to notice when you react more strongly than the situation calls for. That is often when something older than your job is at work. The question “Who does this situation remind me of?” is sometimes more useful than any management handbook. I have also looked at how old patterns show up with managers and colleagues in Attachment at work.

Exercise: the first honest conversation with a former colleague

Much of the discomfort of the first months comes from the change not being talked about. Everyone knows things are different; nobody says so. This exercise helps you prepare one such conversation — with the person with whom the transition is hardest. It takes twenty minutes of preparation.

1. Choose one person. Not everyone at once. The one with whom you feel the most awkwardness, guilt or caution.
2. Write down what connected you. Shared experiences, jokes, shared frustration, confidences. This is not something you have to throw away; it is part of the story that you acknowledge.
3. Write down what has changed. Concretely: “I now decide on your tasks.” “There are some things I won’t be able to tell you everything about.” Without apologising and without sugar-coating.
4. Write down what remains. Respect, interest in them as a person, willingness to listen. Say this out loud too.
5. Arrange a conversation and start with what you notice. For example: “I’ve noticed something has been different between us these last few weeks, and I think it’s right that we talk about it.” Then listen more than you speak.

The conversation will not resolve everything. But it will move the relationship out of a fog in which each of you is guessing alone and into a space where the change has at least been named. That often brings relief to you both.

Where this view falls short

I want to be honest here: not everything that happens to a new manager is about their patterns or their skill with relationships.

Sometimes the problem is the organisation. If the company put you in the role without any induction, without clear authority and without support, then your difficulties are not a personal failure. They are the result of a system that expects people to be capable of leading simply because they were good specialists. In that case it is fair to ask for support out loud — from your own manager or from HR.

Sometimes you simply did not want the role. Some people accept a management role because there is no other way to progress, or because they cannot say no. If after a few months you realise that the role is draining you in the long run, that is no disgrace. It is information. You can decide differently — and that too is a decision worth thinking through with someone who is not part of the system.

Sometimes it is something more serious. If former colleagues deliberately undermine your work, systematically exclude you or insult you, this is no longer just a “transition”. In that case do not rely on conversations alone — keep a record of what happens and seek help within the organisation, from a trade union or from legal advice. For legal questions I am not the right person to ask.

And finally: if the transition comes with sleeplessness, constant anxiety or a sense that you cannot cope any more, do not wait for it to pass by itself. Talking to a professional — your GP, a psychotherapist or a psychologist — is not a sign of weakness but a way of making sure you can still lead a year from now. If English is the language you think in, I also work with English-speaking clients in person in Ljubljana.

What to remember

• Moving from colleague to manager is not just a new task but a change of identity — and a change in your place in a system of relationships.
• When you move, everyone moves. Caution, distance or sudden closeness from former colleagues is often the system responding, not a personal attack.
• Your loyalty is no longer to one group but to the work and to fairness. This will sometimes leave both sides dissatisfied.
• Healthy boundaries are not a wall. You can stay warm and approachable while clearly separating what belongs over coffee and what belongs in a meeting.
• Loneliness in a new role is to be expected. Look for support somewhere other than among the people you lead.