# Workplace Surgery: From friend to boss

- **Episode:** [176](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/176.md) (2025-03-04)
- **Type:** workplace-surgery
- **Tags:** workplace, promotion, friendship, management
- **Time:** 35:53–41:58 (start 2153s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/176?t=2153](https://truthliesandwork.com/176?t=2153)

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[35:53] Al Elliott: Yes, almost a year old. We're on question 1 for this week, or 142 if we're being specific. Are you ready for it, Leanne?
[36:02] Elaine Smith: Yes
[36:02] Al Elliott: Okay. From friend to boss, how to lead without losing your mates? This is a UK question, hence the word mate. That's what UK and Australians call friends or buddies if you're across the water
[36:12] Leanne Elliott: Australians say mate?
[36:14] Al Elliott: Yeah, that's what I said. UK and Australia
[36:16] Elaine Smith: Oh, sorry
[36:16] Al Elliott: You're here to answer questions, not here to tell me on what, how I should be telling them. Okay. So this question says, I've recently been promoted to team lead, managing a group of 8 people, including 3 former coworkers
[36:28] Elaine Smith: Uh-oh
[36:28] Al Elliott: who I used to socialise with regularly. One of them keeps undermining me in meetings by making sarcastic comments when I delegate tasks or suggest process changes. I don't want to damage our friendship, but I'm worried the rest of the team is starting to pick up on this dynamic. Is there a way to establish my authority— we'll come back to that— without coming across as power hungry or destroying relationship value?
[36:49] Elaine Smith: No
[36:50] Leanne Elliott: Next question
[36:50] Al Elliott: Well, there you go. I mean, let's be honest, this person seems to be approaching management slightly the wrong way. They need to listen to Thursday where we talk all about management and the first 30, 60, and 90 days in being a manager. A phenomenal episode, if I say so myself. But I think what they seem to do is like going, I'm the boss, why, you listen to me. When I stand up and tell you to do something, you go and do it. That seems to be a wrong approach, Leanne. What are your thoughts?
[37:15] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, it is. Yes, yes, it is. And there's not— you can't stamp your authority to gain respect from somebody. It just doesn't, doesn't really work like that. The, the equal challenge is I've been in this situation and I've been in organisations where roles have changed so much that at one point we're all peers, the next minute somebody's my manager, the next minute I'm their manager, the next minute it's— so I understand that the dynamic can be very, very tricky. And I think the reality is you're always going to have that one person who their thirst for power is greater. So they're not going to be happy that you're now their manager because They want that power, they want that position, or they want the opportunity, or they're not going to take orders from you because this time last week I was bossing you around type thing. And you just get people like that who have that ego that just want it that way, to their detriment a lot of the time. They'll put their faith in other people that will end up screwing them over much, much more. Um, there's just people like that. You're gonna have to just chalk it off as that's life. And the only thing you can do with somebody like that really is say, look, what can I do to make your job easier? What can I do to either give you more resources, take any barriers away, just to make this work? For example, are there certain tasks that are taking up far more of your time that I might be able to, to help you with? Are there certain things that in terms of processes that are bugging you that maybe I can speak to a senior leader about or a different team about? You're gonna still require their buy-in to share those things with you, but if you're constantly asking them, what can I do today? Or if they end up moaning about something, or if they say, oh, I didn't do that because I had to do this
[38:45] Elaine Smith: Yeah
[38:46] Leanne Elliott: Okay, great. Well, this is a perfect example, person, about how you can offload something to me. Being a great manager is as much about delegation as it is about taking things off the hands of your people if they need to. Their time is better invested elsewhere. So, this has to be an ongoing conversation. You're not going to fix it overnight. Over time, things can get better and get more, um, build civility in that relationship. So, they're kind of like, they're mocking you and calling you out. That's, that's incivility, and that's not, that's not cool. It's not okay. And the only way to, to really do that in a way that is going to preserve this relationship long term is flipping it back on them. What can I do to make your job easier? If they continue to throw it back in your face and get even more and more toxic, then that's a performance management conversation that you, you manage further down the line. But first of all, that's how you want to approach it, and that's how you'd approach it with every single member of your team, not just the ones that you used to be a peer with or you used to be mates with. This is what great managers do. It's called empathic concern. What can I do to make your job easier today? And there's also always going to be boundaries within that. You can't do everything, and you don't want to take on too much that you're overwhelmed. But there's an opportunity here, particularly from somebody who's been in their role and been in that position, for you to use your knowledge of the role, use your knowledge of the team, To actually come up with some ideas as well and go, do you know what always used to bug me is this. This is what I'm thinking could be a potential solution. What do you think? Would that help the rest of the team? And really coming at it that way. That would be my advice equally. I've been there. Some people I brought round and were on my side and then lost their shiz when they, uh, when I got promoted and they had to get another manager in
[40:34] Elaine Smith: Yeah
[40:35] Leanne Elliott: And then there are the people that I never won around, and it's just the way, it's just the way it is. But ultimately, if you know you're doing everything you can to support the performance, productivity, and wellbeing of your team, that's, that's all you can judge yourself by as a manager. People will always have their opinions
[40:52] Al Elliott: But I think that a lot of people think, oh, I'm now your boss, so you work for me. In actual fact, the greatest managers in the world kind of work for their team, and they sort of, they invert the, The pyramid, the traditional corporate pyramid. But more of that on Thursday. I know I keep trailing Thursday's episode. It's going to be a good one. I really, really liked it. Okay, so question number 2, the unlimited holiday trap. Perfect on paper, riots in reality. Our company— I love the headline. I actually asked ChatGPT, no, actually Claude for some help with some headline for that one, and it came up with this. I thought it was really good. Our company recently implemented an unlimited holiday policy that sounded great on paper, but has created chaos in practice. Some team members are barely taking any time off because there's no clear guidance on what is acceptable, while others are disappearing for weeks with minimal notice. As a middle manager, I'm caught between senior leadership who think the policy is progressive and my team who are increasingly resentful of the inconsistency. Oh, I like this idea of inconsistency. How do I navigate this without undermining company policy or burning out my team? Lee, there's a lot to unpick here