# Managing former peers

- **Episode:** [177](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/177.md) (2025-03-06)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** managing-peers, former-peers, management
- **Time:** 9:21–11:59 (start 561s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/177?t=561](https://truthliesandwork.com/177?t=561)

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[9:21] Al Elliott: We're going to come back to the manager's manager in a second
[9:24] Vince Sanderson: Yeah
[9:25] Al Elliott: But before we do that, a lot of people who've been newly promoted to manager will end up managing people who used to be their peers
[9:31] Vince Sanderson: Yes
[9:31] Al Elliott: People they used to work with. So talk me through, what are the pitfalls with that? What should they be doing? What should they not be doing?
[9:37] Vince Sanderson: It is such a nerve-wracking position for most people to be in. It comes up so often on social media, people asking about this. And my kind of go-to tips around this, having been through this situation myself, is don't avoid the elephant in the room. There is going to be potentially, depending on the nature of your organization, the nature of the people in the team, there will potentially be a little bit of awkwardness. Certainly if you were competing with one of your colleagues for that position and they didn't get it, expect them to be a bit upset. A bit frustrated and not get over that straight away. If they do, amazing. You don't have to do anything about it. But if you expect people to be fine, you might be in for a bit of a shock when people are colder, distant, the relationship has changed. So give people a bit of time and space to work through that, but also offer some support around it. And the easiest thing that you can do is just have a conversation around it. Certainly if you, you know, you have been promoted. Just within the first few days, talk around how your job has now changed. Say things like your intention is not to completely change the culture of the organization, change the culture of the team, that what you know about the team, you're going to take all of the good stuff forward. But that doesn't mean that you will, and I think this is not necessarily something that you say out loud, but certainly as a manager, you need to be aware of, you're now probably going to be removed from some conversations, and you should probably do that yourself anyway. But you're, what you think you know about the team is going to change. And so you've still got to be willing to listen and understand people's perspectives and not think, I understand, I know that because I was once part of the team. I know what your struggles are because I've been there. You only know your version of the struggles and they can change because you're now the new manager. So having the willingness to have these conversations and still listen is such an important part of showing that you are going to be someone that essentially the primary job of a manager is to create an environment for other people to excel. So how are you going to do that? You might need to talk about some of the implicit issues that come up with You being a manager