How to Lead Former Peers

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects.

Of leadership and management.

It addresses some of the most common, common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode.

If you have recently been promoted and find yourself in a situation where you are now leading or managing former peers and are feeling slightly apprehensive about that situation and how to approach it, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is for you. In this episode I'm going to share with you the single most important thing to do in order to set you and your team up for success and the huge risk involved in avoiding that very same thing. When we are suddenly leading and managing former peers, friends even. The reality is that it is going to change the dynamic of the relationship. And the biggest mistake I see new leaders make is failing to acknowledge that. Failing to acknowledge the huge elephant that is sitting in the corner of the room. Every time you have a team meeting or a one to one meeting with someone in your team, and we avoid having those conversations because, yes, they might feel a little awkward or challenging, but if we avoid those initial, or that initial awkward conversation, it almost certainly means that every subsequent conversation, every subsequent one to one, every subsequent team meeting is going to be awkward too. And if you watched my previous episode of the Leader's Kit Bag where I was talking about David Rock's Scarfe model, you'll understand how a lack of certainty can trigger a negative behavioral response in people. And that negative response is generated by lack of certainty will make it harder for people in your team to focus, to collaborate, or to engage fully with you as the team leader. So we simply must provide certainty about what the future will look like with you as the team leader. In order to do that, we need to set up that initial meeting as soon as possible with all of the individuals in our team. Now, the first thing to do in that meeting is to be very honest and open, talk about the situation and perhaps share how you also are a little apprehensive and uncertain say, look, I'm slightly apprehensive about this meeting because this relationship is really important to me so if I stumble or say the wrong thing, please bear with me. And once you've done that, you can ask them about some of their concerns about how the dynamic is changing. You can share some of your concerns and outline how you see things working, your approach to leading the team and then invite their feedback on that. And as I said, it might feel a little awkward but if you don't have that conversation then you can guarantee that all of the subsequent ones are definitely going to feel awkward too. And if you do have that conversation early on, as soon as possible you're addressing that elephant that is in the room and you're setting yourself and the team up for success. That's it for this episode. Hope it's been useful. As always, look after yourself. Look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead and until next time, lead on.