3 Frustrating Truths About Managing a Team That Used to Be Your Peers
Because Not Everyone is Happy You Got The Job.
You got promoted. You should feel great.
Instead? Something feels off.
- Conversations go quiet when you walk in.
- Some people challenge your decisions, just to test you.
- One person clearly thinks you don’t deserve the job.
You’re not imagining it. This is the silent (but real) conflict of stepping up as a leader.
Here are 3 brutal truths about leading your old team, and how to handle it.
1️⃣ Not Everyone is Happy You Got the Promotion.
Someone thinks they should have gotten the job. Someone liked things the way they were, and now they are playing all sorts of silent games. It’s interfering with work, and making you question if you should have gotten the job as well.
But, for better or worse, you got the promotion and it’s not your job to fix their feelings.
🔥 Fix it: Stop trying to prove yourself. Start leading. The faster you focus on what’s next instead of who’s upset, the sooner they’ll move on.
2️⃣ You’ll Get Subtle Resistance.
❌ People dragging their feet on decisions?
❌ Someone always "forgetting" to update you?
❌ Backhanded comments like "That’s not how we used to do it..."
This isn’t random. It’s low-key defiance. Any previous disagreements you had with anyone in the team, will be subliminally held against you. But the past is just that, and it’s time to move on.
🔥 Fix it: Call it out, calmly, directly, early. The longer you let small resistance slide, the bigger it gets.
3️⃣ You Can’t Be ‘One of the Team’ Anymore
You used to be one of them. Now? You’re their boss.
The hardest part? Accepting that the dynamic has changed forever. You’re now responsible for all of the work they produce, and this might not sit well.
🔥 Fix it: Don’t overcompensate by staying too casual or over explaining decisions. Step into your manager shoes, or they’ll keep seeing you as “just one of the group.”
Want the Full Playbook on How to Handle This?
Internal promotions are one of the hardest transitions to make in management and leadership, because the conflict is silent. Worse, it’s very loud. Either way, it shouldn’t impact the way you get the job done.
I’m currently working on scenario based training for first time team leaders and managers, that gives you:
- Word-for-word scripts to handle subtle pushback
- A breakdown of power dynamics and how to reset them
- Step-by-step strategies to earn authority without losing trust
🔥 Want to be the first to access it? To stay up to date, you can Subscribe to my Free newsletter here on Substack, or find and follow me on Linkedin.
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