Harvard Business Publishing

Thanks to readers for the wonderful responses to the Julia Martinez scenario. It's clear that many leaders have faced similar challenges, and that there is a wealth of knowledge out there for dealing with them.

Because the scenario has a number of elements and because there is such richness to readers' responses, I've decided to devote several posts to analyzing and discussing it. The remainder of this post will provide an overview of the full set of challenges that Julia faces. The next post will deal with what Julia should do on her first day after the announcement of her promotion. A third post will focus on what she should do to plan for and lead the off-site meeting. Beyond that, we could look at the challenges she faces in dealing with the boss and new peers in this situation.

The overall challenge for Julia Martinez, and every leader who gets promoted, is what I think of as "relationship re-engineering." On the face of it, not much changes. The organization is the same, the culture and politics is the same, and the players are the same. Also, Julia has accumulated substantial "relationship equity" on which she can draw to get things done. She understands the business and the key levers that drive it. And she's gotten the job because senior leadership believes she is the right person.

But what does and must change is all of the relationships that Julia has with others in the system: former peers, new peers, and her boss. As Kartik Jain notes in his response, "Work is not a problem because all the former peers of Julia are [professionals] and they know how to get things done successfully. [The] problem lies in the new...relationships between Julia and [the others]." This is why stepping up in your current organization can be fraught with peril. Because you think you know everyone and everyone thinks they know you, it's easy to miss the fact that all your existing work relationships were shaped, in part, by the role that you previously played. The corollary is that now that you have taken a new role, those relationships must change: relationship re-engineering is therefore at the heart of meeting the promotion challenge.

What should Julia, and every leader in this kind of situation, do to make a successful transition? Reader "Guru" highlights the key priorities in his response saying, "she should... define realistic objectives, build trust with team members, clearly communicate the objectives, brainstorm, develop solid & flexible plans with a pragmatic approach, ask for feedback, define roles and authority for [her direct reports] and implement the plans made."

Beyond that, there are some basic principles for re-engineering relationships if you are promoted to lead former peers. Adhering to them would help Julia-and every leader in this situation-to make the requisite shifts:

1. Establish your authority deftly. To exert authority effectively in your new role, you have to walk a knife's edge between under- and over-doing control. On one hand, there is the temptation to act as a sort of "super-peer"; leaders who get caught in this trap focus over-much on coaching, encouraging, and supporting their former peers, now direct reports. On the other hand, there is the risk that you will develop a Napoleon complex and begin issuing edicts. Seek to find the middle ground early on. Julia should consider putting her plans to create a new work culture on hold for a while. As Ajay Philip put it in his response, "The change in style of leadership will require being gradual and not rapid to make it successful." Julia should use a "consult-and-decide" style for dealing key issues for the first few months, in part to establish her own authority, and in part because that's what people are used to. She should listen carefully, consider carefully, and then make and communicate her calls. The "consult" piece of consult-and-decide shows she values thoughtful input. The "decide" piece conveys both that she is capable of decisiveness and knows that she are ultimately accountable for results. Once she has established a new rhythm with your team, she can engage in more consensus-building if and when it's appropriate.

2. Focus on what's good for the business. Some former peers, now direct reports, may worry that the new leader's promotion heralds the installation of a new regime. Early on, they will be hyper-vigilant, straining to discern whether you will play favorites or seek to advance your political agendas at their expense. One antidote to this is a relentless, principled focus on doing what is right for the business. As Ramesh put it so aptly, "She must... be clear that welfare of others is the thing that matters most, and that any hidden agenda will only upset her colleagues." Every decision Julia makes should therefore be framed in those terms -- so long as she is genuinely committed to it, and prepared to live with the consequences. The sooner her new direct reports see that she will be "hard on the issues and soft on the people," the better. A second antidote is reliance on what Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne have termed "fair process" for making key decisions. This means establishing and upholding work processes that are perceived as fair, perhaps by melding consult-and-decide decision-making with "put the interests of the business first" criteria for evaluating alternative courses of action.

3. Rethink what you delegate. As Peter Drucker highlighted in the early 1950's, the ability to delegate lies at the heart of leadership. Delegation is, as Gautam notes in his response, a key challenge for Julia, "For increasing her acceptance, she [needs] to reassure people on two counts...she would ... listen to all, and delegate to all." Regardless of your level, the "how" of effective delegation remains pretty much the same: you build a team of competent people whom you trust, you establish goals and metrics through which you can measure progress, you translate them into specific responsibilities for your direct reports, and your reinforce them in some variation of a management-by-objectives (MBO) process. While the how remain the same, however, it's easy to miss that what you delegate -- the basic units of analysis through which you engage with your direct reports -- typically shifts dramatically when you get promoted. If you are leading an organization of six people it makes sense to delegate specific tasks. At 60 people, your focus has to shift from tasks to projects and processes. At 600 people, you often need to delegate responsibility for specific functions. At 6,000 people, your direct reports may be responsible for diverse businesses, and so on. So it's essential that Julia take a step back and figure out what she needs to delegate before turning to the how. This has big implications for what she should try to achieve at the off-site meeting.

4. Communicate, communicate, communicate. The good news about moving up is that you get a broader view of the business and more scope to shape it. The bad news is that you are further from the front lines and more likely to receive filtered information. It's ironic, but inevitable, that your former peers will share information differently with you now that you are the boss. One recently-promoted leader spoke to the heart of this challenge saying, "People treat me differently in the way they funnel information. I see folks shield me from information that I ordinarily would have received." To avoid this, Julia should work to establish a climate of openness and a culture of "no surprises." Making this work requires that she (1) not punish people for sharing bad news (while of course not condoning negligence or incompetence) and (2) not require them to have iron-clad answers when they bring problems to her (plans to deal with the issues yes, but specific answers no.) It also requires that she create alternative channels for figuring out what is going on at the front-lines of your organization - for example engaging in regular direct contact with customers and front-line employees and providing direct channels for raising serious legal or ethical concerns - without, of course, undermining the integrity of the chain of command. As the response from the Sport and Exercise Psychology class at CSU, Fresno, stresses, Julia "has to stick to what made her successful -- good communication skills."

5. Re-enlist your (good) former peers. For every "winner" who gets promoted, there are likely to be one or more "losers" who wanted the job but didn't get it. When promotion processes are managed well, the ultimate decisions come as disappointments, but not surprises. Regardless, however, newly-promoted leaders like Julia typically have to deal with the reality that some former peers may be deeply disappointed, even angry or nursing feelings of victimization. When direct reports are not "good," that is not competent or unable to get over their disappointment and support the new leader, the key is to help them find other opportunities. When they are "good" and perhaps even essential to getting things done as in the case of Andy, the new leader has to find ways to re-enlist them. As L Subramanian put it, Julia must show "she respects what each of them has contributed to Alpha's stature today. She must make sure to recognize individual contributions elaborately." In part, this means recognizing that disappointed former peers will experience a process akin to the Kubler-Ross stages of grieving (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) and that it will take some time for them to work things through. It also means thinking hard about when and how to best engage with disappointed direct reports -- early or later on, directly or obliquely, empathetically or matter-of-factly. Above all it means recognizing that career prospects -- and an associated fear that they have been dead-ended -- are likely to rank on their lists of concerns. Andy's belief that Julia is genuinely committed to helping him to develop and advance may therefore be one key driver of re-enlistment.

6. Re-think your advice and counsel network. My Right from the Start co-author Dan Ciampa (who also authored the recent Taking Advice) makes the important distinction between technical advice (How best should we design a market research study?) and political counsel (Who is likely to resist my change initiative, why, and what can I do about it?). Leaders always need a network of people who can provide advice and counsel, but the mix changes at you rise up through organizations. The more senior you are, the more likely it is that you need sophisticated and supportive political advisers in your network, both knowledgeable insiders in your organization and impartial outsiders. The implication is that the advice and counsel network that served Julia well before her promotion is unlikely to be what you need in her new role. So she may need to re-engineer her relationships with existing advisers and counselors to focus on new topics in different ways. She may also need to develop entirely new sources of advice and counsel and rely less on existing ones.

7. Recognize that relationships have to change. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you must accept that one price of promotion is that personal relationships with former peers have to become less personal. In the process of working together and facing shared challenges, some former peers may have become friends. Now, as in the case of Julia and Amanda, you are overseeing their work. The unfortunate reality is that close personal relationships and effective supervisory relationships rarely are compatible. And it's not just (or even often) the case that people will expect you to do them favors. It's that you can't afford to have your judgment about key issues clouded by personal feelings. Nor can you allow the perception to take hold that you play favorites (see the principle above about putting the interests of the business first). Julia could very well find herself sitting across the table from Amanda, needing to deliver hard-edged performance feedback, yet experiencing a desire to cushion the hurt. If she succumbs to the temptation to go easy, Julia would undermine the performance of her new organization and her own leadership. If she does what's right for the business, she irreversibly alters the relationship and she will see it in Amanda's eyes. There is a right answer, but that doesn't make it easy. As a starting point, Julia should take the advice of Sport and Exercise Psychology class at CSU, Fresno and "Define what [Amanda's] role is ...[and send the message] 'I will be fair in my evaluation of you within this organization'"

While unquestionably challenging, success in adopting these principles will help position Julia, and you if you are in this situation, for success in a leading former peers. Recognize, however, that moving into any new role is a journey and not a destination. Of course, getting off to a good start helps, but recognize too that you will have to grow into the role and that this will take some time.

Read all of Michael Watkins' Leading Edge posts.

MORE ON LEADERSHIP TRANSITIONS:
Becoming the Boss (HBR Article)
So You Want to Be CEO (HBR Article Collection)
The Leadership Transitions Collection
Right from the Start: Taking Charge in a New Leadership Role (Paperback)