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Stepping into your first leadership position is an exciting new phase of your career, whether it’s a tech lead position, team lead or engineering manager. It’s motivating to experience recognition in the form of a promotion: as a result of proving core individual contributor work, together with collaborating with others and showing influence, you are given more, and often, new responsibilities. However, this can be a nerve wracking experience. As you change from a contributor to a multiplier, your relationships with your peers will naturally change, as you all navigate this change in status.
Several things could happen (or if you are unlucky, all of them!) while you’re recalibrating these relationships:
– You might find yourself left out of groups and conversations that you were part of before. This could manifest in many ways, including water cooler conversations dying down when you approach!
– It could be that you are now leading someone in the team who also was up for the same promotion, and there are feelings of hurt and resentment to navigate.
– You may be seen to have favourites, making difficult conversations even harder. – You might find yourself having to make difficult decisions that the team doesn’t agree with.
In this talk I give tips for new leaders to help them navigate these changing relationships with former peers. I include recommendations in order to succeed as a new leader and emphasise the importance of collecting feedback from your team, and understanding more about their motivations. I conclude that in a leadership position, treating your team with respect is important and that making them look good, will in turn make you look good.
