At some point in most management careers, you end up having to lead someone who used to be at your same level. Maybe you got promoted over them. Maybe a re-org put you in charge without a title change. Either way, most people assume the hard part is going to be the friendship getting weird.
In my experience, that's not actually the hard part.
Before I figured out what the real challenge was, I watched a peer of mine walk into that exact situation and completely crash out. And honestly, seeing him do it badly ended up being the most useful management lesson I got that year.
A few years into my career, my manager left the company. To fill the gap on a big project she had been running, leadership asked one of my peers (someone at my exact same level at that time) to step in and lead it. It was essentially a trial run: if she did well, she could step into the role. No title yet, no formal authority, just a peer who was suddenly acting like our manager.
It did not go well.
She came in acting like she had a lot of authority but with not a lot of self-awareness, which is a rough combination. The feedback she would give me was things like "can you change this word on this slide" or "I think the font should be bigger here." Completely surface-level stuff that had nothing to do with the actual work. And because she wasn't actually my manager, every time I got that kind of feedback my honest internal reaction was: if it bothers you that much, why don't you just change it yourself?
She got taken off the project a few months later. Nobody was surprised.
I think about that experience a lot, because a few years after that, I ended up in the exact same situation she had been in at a different company. My organization did a re-org and I was asked to step in and lead a group of analysts (some junior, some at my same level) with no formal authority. The first thing I thought was: I know exactly what I don't want to do here.
So instead of coming in with direction, I came in with questions. I spent the first few weeks just trying to understand how everyone worked. What tools they used, what slowed them down, what they were proud of. I didn't show up with a plan. I showed up trying to learn.
And I was really conscious of something in particular with the peers at my same level: I knew they probably felt like I was stepping into their space. Honestly, I couldn't blame them. When someone at your same level starts running the project and owning the outcomes, it's reasonable to wonder what that means for your visibility, your credit, your trajectory. Those are real concerns. So I made it my mission to make the answer to those concerns really obvious — I wasn't there to take anything from anyone. I was there to make their work easier without touching the work itself.
By the time the re-org officially went through and they formally became my direct reports, the transition was almost uneventful. Which, honestly, was exactly what I was going for.
What I actually took away from all of this
People don't resist being led. What they resist is being led by someone who hasn't earned the right to lead yet. My peer walked in assuming the authority came with the assignment. It doesn't. You have to build it through small follow-throughs, through giving credit, through making it clear that your presence adds something rather than takes something.
The peer-to-manager transition trips people up because everyone focuses on the friendship angle. But in my experience, the much harder thing is the territory piece. Proving to people at your same level that your presence makes things better for them, not more complicated.
Earn the trust first. If done correctly, the authority tends to follow.
One thing to think about this week
If you're leading people at or close to your level right now, ask yourself honestly: what am I adding that they couldn't already do without me? Not in a self-critical way, just as a diagnostic. Because that gap, whatever it is, is where your credibility actually gets built.
— AndreaFounder, Code to People
P.S. Not sure where you actually are in the IC to manager transition? I built a free 2-minute assessment that shows you exactly which IC habits are still running the show — across how you execute, communicate, and delegate ownership. Nine questions. Immediate results. You can find it here.