"I went from mate to manager, what needs to change?"

7 things I wish I'd done sooner

Growing pains

It was October 2020, I'd just got the news I was being promoted to ‘Operations Director’ at GoProposal

We were a small company at the time, only a team of 12. I was excited for a salary raise, fancy title. I’d been working so hard for years to get there.

Then Monday rolled around… And after the announcement to the rest of the team, the DREAD quickly set in.

Now I actually…. had to do it. Eek. These people who had all been my peers, shared drinks with, told secrets to, and who I viewed as a 'friend', I now had to manage them.

The process stuff I found simple, the increase in responsibility and technical expertise of the role… Fine.

But I now had a team of 11 under my wing. And just the week before were mates.

I’d actually done this transition once before when I'd moved into a marketing manager role, but this time felt serious. So I started fiercely watching YouTube, dusting off my old notes, and made a plan of how I could transition from 'mate' to 'manager', as quickly as possible. 

I felt like:

• I had to prove I was worthy of listening to

• They were thinking 'who is she to tell me what to do' (they weren't)

I was in the Ops Director role for 3 years, as the team grew, nobody ever left, we had incredible results over the years, my salary went from about £45k to £120k+£40k bonus, all because of the results I was having with this particular team. 

I figured this out the hard way, but imma tell you all you need to know in less than 400 words…

Here’s 7 things that worked the best for me going from ‘peer’ to ‘manager’

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