6 Leadership Lessons When You Move to 'Team Them'

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Leadership  

I remember my first position as a manager, selling clothes in a department store to work my way through college. One of my colleagues, who I’ll call Jay, was also a good friend. We ran together, went to movies, and overall had a great time.

After I got promoted and became his boss, we still did some things together—but there was persistent tension in our relationship. He didn’t like the fact that I was his boss and would tell me that he worked for my boss, not me. He then became chummy with another guy who was his peer in another department. This tension existed until I graduated from college and left the department store. Once I wasn’t his boss, the tension lifted.

That was my first experience with the “them” team.

It happens all the time at all levels in an organization. A tight-knit peer group chats about things going on in the organization, questions decisions their management makes, and seemingly has all the answers as to how things should get done. Then one person gets promoted and is now the group’s leader.

While the new leader may still want things to be the same, it’s just not to be. The new leader now joins the “Team Them”—the ones in management who make ill-informed decisions and seemingly don’t know which end is up.

Through my experience and observing others moving from the &ldquo…

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