The step up that catches most people out is not the move to director. It is the first time you walk onto a job in charge of people who, last month, were your equals. The people you moaned about the client with. The people who know exactly which of your calls went wrong, because they were stood next to you when it happened.

I went through it as a QS and I see it constantly now in search, usually when it has already gone sour. The pattern I see most often is not the new manager becoming a tyrant. It is the opposite. They soften everything. They keep sitting in the same seat, keep joining the same grumbles, keep making decisions sound like suggestions, all to prove the promotion has not changed them.

Here is the problem. It has changed things, and everyone knows it except, apparently, you. Your former peers are not waiting for proof you are still one of them. They are waiting to find out what kind of manager you are going to be. Every ducked decision, every performance issue you let slide because raising it feels disloyal, answers that question badly. Ambiguity is not kindness. It is a tax the whole team pays so you can avoid one awkward conversation.

The overcorrection is just as common and just as damaging. Sudden formality, distance, a new voice in meetings. People read that instantly, and what they read is insecurity.

What actually works is simpler and more uncomfortable than either. Name the change, out loud, early. Sit down with each person individually within the first couple of weeks and say the plain version: this is a bit strange for both of us, here is how I want to work, here is what you can expect from me, and I want to know what you want from your next few years so I can push for it. Nobody has ever been offended by that conversation. Plenty of teams have been quietly wrecked by its absence.

Two other things I would tell anyone in this position. First, the friendships that survive are the ones where both of you accept the working relationship comes first between eight and six. Some will not survive, and that is a real loss, worth being honest with yourself about. Second, watch the pull towards the people you already rate. It is natural to lean on your old allies, and from the outside it looks exactly like favouritism. The person you never socialised with is watching how work gets shared out, and they are drawing conclusions.

The test of your first six months is not whether everyone still likes you. It is whether the person you were closest to can say you treat them the same as everyone else, and whether the person you were least close to can say the same thing.

If you have recently made this step, ask yourself one question tonight. Is there a conversation you are avoiding because the person on the other side of it used to be your peer? If there is, that conversation is the job now. Have it this week.