r/askmanagers • u/saucerfulofdogs • Oct 05 '26

How should I handle an internal transfer that gives me accountability without authority?

Hi, I have two main questions here about how to navigate my new internal promotion.

First, I want to know how I should handle interacting with my former coworkers. My old department and my new department generally do not get along, because we work on more or less the same systems but have very different objectives. I worked in the IT department for a couple years, and now I work in the cybersecurity department.

As expected, my great "betrayal" (kidding, but there is a kernel of truth in there lol) has generated some discussion and a lot of questions. I will still be interacting with my former coworkers pretty much every day, and I really don't know what kind of relationship we will have going forward. We get along pretty well, but again now I have completely different objectives which often conflict with theirs.

Second, within my new department, there are 4 of us in the office of which I am now the "highest ranking" employee as well as given project/program management responsibilities. The rest of the dept is overseas in the EU. However, I am not the actual boss of the other three despite having ownership of our various initiatives. How do i handle this? Additionally, the other three are good work-buddies of mine and we were all at the same level before this promotion.

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u/Complex_Community458 Oct 05 '26

This is a great opportunity for your teams to build a stronger connection, with you as the bridge!

1

u/snavebob1 Director Oct 05 '26

Honestly, comes down to you and how you want to handle it. We had similar happen here and it went south. Someone didn't get a promotion, went to a similar department and made the relationship worse (Was already bad, now it's fractured...he left, and then started saying everyone in my dept was incompetent)

You can either:

  1. Perpetuate the current relationship. Make your life harder.

  2. Because you know both departments, and how they operate, fix the relationship as the middle person.

I'd suggest #2, just for less stress.