Your Next Move

2

The Leading-Former-Peers Challenge

JULIA MARTINEZ’S PROMOTION TO DIRECTOR OF MARKETING at Alpha Telecommunications took her former peers, many of whom would now be her direct reports, by surprise. Julia’s boss and mentor, Thomas Collins, was good at many things, but communicating about people issues was not one of them. Within a week of being promoted to vice president of sales and marketing at the midsize telecom services company, he appointed Julia, one of the five marketing managers who had reported to him, to be his successor.

Julia inherited an organization that had made impressive strides in the past few years, a primary reason for her boss’s promotion. Effective marketing had helped propel Alpha to a leading position in providing specialized ...