The job of a leader is to ensure that the work gets done, and for that, you need trustworthy people who won’t let you down because they think you don’t deserve the position.
It’s not wise to assign an important task to someone you know doesn’t have the capacity to do what’s asked, or worse, someone who knows how to do it, but deliberately does it wrong to harm you as a manager.
Your first task is to identify who’s who, first by determining their sentiment towards you, who likes you, who’s indifferent, who hates you, if they hate, why…
Next, figure out their level of knowledge, who’s a fool, who’s a fool and thinks they’re smart, who’s truly smart and who’s smart but thinks they’re a fool.
With this map made, prepare your strategy. To start, don’t waste time on fools who hate you and the fools who flatter you, they’re a waste of time, but always treat them with respect, just don’t expend energy on them, as they usually sink themselves.
Treat those who are indifferent to you with respect and try to convert them into followers, showing that you understand their frustrations and problems that may make them uninterested in the work. But be careful not to become a psychologist.
Finally, regarding the people who like you, play it safe, subtly compliment them when you can, encourage their growth. If they’re the smart type who thinks they’re a fool, show them they have impostor syndrome and watch their morale boost. If they’re fools, understand why they’re fools, it might just be that they’re in the wrong position. But if it’s something worse, try to subtly keep your distance, so as not to turn a sympathetic fool into a new hater.
In conclusion, always treat people with respect, regardless of their position or age, remember that things change, tomorrow one of them could be your boss and you wouldn’t want to be humiliated because of revenge for something you did in the past.
Perhaps it’s due to my past experiences, but in the company where I was a manager for most of the time (approximately 10 years at different hierarchical levels), there was a policy of no layoffs except in criminal cases, which gave employees a certain level of arrogance. Unfortunately, I had to deal, more than once, with employees who actively tried to mess with me or a manager beneath me for whatever reasons, did I do something against them? No, it just happened to be that I was the unlucky manager of the time.
I no longer work at that place and in my new position, where I’m not a manager by personal choice, I see a world more similar to the one you describe, simply because accountability exists, so the bad apples are fired when they start to cause problems.