What to do in the first 30 days as a new manager

TL;DR:

#1 Get to know each team member
#2 Understand the current state of the work
#3 Plan a team event
#4 Set the ground rules
#5 Establish rituals
➠ Related Notion templates
➠ Related Management Frameworks

When I got my first role as a manager, I was thrilled. New company, more responsibilities, a dynamic company, a friendly culture. And an employee to manage.

My manager had explained the priorities and the urgencies, I rolled my sleeves and planned the work. I scoped the first project, got the project team together, a freelancer for the skills we are missing, built the timeline, scheduled the meetings, and set to build the course we had planned.

Do you realise I never mentioned my report in the previous paragraph?

It’s because I actually never checked with her if all this planning, roadmapping, and scheduling makes sense to her. If it resonates with her goals and aspirations.

Her job was “content manager” which I had a good understanding of from my previous roles. I assumed that since she had accepted the job of a content manager she knew what it means. I assumed she knows what she needs to do and where she wants to go.

In fact, she had no idea. She was given 4 lines in a Slack for her new job. And 5 days to decide if she takes it, or if she leaves the company.

Needless to say, things went in a down spiral afterwards.

What did I do wrong?

1. I had not asked about HER understanding of her job.

2. I had not spent time to set the ground rules.

3. I had not paused to see if she was alright.

Avoid falling in the same traps. Get on the right foot with your new team by putting in place the 5 actions below:

#1 Get to know each team member

Organise an initial 1:1 conversation with each report to talk about their current role, what motivates them their aspirations, and how you can work together.

If you work in the same location, you can have this conversation in a cafe or a restaurant for lunch. Lunch is a great idea since it gives you a comfortable hour of discussion so that you have enough time to cover all subjects.

During the meting share some personal facts about yourself and see if your team members feel comfortable doing the same. Create a personal rapport to ease future collaboration and to learn how to adapt to their reality.

#2 Understand the current state of the work

Go through all available documentation on current and past projects. Follow-up with your direct team and colleagues from other teams to get as much information as possible on how things work. Find out where the challenges and roadblocks are.

The most important mindset shift at this point is to observe and listen rather than do and solve. You are not here to solve every problem, tell others what to do, or do it yourself, especially not in the first month. Accept that you do not have all the pieces of the puzzle yet and try to collect them.

Schedule check-ins with other departments to find out what their expectations are. Several questions you can ask external colleagues to find out what works and what can be improved:

What are your major objectives right now? Where can my team help?
What projects have you worked on well together with the team?
How do you share updates?
What could ease the collaboration between the two teams?
What do you enjoy most about the work of the team?

#3 Plan a team event

Plan an event to get to know each other a bit better. Find a place outside the office to set the tone for an open conversation.

I recently organised an event where we had 2 exercises to get to know each other better. First, we answered light questions about ourselves, our preferences or hobbies, and we used a thread to symbolise the uniqueness of our team.

Here are some of the questions we used that I collected from various sources online:

The second exercises was focused on our strengths and blind spots. I printed the 34 strengths based on the Clifton Strengths’ model and cut the paper so that each strength is separated. Make sure to print the reference guide to explain what is behind each of the strength as it can be easy to misinterpret.

Each person has to pick 2 strengths they feel strongly connected with and explain why they pick them. In the second round we picked the one characteristic from the pack of 34 words and choose the term which symbolises an area we are not strong in. And explain why again.

The purpose of the exercise is to explain to others who we are and how we work. The 34 strengths gave us a framework, a shared vocabulary.

#4 Set the ground rules

If you want to formalise the team culture and common rules, a great exercise is to build a Team Manifesto.

Gather everyone in the same room (ideally in person if possible). Block 2 hours on your agendas. Ask everyone to take 5-6 post-its with 2 different colours. Ask them to start by thinking what do they appreciate most in their team (or in the best team they ever had if it’s a new team). Ask them to use the other colour to list the behaviours that make them shiver, that makes them demotivated, make them hate their team.

Gather all post it by category on a big flip chart. Recap the findings as a short phrase. Make a pretty design and share it in a common place for the team to often see it, either on paper or on your digital space.

The team manifesto is a fantastic tool to create a feeling of team belonging as it is a product of the group working together.

Another area you need to address is your specific expectations about how you work together. Specifically, make sure to clarify:

how to request holidays
working hours
where you expect to be involved.

For example, I asked my team to put holiday requests on the system before asking me. If there is a problem with the dates, I will tell them so. If not - I will simply accept the request. Rest is important, I trust them with their time management and there is no need to waste time on discussing whether they can take a few days off.

When it comes to working hours, we don’t have strict schedules either. The rule is to be available for others and to be always on time when you have a meeting. And not to annoy our colleagues who are client-facing and have a responsibility to cover a wide time windows. My selfish goal here is to avoid receiving messages about someone being late.

#5 Establish rituals

The purpose of establishing rituals is to build a routine while keeping the spark. To make sure you have enough team time without drowning in meetings. Depending on your field of work, you can set the following rituals:

—> regular team meeting (weekly / monthly)

—> 1:1 with each team member

—> quarterly offsite / team building

—> standups

—> backlog reviews

—> lunches / breakfast

—> retrospectives

—> game hour

Initially in my team we had a weekly team meeting and I used a format I loved from one of my first jobs. Each person had to share the highlight of their week and ask for help if needed fo 2 minutes. Afterwards, we had cross-team topics to discuss or share. However, this round robin turned more into reporting rather than sharing of our successes or anecdotes and it became boring.

We changed the format and now we have a bi-monthly team meeting where we simply discuss cross-team topics (bottom-up and top-down). On the week we don’t have this team meeting, we added a “Think tank” session which we use to zoom out and work together on a specific topic which may or may not be related to the current projects. For instance, last time we talked about how to use stories in our training courses. We started from each person sharing what “storytelling” means to each one of us, going through examples from other companies and then thinking what will make sense for our projects.

In your first days as a manager of a new team, especially if you are a first-time manager, you may want to act quickly based on the initial signals you received.

Grasping how the team work is not an overnight task, though. Especially if you are building your team from scratch, give yourself time to let the team culture get defined and set the foundations for successful team work.