Don’t be the Elephant in the room when inheriting a team

Photo by Geranimo on Unsplash

Maybe you’ve experienced this situation before: you came into a company or changed positions and landed a managerial role managing an existing team.

You come in thinking:

What am I going to improve or change here?

Would you change a recipe without tasting the dish first?

Here’s the issue. When you come in with that intention it doesn’t have to be bad, but the timing can make it bad.

Imagine Gordon Ramsay in Kitchen Nightmares going into a restaurant he doesn’t know. Instantly he start shouting:

• Wtf is this?
• Change that menu!
• What are you doing?

He doesn’t.

He always:

• Orders a variety of things, tastes it.
• Talks to the chef
• Talks to the manager
• Goes around the area, asking for experiences

Starts making sense?

He makes sure he knows what drives the people, what causes issues, what needs to stop, start, continue.

Watch, listen, talk first