Runs on PeopleBlog / Leadership · 3 min read
How to take over a team that's had a bad manager
The team you've inherited has learnt to keep its head down. They'll judge you on what you do, not what you say. How to earn back trust that someone else spent.
What you've inherited
A team that's had a poor manager has adapted to survive. They might be quiet in meetings, guarded in one-to-ones, quick to cover themselves in writing. Some of your best people may already be looking elsewhere. None of this is personal. It's what they learnt worked.
You start in debt. Trust was spent before you arrived, and you'll be paying it back for a while. That's fair, and it's fixable.
What not to do
- Don't criticise your predecessor. The team may agree, but it makes you look like someone who talks about people when they leave the room.
- Don't arrive with a plan. Big changes in the first weeks tell people you've decided without them, which is probably what they're used to.
- Don't expect gratitude for being decent. Being better than the last manager is the starting line, not the finish.
The first 90 days
- Meet everyone one-to-one in your first fortnight. Ask three questions: What's working? What gets in your way? What should I not change?
- Listen for patterns, not complaints. If five people mention the same broken process, that's your first job.
- Fix one small, visible thing quickly. A blocked request, a rota that never works, a tool nobody can access. It shows you heard.
- Do exactly what you say. Every promise, however small, kept on time. Write them down. This is how trust is rebuilt: in tiny deposits.
- Make it safe to disagree with you. Ask for pushback in meetings, then thank whoever gives it. Visibly.
- Give credit in public, feedback in private. Every time. People who've been criticised in front of others will notice.
- Ask what they want next. People under a bad manager often stop thinking about their own growth. Show them you are.
What you'll see, and what it means
| What you see | What it often means | What helps |
|---|---|---|
| Silence in meetings | Speaking up used to cost something | Silent writing first, then ask quieter people directly |
| Everything in email | People needed a paper trail to protect themselves | Keep your word reliably until they stop needing one |
| Testing you with small asks | They're checking if you follow through | Follow through, quickly |
| One person very loyal to the old way | They were protected, or they built it | Ask what they'd hate to lose. Take it seriously |
What to say
At your first team meeting, be honest about the situation without dwelling on the past.
"I know the last while hasn't been easy, and I'm not going to pretend I understand it yet. I'm not here with a big plan. I'm here to listen for the next few weeks, fix what I can, and be straight with you. If I say I'll do something and I don't, tell me."
In other industries
A practice that's had a difficult senior partner, a factory shift after a harsh supervisor, a shop after an owner who micromanaged: the pattern is the same. People protect themselves until someone proves they don't need to.
Try this week
Book a one-to-one with every person on your team and ask each of them what you should not change.
Think about it
What would your team need to see from you, again and again, before they believed it was safe to tell you bad news?
Keep reading
Why your retros stopped working, and how to fix them
When a retro goes quiet, it's rarely because there's nothing to say. It's because saying it hasn't changed anything. Five fixes that bring the honesty back.
Running your first retro after something went wrong
A missed launch, an outage, an angry client. The retro afterwards can rebuild trust or quietly break it. How to run one that finds causes, not culprits.
Leading a team you used to be part of
Yesterday you were one of them. Today you do their reviews. How to make the move to managing your friends without losing them, or your nerve.