What to do in the first 30 days as a new team leader

“Oh my gosh, this all feels mildly overwhelming, where do I even start?” When you start in a new role, and particularly the role of a team lead, the common reaction is ‘Where do I begin’. Let’s have a look at what to do and not to do in your first 30 days to help you navigate this period. We also introduce a handy acronym to make it easier!

Let’s start with what Not to do first.

Hello, I’m the new broom.

Trust me, I’ve been there. When you start as a team lead, it feels like everything is coming at you at the speed of light. Learning from my experience, here are a few suggestions what not to do in the first 30 days.

• Don’t start changing everything. The people you are leading will be nervous with the volume of changes coming at them. If you start changing everything – existing meetings schedule, vision, direction etc. – your team will respond with even more nervousness and resistance. And that will not get you anywhere.
• Don’t fire people. Tempting in some cases, I know. However, coming in as a new member of the team you definitely do not know the whole story of anyone or of all situations that have happened. Bear this mind when you consider replacing someone.
• Don’t bad-mouth anyone who was the team lead before you. This is a huge No No. It doesn’t matter if they were good or bad at their job; you do not participate nor initiate a complaining fest about your predecessor.
• Don’t say Yes to everything. In a similar fashion to not changing everything, saying Yes and over-promising will not help you in the long run. Sometimes the urge to make things better, or people happy, back-fires and adds to the heap of stuff you need to sort out.

There are other things that I would suggest not to do, but let’s move to What to Do.

Photo by Daniel Lerman on Unsplash

Start with LOVE

I’ve come up with the LOVE acronym randomly one morning. It’s corny, I agree! But it also covers everything that you need to do in the first 30 days of being a team lead.

Here’s what I mean.

L – Learn. Learn your team. What makes them tick, what they don’t like, how they like to communicate, what they would like to learn themselves… You can’t lead people without understanding them (stealing a quote by Zach Mercurio here). Make it your priority to learn and understand your team in the first 30 days. You don’t need to have them all figured out; in fact find out what you still need to explore with your team members.

O – Observe. Going back to what Not to do, observing is the opposite to changing everything and saying Yes to everything. Absorb information you are exposed to. Take your time to amass the data that you can use to form conclusions or make decisions. Unless there is a crisis, refrain from making changes until you feel you have enough information to make them. This behaviour shows your consistency, and sets the boundary on what others can expect from you.

V – Visualise. Taking your time to learn and observe, and gather information helps you visualise which direction you’d like to take your team in. Whether it’s a grand vision for a world domination or a plan for the following 30 days, create a picture of the future that you can share with your team. They will be looking to hearing what is going to happen in their worlds, which pathway to follow, and how it all fits with a bigger company picture. Help them visualise where you’re going with them.

E- Execute. At the end of the first 30 days, you should have a plan how to execute your vision. It doesn’t have to be a 1000 line project plan. With all the information you’ve gathered, and observations you’ve made, you can create a high level plan that shows the vision, the direction you want you and your team to take, and how to get there.

Keep moving forward

No one has everything figured out from the very beginning. Even the biggest brains on the planet think “Hmmm, what do I do with all this?”.

Give yourself time to learn and observe in the first 30 days. Don’t make any rushed decisions, and avoid jumping to conclusions. Share your observations with your team lead to validate them! Seek clarity whenever you can.

Deep breath. You’ve got this!

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If you’d like to learn more about starting in your role as team lead, have a look at our guide for a learning leader. It’s full of suggestions, tips and examples!