Your First 90 Days as a New Manager: The 5 Moves I Would Make

Gallup's research estimates that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement scores. The way you show up in your first three months shapes how your team feels about work for a long time afterward. Whether you were promoted from within or hired into a new company, those 90 days set your credibility, your relationships, and your direction.

Every time I have joined a new team, I have followed the same sequence. It has held up across different industries and different leaders. Before I walk you through it, let me tell you about the team that taught me why it matters.

The team I was supposed to fix

Earlier in my career, I took over a team with a clear mandate. Leadership wanted me to clean up their processes, and they told me plainly that personnel changes were on the table. The assumption behind that mandate was that this team was the problem.

I could have started making changes in my first week. Instead, I started with a listening tour, and I held every conversation with the same intention: learn first, assess later. I sat down with each person on the team, took detailed notes, and listened. I asked what was working, where they got stuck, and what they wished leadership understood about their work. In the first few conversations, I heard things that did not match the initial story I had heard. By the end of the tour, the picture had changed significantly.

The performance issues leadership had pointed to traced back to a decision that had been made well above this team's pay grade. The people I was asked to fix were carrying the consequences of that decision. They had been blamed for results they never had the authority to change. They had known it all along. Nobody had asked them, and many of them had stopped expecting anyone would.

Because I had spent those weeks listening and building trust, they told me the whole story. If I had walked in with a restructuring plan, I would have removed capable people and left the real issue untouched. It would also have confirmed what the team already feared, which was that leadership saw them as expendable. Instead, by listening without assumptions and being open to learn, that team was able to rebuild trust and strengthen over time.

That experience shaped how I approach every new leadership role. Here are the five moves I would make again.

1. Start with a listening tour

Before you change a single process, schedule one-on-one conversations with every person on your team. Then extend the circle to your peers, your internal customers, and the people who depend on your team's work. Ask open questions. What is working well? Where do you lose time? What do you wish leadership understood about your work? What should I protect, and what should I look at more closely?

Plan to spend most of your first month on this. Your team will notice that you came to learn before you came to direct. That observation builds more goodwill than any announcement you could make.

2. Assume nothing is broken

New managers often feel pressure to prove their value quickly, which makes it tempting to walk in with a fix. I recommend walking in with curiosity. The process that looks inefficient from the outside may exist for a reason. Maybe it's a customer requirement, a past incident, or a constraint you cannot see yet.

Give every practice and every person, the benefit of the doubt until you understand the full context. When I took over that team, the evidence I needed to see the real situation was only available to someone willing to ask before acting. When you eventually do make a change, your team will trust that you made the decision with full context. They will be far more willing to follow you through it.

3. Build trust and take thorough notes

Trust grows through small, consistent behaviors. Show up on time to your one-on-ones, follow through on what you said you would do, and keep confidences. Your team is watching closely in these early weeks, and they are deciding whether it is safe to be honest with you.

Taking thorough notes supports this in two ways. First, it signals that you value what people tell you. Second, it gives you a record you can return to. Patterns will emerge across conversations and you will want the exact words people used. I like to follow up with each person after our conversation and share one thing I heard and one thing I plan to do about it. That small loop shows people they were heard.

4. Turn what you heard into a SWOT analysis

Around the end of month one or the start of month two, step back and organize your notes. A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) gives you a clear structure for the information you collected.

Strengths are what your team does well and what you should protect. Weaknesses are the gaps in skills, tools, or process that people described. Opportunities might include a stretch assignment for someone ready to grow or a cross-functional partnership that could make everyone's work easier. Threats can be anything from attrition risk to a looming deadline to a decision made elsewhere in the organization that is affecting your team's results. Look especially for themes that came up in multiple conversations, because those carry the most weight.

5. Get strategic direction from leadership and build your plan

By now you understand your team from the inside. The next step is to understand where the organization wants to go. Meet with your own manager and other senior leaders to ask about priorities, success measures, and the constraints you will be working within. Ask what a strong first year looks like in their eyes.

Then bring the two views together. Your team's reality and leadership's direction rarely line up perfectly. Your job is to bridge them, including by bringing leadership an honest account of what you learned. Build a plan with a small number of priorities, clear owners, and milestones for the next 6 to 12 months. Share it with your team and invite their input before you finalize it, because people support what they helped shape.

What this sequence gives you

When you follow these five moves, you arrive at day 90 with a team that trusts you, a clear read on what is working and what needs attention, alignment with leadership, and a plan your team believes in. That is a strong foundation for everything that comes next.

How I bring this into my work with clients

This sequence sits at the heart of how I develop leaders. In my work with organizations, I build emotionally intelligent leaders through the IGNITE Framework (Inward, Grounded, Noticed, Intentional, Together, Energized). The framework starts with the leader's own awareness and builds outward to the team. Because the way a manager shows up in a room determines whether people feel safe enough to tell the truth.

The listening tour is where that work becomes visible. A manager who can stay curious under pressure, resist the urge to fix too early, and make it safe for people to speak honestly will see the real situation. A manager who cannot will act on an incomplete picture, as I almost did. Through my Lead From Within program, I help managers develop those capabilities and practice them in the real context of their own teams.

If you are an HR Director or CHRO, ask yourself how your newest managers are being supported in their first 90 days. Most are promoted for their technical performance and handed a team with very little guidance on how to begin. A clear path through the early months protects your managers and the people they are about to lead. And it protects your organization from costly decisions made on partial information.

If you would like to see where your managers stand today, download my free guide, "5 Signs Your Managers Are Struggling", or reach out to talk about a diagnostic for your leadership team.

Fernanda Brasileiro

Consultant & Strategist

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