A Framework for Managers Starting a New Role

Following these principles will help you rock your first few months at a new job

One’s first few weeks at a new job are often the most exciting but also can be the most nerve-wracking. You want to do everything right, and at the same time, you want to start driving impact and prove you’re the right person for the job.

Most people feel pressure to prove they were the right hire. They rush to make decisions, solve problems, and demonstrate impact. By the way, that used to be me.
I have learned that the strongest starts rarely come from moving the fastest. It comes from laying the right foundation and approaching your first few weeks strategically.

Over the years, I’ve found there are a handful of things that consistently set new managers up for success in their first few months.

Following these will help ensure you rock your first few months at a new job, no matter how intense.

Make the Most of Your Onboarding

Depending on the company's size, onboarding sessions for managers can last for days or weeks. If you’re joining a bigger tech organization with decades of technology and product, you can be sure there will be a lot of information to take in. Companies like Google and Facebook are known for weeks-long onboarding.

As a manager, your onboarding isn’t only about learning the business but also about learning how the company expects its managers to lead.

Essentially, what is important at this stage is that you become a sponge. Absorb everything, take notes, and ask questions.

Every company will have something I call a management system, whether written or unwritten. Sometimes it’s documented in leadership principles or management training. More often, it’s reflected in how decisions are made, how managers are expected to lead, and what behaviors are rewarded.

For example, one company may believe managers should invest heavily in coaching low performers before considering an exit. Another may believe that once it’s clear someone isn’t the right fit, it’s better to move quickly. Neither approach is inherently right or wrong, but each reflects a different philosophy about management.

These beliefs influence everything from performance management and decision-making to communication and team culture. Understanding them early will help you navigate the organization more effectively and avoid unintentionally working against its norms.

As you learn the company’s management system, reflect on how it aligns with your own leadership philosophy. You don’t need to abandon your principles, but you do need to understand the environment before trying to change it.

Build Your Network Early

One of the best investments you can make during your first few weeks is in relationships.

As a new manager, you’ll spend a lot of time learning the systems, processes, and technology. But don’t overlook the people. Strong relationships will help you ramp up faster than any documentation (sometimes outdated) ever will.

A great place to start is with the people you met during the interview process. They’ve already met you, which makes it easier to continue the conversation now that you’ve joined.

A simple message on Slack (or whatever your company uses) is often enough:

Hey XYZ,

I’m ABC. You interviewed me for this role, and I just started today. I’m really looking to hit the ground running. If you don’t mind, I would like to schedule a quick chat to learn a bit more about your team and projects, and to hear anything you think would be helpful for me to know to be successful here. Really looking forward to speaking with you again.

Once you’re inside the company, people are often willing to share the context they couldn’t discuss during interviews. They might tell you where teams collaborate well, what challenges the organization is facing, and what they think is important for a new person joining to know.

Don’t stop with your interviewers. Schedule introductory conversations with your peers, product managers, engineering leaders, designers, and other cross-functional partners. Ask thoughtful questions, listen carefully, and take notes. More on this later.

These conversations will help you build a mental map of the organization. More importantly, they’ll establish trust before you need it. Months later, when you need to solve a problem or navigate a complex decision, you’ll already have relationships to lean on.

Resist the Urge to Prove Yourself

“Hey, I’m the new sheriff here now!”, ”Can I quickly chime in?” “Here are my 2 cents!”, “I have something to say”..., blah … blah!.

Calm the heck down, especially in your first few days.

One of the biggest mistakes new managers make is feeling they have to demonstrate their value immediately. You join a new company, open Slack, and suddenly you’re surrounded by conversations you only partially understand. New acronyms, unfamiliar systems, inside jokes, and technical discussions are happening everywhere.

It’s tempting to jump in.

After all, you were hired for your expertise. You want to show you’re capable. You want to prove the company made the right decision.

Resist that temptation. That is self-imposed expectations.

In your first few days, it’s likely you haven’t formed the correct reality to have the best opinions. Every company has its own context, history, constraints, and ways of working. Even if you’ve solved a similar problem before, you don’t yet know why this team does things the way it does. Advice without context is often worse than no advice at all.

One thing that helps is setting expectations early. Tell your team and everybody that your first priority is learning.

You might say something like:

Hey everyone, I’m a new manager here. Here is XYZ about me. My apologies in advance because I’m going to be asking a lot of questions. Most of the time it’s for my own understanding. In the next few days, I’ll focus on learning as much as possible from you all about the project and gathering context. But if you need me to explicitly weigh in on anything, please let me know so I can.

That simple message accomplishes two things: it gives you permission to learn, and it gives your team permission to teach you. By setting this expectation, you’re communicating that you don’t know it all and that you’ll spend some time learning.

Meet Your Manager and Align on Expectations.

One of the biggest sources of anxiety for new managers is not knowing what’s expected of them.

One of the best things my manager did when I joined my previous company was document what success looked like during my onboarding and beyond. It gave me clarity on the organization, the team’s priorities, and, most importantly, what I should focus on first.

Not every manager will do this automatically, so don’t wait for it. Schedule time with your manager early. Essentially, the goal of that call is to quickly touch base on what you should have access to, whether there are any priorities your manager thinks you should address first, and to align on expectations.

This is not all there is to this; you need to be explicit and break expectations down. I often see people ask, “What are your expectations for me in this role ”? By the way, that is not a wrong question to ask. The problem is it’s not just a detailed question to ask.

The expectations for someone in their first two weeks shouldn’t and won’t be the same as those for someone who’s been in the role for six or 12 months.

The questions you want to make sure you ask are:

• What do you expect from my onboarding, and how would you measure the success of my onboarding?

• How would you measure me in my first 3 months?

• What do you want me to focus on in my first 3 months?

• After my onboarding, what does success look like in this role after 1 year?

Now, you are separating onboarding expectations from role expectations, which gives a clearer understanding of how you should spend your time in the first 3 months and what success looks like during those 3 months, and afterward.

Build Trust With the People You Lead

When you start as a new manager, you may have the title and responsibility on day one, but you don’t yet have the trust of the people you lead, and that’s normal.

I like to think of trust as a bank account. When you join a new team, you start with an empty account. Every interaction, decision, and follow-through is a deposit that builds trust over time.

Building that trust starts with getting to know your team.

Depending on the company, you may or may not have met your future team before joining. In big tech companies, interviews are conducted through centralized hiring processes, and successful candidates are matched to teams afterward. That means you may start your first day without having any existing relationships with the people you’ll manage.

Don’t wait for those relationships to form naturally.

Schedule introductory calls with each of your direct reports. These first calls should not be about status updates or project reviews. They should be about understanding the person behind the role.

Learn about their background, what brought them into their career, what motivates them, what they enjoy working on, and what they need from their manager to be successful.

Also take the opportunity to share about yourself:

• Your background and experiences

• How you approach leadership

• How you communicate and make decisions

• What your team can expect from you

A manager README can be a great way to start this conversation. Sharing it before your first meeting gives your team a chance to understand how you work and creates a foundation for a more meaningful discussion.

Remember: your team doesn’t need you to prove everything on day one. They need to understand who you are, how you operate, and whether they can rely on you.

Trust is built one interaction at a time.

Earn Your First Wins Through Listening

Earlier, I mentioned that you shouldn’t put pressure on yourself to prove your value on day one.

That doesn’t mean you should wait around and avoid making an impact.

It means your first impact should come from understanding where your team and organization need you most.

The best early wins will not come from you walking in with a list of changes you want to make. They come from listening, identifying patterns, and focusing your energy on problems that actually matter.

Start by meeting with the people around you:

• Your direct reports

• Your stakeholders

• Product partners

• Design partners

• Data and other cross-functional teams

In each conversation, spend most of your time listening. At the end, ask three questions:

1. What is working well today?

2. What is not working well today?

3. If there was one thing I could change to make the team more effective, what would it be?

These questions force people to reflect. Some answers will be small. Some will be contradictory. But over time, patterns will emerge.

You’ll start hearing the same challenges from multiple people. Those repeated themes are often where your first opportunities are hiding.

Use those insights to build your first roadmap. Prioritize the problems where you can create meaningful improvement while also building credibility with your team.

Your first wins shouldn’t come from proving that you have all the answers instead from understanding the problems worth solving.

I hope this helps someone starting a new management role avoid the pressure to prove themselves too quickly, focus on building the right foundation, and create meaningful impact over time.

If you’re an early manager and want to know about the general responsibilities of an engineering manager, I wrote the four core areas of responsibility for an engineering manager for that.