Your First 90 Days: 5 Ways for New Managers to Lead with Trust, Inspiration, and Recognition

A new leadership opportunity can be exciting and daunting. Shifting from doing work to leading work is a major transition, yet 60% of first-time leaders do not receive formal leadership training when promoted. In your first 90 days, it’s important to get to know your new team, culture, responsibilities, and expectations.

By creating a 90-day plan, you can ensure a smooth transition and create a culture of inspiration and appreciation for your people so they can thrive at work in the long term.

5 things to prioritize in your first 90 days as a new leader

1. Start with active listening and learning

No one wants a new manager who starts by issuing directives. Instead, spend your first few weeks listening to employees—their insights about the team and their job, their challenges and needs, their goals and hopes, and their ideas for improvement. Get to know your people.

Use one-on-one and team meetings to gather employee feedback. With only 16% of employees thriving in their current roles, starting with listening can help you identify what to prioritize as their new leader.

2. Communicate your leadership approach and expectations

Collaborate with your team to set inspiring goals and actively practice hope to overcome obstacles and achieve those goals. Be transparent in the four areas that generate the most impact (employees’ personal work, the team, decision-making, and accountability). Set high, healthy expectations with your people while providing them adequate support. Ensure your communication and leadership practices align with your company culture.

3. Recognize early and often

Even small acts of appreciation and recognition can have a big impact on employee engagement, retention, and innovation. Start early and recognize employees often for extra effort, helping one another out, and great work.

Be sure to personalize recognition and give it genuinely and authentically. Only 61% of employees say the recognition they receive is meaningful, but when it is, there are 3x increased odds of employees feeling connected to their company and 2x increased odds they want to stay. Recognition is one of the best ways to build connection and belonging with your team as a new leader and help your employees feel seen.

Need help learning what to recognize and how to give it? See our Leader’s Guide to Recognition.

4. Build modern leadership skills

Modern leaders are those who strengthen connection, belonging, and trust. They mentor rather than gatekeep. They foster a sense of psychological safety and inclusion on their teams, and lead with empathy and emotional intelligence. Modern leaders inspire their teams but also know how to build teams that inspire and include one another.

Modern leaders are made, and not born, so learn and practice these skills early in your new role. In doing so, you will set yourself up as an inspiring leader from the very beginning, naturally earning the trust and engagement of your team.  

To practice modern leadership daily, get familiar with your organization’s recognition and culture-building tools, like Culture Cloud®, and use them often.

5. Avoid burnout—leaders need support too

Being a leader comes with a lot of responsibilities: administrative tasks like budgeting and timecard approvals, management of employee performance, hiring, leadership coaching and developing employees, taking care of employee wellbeing, strategic planning, and operational day-to-day responsibilities. We ask a lot from our leaders.

Yet leaders are employees too, and the added responsibility and pressure to succeed can take a toll. Research shows leaders are 43% more likely to feel work is interfering with their ability to be happy in other areas of their life, and 70% of employees say their managers are stressed.

Be sure to care for yourself as you do for your employees. Create a workplace community for yourself, find your sources of connection, inspiration, and wellness, and be transparent with your leadership about your workplace experience.

Remember, as a new leader, you don’t have to know it all. Follow this 90-day plan and you’ll be able to inspire your team and provide a workplace culture that helps them grow, be engaged, and want to stay and do their best work.

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Find more insights and research on leadership in our Global Culture Report.