Think back to the last time you put someone into a new role. Maybe you hired from the outside—sorting through resumes, sitting in interviews, talking yourself through the trade-offs. Maybe you promoted someone you already trusted, or moved a strong performer into a part of the business that needed them. Either way, you put real care into matching the right person to the right role, and you hoped they’d find their footing quickly and become everything you believed they could be.
We pour enormous care into choosing the right people. Then, too often, that care stops the day they step into the role. According to Gallup, only 12% of employees say their company does a good job of onboarding, and nearly one in five say their last onboarding was poor—or that they got none at all.
In nearly two decades of coaching leaders, I’ve seen what that gap costs. We’re often brought in months later, once a talented person has started to struggle—they can’t quite read a new team or culture, they’re missing the unwritten rules, or they’re bumping into dynamics no one warned them about.
This holds whether someone is brand-new to the company, new to a particular business unit, or stepping up into a bigger role they’ve earned inside it. In fact, it’s often the people already in the building whose transition we underestimate. We assume that because they know the organization, they’ll find their way on their own.
The encouraging news? A few simple, proven strategies can make any of these transitions dramatically smoother, and they don’t require a big HR team or budget.
1. Build relationships to accelerate success
Remember when you were “the new person”? You were probably handed a binder full of policies—and yet the things you most needed to know weren’t in it. Who do you actually go to when you need a quick answer? How do decisions really get made here? What are the unwritten rules about speaking up in meetings?
I coach my clients to invest in results and relationships. That’s because I’ve seen too many talented people underestimate the importance of consistently investing in relationships.
To make relationship-building a deliberate part of every transition, pair anyone stepping into a new role with a mentor who can decode the unwritten rules, and, when you can, a sponsor with the influence to open doors. I’ve also seen organizations bring people who are starting new roles together as a cohort, so they learn alongside peers and build a support network from their very first week.
2. Have a real conversation about goals — early
At the start of a new role, you have a unique opportunity to learn about the person while they’re still learning about you. When I led teams at Deloitte, I would sit down with each new team member to discuss what they wanted from their role and what would help them do their best work. We’d even structure the small things—what we’d handle by email and what would warrant a conversation.
These small steps made us effective from the first week, helped them feel seen, and prevented so many small misunderstandings. According to Gallup, fewer than four in 10 employees believe that someone at work cares about them as a person. This is one reason why employee engagement is so low.
3. Don’t shortchange your most senior people
This is one mistake I see even the most savvy organizations make. The more senior the person, and the more familiar they already are with the company, the more we assume they’ll simply make a smooth transition into a new role, and the less support they get. Yet experienced people are often the hardest to integrate, whether they’re joining from outside or stepping into a bigger role from within, and the cost of a misstep is high. By the time someone calls me to coach a struggling executive in a new role, that leader is usually already working to win back the credibility they quickly lost in their first few months.
You can prevent much of this. When a senior person takes on a new role, help them develop a deliberate plan for their first few months and give them an executive coach to help them navigate the culture. It is far easier, and far less expensive, to set someone up to succeed than to help them recover.
4. Open up development before people ‘earn’ it
With leadership pipelines running dry, we can’t afford to wait until someone has proven they’re “high potential” before investing in their growth. That holds back the very people we’re counting on. Signaling early that you believe in someone builds loyalty and fuels engagement, and it matters as much for a proven employee taking on more as it does for someone brand-new.
Give people the start you’d want
You did the hard part. You got the right person into the right role. The work now is to help them do their best once they’re in it. You don’t need a large learning-and-development function to make that happen. Our New Lens® platform gives lean teams an affordable, easy way to offer Fortune 500-caliber development. And if you’d like a partner who has helped leaders and companies through transitions for nearly two decades, across recessions, a pandemic and no shortage of disruption and change, get in touch to learn how else we can support you and your team.
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