Gene Hammett is an executive coach and the host of the Growth Think Tank podcast, where he has interviewed more than 1,200 leaders of fast-growth companies since 2014. He is the co-founder of Core Elevation and the co-author of How to Have Tough Conversations.
New managers should assess their team, set simple meeting rhythms, and have the tough conversations early, especially when they’re promoted over former peers. Gene Hammett, founder of Core Elevation, says the biggest mistake is falling back on working harder instead of leading. Start small with two to four practices and adjust as you go.
I’m Gene, and these new manager tips come from coaching people through the two hardest starts: being promoted over your peers and inheriting a team you didn’t pick. Both feel lonely. Both have a way through.
TL;DR
- ●Your work used to be your scorecard. Now your team is.
- ●Former peers will push back, so plan a series of honest conversations instead of one.
- ●Assess the team first, then set a simple meeting rhythm and one-on-ones about growth.
- ●On an inherited team, some people won’t make the transition, so build team leads who lead.
- ●Pick two to four practices, make them how you work, and adjust them later.
Accept That Your Team Is Now Your Scorecard
Becoming a manager changes the way you’re judged. For years, people looked at your work and said, “Great job.” Now they look at your team, and your own output barely counts.
I learned this the hard way in my first company, the one I scaled to $7 million. I was the guy with the color-coded lists and the spreadsheets (so many spreadsheets), sucked into every problem of the day, and I thought that made me a leader. In other words, I was a firefighter with a bigger title.
So what’s the scorecard now? Gallup finds the manager alone accounts for 70 percent or more of the difference in how engaged a team is, according to its employee engagement indicator. Managers are hurting too, with engagement among managers worldwide dropping five points in one year, to 22 percent in 2025, per Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report.
The way through a hard start is tough conversations, and usually a series of them. Every tip below supports that one idea.
Is your newest manager stuck doing instead of leading?
If you’re the founder who promoted them, I’d be glad to help you see what is holding the team back.
Follow These 7 Tips to Get Through the Hard Start
Across my podcast conversations with fast-growth CEOs, the managers they’re proudest of rarely run on thirty tips. A list that long would bury the few that matter, so you start with these seven and add more only when they’re habits.
Expect Resistance and Address It Directly
If you were promoted over your peers, someone wanted your job (maybe more than one someone). You should expect pushback, and you should plan for it before it shows up in a meeting.
I say it the same way to every new manager I coach.
“A new manager that’s promoted over their peers has got a tough road ahead of them because their peers probably wanted the position too.”
The answer is a direct conversation with each person, early, and you’ll probably need more than one. I tell people, “When I say tough conversation, it may not be one.” Then I add the part most people forget. “It may be a series.”
- ●Name the change out loud in your first week.
- ●Ask each former peer what they need from you now.
- ●Follow up when the old dynamics come back, because they will.
If you want a structure for those talks, my walkthrough of how to have tough conversations lays one out step by step.
The shift: From hoping the tension fades on its own to addressing it in the first two weeks.
Step Up and Lead Instead of Doing
Your “old lever” was working harder. That lever got you promoted, and I promise you it won’t scale now.
“That manager really does have to have the confidence to step up and lead.”
People mix up doing and leading all the time. Doing means you finish the work yourself. Leading means the work gets finished through other people, and they get better at it every time.
You might be thinking, “But I’m faster if I just do it.” You’re right, for this week. Next month your team is still waiting on you, you’re still the bottleneck, and you’re more tired than you were last month.
The shift: From proving yourself with your own output to proving yourself with the team’s output.
Assess Your Team Before You Change Anything
Look at people one at a time, then step back and look at the team as a whole. You can’t lead a team you haven’t really seen.
When I coach a new manager, I ask for this in the first two weeks, before they touch a single process. Write down what you find, with pen and paper if you can, and you’ll come back to it in every one-on-one and every decision about who leads what.
Your own boss is running a similar check on you. My guide to telling whether a manager is effective shows the signals they’ll look at.
The shift: From changing things on day one to changing the things you actually understand.
Set a Meeting Rhythm With Clear Agendas
A rhythm tells people what to expect and when. In the third quarter of 2026, only 46 percent of US employees strongly agreed that they were clear on what their job expects of them, according to Gallup’s latest engagement update.
Think about that for a second. More than half of US employees can’t say for sure what’s expected of them. Your rhythm is how you close that gap on your team.
Pick one rhythm that fits the work and send a clear agenda ahead of every meeting. A meeting without an agenda turns into a status report, and nobody grows in a status report.
The shift: From meetings when something breaks to meetings people can plan their week around.
Hold One-on-Ones That Move the Needle
You’ve heard “hold regular one-on-ones” a hundred times. But are you actually doing them, every week, about the person instead of the task list?
People who sit down with their manager on a steady schedule are close to three times more likely to be engaged, according to Gallup’s research on what employees want from managers. Gallup’s analysis of manager span of control adds that useful feedback every week comes close to tripling the number of engaged people on a team.
Keep status updates for the team meeting. Use the one-on-one for questions like these:
- ●What do you want to be doing a year from now?
- ●What is one thing getting in your way this week?
- ●Where do you want more ownership?
- ●What should I start or stop doing as your manager?
The shift: From checking on tasks to growing the person in front of you.
Build Layers as the Team Grows
A team of five can run through one manager. A team of twenty-five can’t, no matter how hard that manager works, and I’ve watched good managers wear themselves out trying to be the only layer.
As the team grows, develop team leads who lead. Give them real decisions, coach them through the first few, and then get out of the way. Who on your team is ready for one real decision this month?
If your company is building that bench on purpose, my guide to manager development covers the program side.
The shift: From every question landing on your desk to team leads who answer most of them.
Start Small and Adjust
New managers love a big launch. Five new processes, a new tool, a new meeting, all in month one. I get the urge, because I’ve done it myself, but your team can’t absorb that much change at once.
“Start small and don’t try to do everything at one time.”
Pick two to four practices and make them “how we work.” Then tell the team the plan is a starting point. Being willing to say “that we’re starting with this way and then we’re going to adjust it later” keeps people open to change, because they know their feedback counts.
The shift: From a big launch that fades to a few habits that stick.
Win Over the Peers Who Wanted Your Job
Former peers have to learn to see you as an authority. That takes a different kind of conversation than the ones you had over lunch last month.
People confuse friendship and respect here. Friendship is about being liked. Respect is about being trusted to be clear and fair, and that’s the one you need from your team.
Some of your former peers will test you. Address it directly every time, because avoiding the conversation teaches your whole team that the old rules still apply.
Do you train the managers you promote?
If you’re the founder or HR leader behind a new manager, join my free live workshop on building leaders at every level.
Take Over an Inherited Team Without Losing a Year
Inheriting a team is a different kind of hard. You didn’t pick these people, and they didn’t pick you.
“Every time I’ve ever seen someone inherit a team, there have always been some people that don’t make the transition.”
I coached a senior leader through exactly this, and I’ll keep him anonymous. He came in from outside the company, and he’d spent decades getting great at the work itself with very little practice building a team. The team pushed back on his changes, friction grew in the culture and in performance, and his only lever was working harder.
Over that year he got comfortable with tough conversations, and he started asking his team leads to really lead. Today the team cares about doing a good job beyond the paycheck. In my words, he became “the leader that the team deserves.”
He did the hard work, and he owns the result. I just helped him see the way.
So expect friction, address it directly, and build team leads. Plan for the fact that some people won’t make the transition, and treat that as part of the job instead of a failure.
Lead People Who Know More Than You
Sooner or later you’ll manage someone who knows the work better than you do. On an inherited team, that might be half the room.
Here’s the trap. You feel you have to prove you belong, so you start competing with your best expert on the details, and you lose that fight every time.
Your job is different from theirs. They own the expertise. You own the direction, the standards, and the conversations that keep the team moving together.
- ●Ask for their read on the work before you make a call that touches it.
- ●Hand them ownership of a problem that fits what they know best.
- ●Tell them plainly what you need from them as a leader on the team.
- ●Hold the same standard for them as for everyone else, including the tough conversation when it’s needed.
Do you have to know more than everyone to lead them? No. You have to be clear about where you’re going and fair about how you get there.
Avoid the Mistakes That Harden Into Culture
New managers who avoid the tough conversations let resistance harden into culture. They fall back on doing the work themselves, they burn out, and the team never takes ownership.
I’ve been guilty of a few of these myself. Which of them is you right now?
Plan Your First 90 Days in Three Phases
A simple plan keeps you from changing everything at once. Use this as a starting shape and adjust it to your team.
If your company wants a structured version for a new leader, see how to build a leadership development plan that runs alongside this one.
Build Confidence One Conversation at a Time
What if confidence isn’t something you need before the hard conversations? You earn it by having them, one at a time.
Every conversation you handle well makes the next one a little easier. The same goes for every meeting that starts on time and every one-on-one where someone leaves a step further along.
- ●Keep a short list of the conversations you’ve had and what changed after each one.
- ●Find a coach or mentor who has led a team through a hard start.
- ●Read with a purpose. My list of the best books for new managers is a good place to begin.
In my experience, a struggling manager can become a strong one in about a year with coaching. The leader in the story above did exactly that.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are short answers to the questions new managers ask me most.
Start With One Conversation This Week
Your work used to be your scorecard. Now your team is, and the first step is the conversation you’ve been putting off.
Take ten minutes today with a pen and paper. Write down the names of the people you need to talk to, and put a day next to each one.
Who is the first name on that list?
What happens to your team if you wait another month?
Want help building managers who lead?
To be clear, you can work through all of this on your own. But if you’re a founder whose managers still run everything through you, let’s look at what’s in the way.