In the past five years, I have been more hesitant to leave an employer because of the transition period to a new role. I hate being a bull in a china shop. Often all my issues rear their ugly heads. Will they like me? Can I do this? The first 90 days are vulnerable, exciting, and stressful.
Most employers I’ve worked with have a “throw them to the wolves” or “see if they can swim” mentality for training their workforce. You have to be resourceful, and a good problem solver to succeed in these types of environments. But, I know plenty of people that have not been so lucky to make it through their first 90 days.
So how do we increase the chance of success for new hires? How do we help them build initial relationships and get early wins to empower their confidence and influence their ability to make great decisions?
That’s exactly what Micheal D. Watkins lays out in his explanation of the Virtuous Cycle for new managers in his International Bestseller, The First 90 Days. The Virtuous Cycle and The Vicious Cycle are two cycles that forecast the success or failure of hiring a new manager.
“The root cause of transition failure always lies in a pernicious interaction between the new role, with its opportunities and pitfalls, and the individual with his strengths and vulnerabilities.”
– Micheal Watkins
Watkins displays these cycles as interwoven factors that impact one another simultaneously to build momentum. New managers feel supported when they build alliances, which puts them more at ease to pitch their strategy or vision to the new group. When they get support for their vision, they feel respected and confident in their abilities at the new company. This indicates there is an optimal environment that helps new managers succeed. When they are surrounded by support, and trust they belong, this puts them in a better position to perform well.
The same is true for the Vicious Cycle, but in the opposite way. If they don’t start out on the right foot with building relationships and getting up to speed quickly with their new role, they don’t get support from others and lose credibility, causing resistance from the team.
The employer and the employee each play a part in these cycles. Employees play an active role in performing, asking for support, and advancing their development. While the company should provide support for avoiding the pitfalls of the Vicious Cycle.
What Are the Pitfalls?
Damage to credibility early on puts new managers in a negative feedback loop, which is difficult to escape. I’ve been here before and typically have to over-perform on my first deliverable to crawl out. As soon as a pattern of negative behavior starts to form, or a belief about someone is backed by any evidence, it’s hard to convince strangers otherwise.
It’s imperative for HR to work with their leaders to influence employee engagement and retention metrics, as it can take weeks or months to recruit a new manager. The first 90 days is a fragile time and you can help the leader you have worked hard to recruit succeed by striving to cultivate a Virtuous Culture.
Here’s Watkins explains his success measures for new managers and we offer some ideas of where the employer could play a role in influencing this process:
Watkins’ Tips for Success in a Manager’s First 90 Days
- Accelerate Your Learning
- It’s your manager’s job to get up to speed as quickly as possible on the business strategies and goals.
- 👨🏼💼Manager Support: Ask the manager to put together a one sheet of the business strategies and department goals for the new hire during orientation.
- 🧑🏻💼HR Support: Provide access to LinkedIn Learning to help them grow in areas you see they need improvement in during the recruiting process.
- It’s your manager’s job to get up to speed as quickly as possible on the business strategies and goals.
- Define a Clear Diagnosis
- Different organizations are solving different problems. Is your manager creating from scratch in a start-up or developing a product for an established corporation? Their ability to correctly diagnose the problem they were hired to solve is key.
- 👨🏼💼Manager Support: Write out the context, particular challenges the new hire is tackling, and what the company is expecting them to solve. Be as transparent as possible.
- Secure Early Wins
- New managers will need to secure early wins to build credibility and trust with the new team.
- 👨🏼💼Manager Support: Hiring managers should give examples of four to five possible early wins for new hires to achieve.
- 🧑🏻💼HR Support: Prompt your leaders to encourage early wins by creating a non-required custom field in your HRIS performance review module. Many systems have goal setting customizations. After explaining the importance of early wins to your existing leadership team, you can implement your own checks and balances to test this model.
- Negotiate Success
- Managers should have a clear 90-day plan and establish check-ins to build consensus.
- 👨🏼💼Manager Support: Schedule a follow up in 30, 60, 90 day check-ins with new hires.
- 🧑🏻💼HR Support: Provide a survey to new managers to check in on how they are gaining influence and buy-in for their initiatives.
- Achieve Alignment
- Your new manager’s strategy should match alignment with the business. Understanding the company goals and executing a plan to tackle those problems is critical for them to get right.
- 👨🏼💼Manager Support: Provide leaders with as much background information on the company, what behaviors have been successful, and other tips to succeed in the culture. The more preparation from multiple viewpoints, the better.
- Build Your Team
- Your new manager is starting out with a new team or inheriting a prior one. In both instances, they should be prepared to make quick personnel decisions that are both strategic and systemic. They will be key drivers for the success of their transition.
- 🧑🏻💼HR Support: Provide them with 5 dysfunctions of a team model to remind them about healthy team building efforts.
- Create Coalitions
- Your new manager will need to be influential with those not just in line with their direct control, but horizontally. Building alliances across departments will help gain support for their vision, especially when they’re not in the room.
- 🧑🏻💼HR Support: Establish a manager mentor program, which includes regular check-ins and is documented by the senior team member.
- 🧑🏻💼HR Support: Give them supportive tips on how to succeed with the particular team they have been assigned to using Social Styles.
- Keep Your Balance
- Transitions are difficult. They say that a new job is one of the top three greatest stresses in anyone’s life, next to divorce and moving. There is never an ideal time to start a new job. Your new leader should strive to keep their emotions in check, making sure their decisions are sound. The first 90 days can’t afford poor judgment as the team is acclimating to the change.
- 🧑🏻💼HR Support: Show empathy and offer to set up a time to check in personally at 60 days. HR should be a place to turn to in times of stress and confidential support. You can establish this relationship in the hiring process.
- Accelerate Everyone
- If your new manager is going through a transition, their team is too. Your new manager’s job is to develop people so they should seek to identify their individual team members’ strengths and weaknesses.
- 🧑🏻💼HR Support: Offer resources and tools like Social Style cards to your managers to encourage relationship building.
Your manager may have been incredible at their last job, but they’re now in a room full of strangers. Failure can be high because there is a lack of training or lack of communication about the direction you are headed in. The easiest orientation I had was when expectations were bulleted out in a word document with the outcomes that were expected of my performance, and my priorities. This technique is simple, yet I have only received it from one employer. Lack of transparency can be a new hire’s greatest hindrance.
The first 90 days is a critical time of angst, vulnerability, and verification that you are the right person for the job. That’s a tall order, especially when you are experiencing one of the top stressors human beings go through. Watkins’ two scenarios, the Virtuous and Vicious cycle, explain the possible outcomes of this period in the first 90 days.
You may have recruited the perfect hire only to discover they fell flat because they missed one of these key indicators of success. HR managers can affect employee engagement and retention for leaders by offering more support through the first 90 days.
We are all looking for more preparation and transparency. When you provide the right information to managers during this critical stage, they can tackle challenges and navigate the transition more smoothly, ensuring a greater chance of success. Developing your leaders is the single most important thing you can do, as the cost can be six to nine months of the employee’s salary to replace them.
Key Takeaways for HR Manager Hires in the First 90 Days
- Implement support where you can. Understand where you have impact and how to influence the process through company orientation, an HRIS, or AI-powered performance goal program.
- Act out of empathy for the new leader; be an ally.
- When recruiting for the position, investigate the challenges the hiring manager’s team is facing and what you can provide to the new manager to help them prepare during their first 90 days.
- Put a visual of Watkins Cycles into your orientation to bring awareness to the challenges, expectations, and experience of others.
- Add in checks and balances to track metrics. If you are challenged by retention or turnover issues, finding out where employees are not succeeding during the first 90 days could help you understand how to influence a better result.
- Identify training tools and see where you can expand development through programs like LinkedIn Learning.
In the first 90 days, anxiety and imposter syndrome can derail a perfectly suitable candidate. The biggest loss is that an employee you hired is right for the role, but they didn’t get enough support in their first 90 days and they failed. Hiring is too hard to let that happen.
When you find and hire the right candidate, work with managers to use these tips to help them integrate and succeed. If your company often says, “it wasn’t the right fit,” you’re spinning your wheels trying to enhance your recruiting department instead of focusing on retention efforts to cure the source of the problem.
