How to Lead a Team You Inherited

Learn the team's story before you start changing it

Every inherited team carries a history: a loved or resented previous leader, a restructure, a project that failed, colleagues who left. That history explains behaviour that might otherwise look like resistance or low performance.

In your first weeks, ask a small set of questions to everyone and listen for repeated themes.

• ✦What has this team been through in the last two years?
• ✦What are you proud of that people outside the team may not see?
• ✦What changed when the previous leader left, and what do you miss?
• ✦Which decisions were made about this team that you still disagree with?
• ✦What do you hope a new leader will not do?

Assess each person on skill and will separately

First impressions of inherited team members are unreliable, because you are seeing them through the lens of a recent change. A simple two-way view keeps you fairer: how capable is this person in their current role, and how motivated are they right now? Each combination calls for a different response.

Hold these assessments lightly for the first two or three months and revise them as you learn more.

Reset expectations in one open team conversation

Around week six to eight, once you have listened, hold a team meeting dedicated to how you will work together. Done well, this meeting draws a clear line between the team's past and its next chapter without disrespecting either.

1. 01

   Share what you heard

   Summarise the themes from your conversations, without naming anyone. People need to see that their input landed.

2. 02

   Say what you will keep

   Name specific practices and strengths you want to protect. This is where loyalty to the past gets honoured.

3. 03

   Say what will change

   Be specific about the two or three things that will be different, and why.

4. 04

   Describe how you work

   How you make decisions, how you like to receive problems, what you expect in one-to-ones and what people can expect from you.

5. 05

   Ask for their input

   Invite questions and concerns in the room, and offer a private route for anyone who would rather speak one to one.

Handling loyalty to the previous leader

If the team liked your predecessor, you may hear 'that's not how we used to do it' for months. That loyalty is a sign the team can attach to a leader, which is useful information. Do not compete with the memory; acknowledge what the previous leader did well, publicly and specifically, and then show your own way of leading.

If the previous leader was difficult or damaging, the challenge is different: the team may be guarded, cynical or exhausted. In that case, the guide on how to rebuild a team after a bad leader is the better starting point, and the basics of building trust in a team matter more than any process change.

Mistakes when taking over an existing team

• ✦Bringing in your own people too quickly. It tells the existing team they were never part of your plan.
• ✦Reading every difference as a problem. Some unfamiliar practices exist for good reasons you have not yet learned.
• ✦Judging people on the previous manager's ratings alone. Form your own view from your own observation.
• ✦Avoiding the strongest personality on the team. Influential team members shape how others respond to you. Engage them early.
• ✦Restructuring in the first quarter without a clear case. Structure changes create uncertainty, and inherited teams have often had enough of it.

Example: taking over a team after a restructure

Imagine a manager in a telecom company who inherits a customer experience team after a restructure that merged two departments. Half the team came from each side, and each half quietly blames the other for problems. The previous manager left during the merger.

In the first month, the new manager meets everyone and notices the same complaint from both sides: nobody owns escalations, so they bounce between the two former groups. At the team conversation in week seven, the manager names this openly, keeps the weekly customer review both groups valued, and assigns escalation ownership by product rather than by former department. The split does not disappear overnight, but the team now has a shared problem to solve instead of each other.

Nothing here describes a real team. Still, friction in an inherited team usually has more to do with its history than with any one person's performance.

Coaching the leader, the team or both

Leading an inherited team is as much about the system as about you. Sometimes the most useful support is one-to-one coaching for the new leader. Sometimes the team itself needs a facilitated space to talk about its history and agree how it will work, which is what team coaching is designed for.

If you are unsure which would help, a discovery call is a good place to work that out. You might also find it useful to compare your team against what a high-performing team looks like.