5 Steps for Leading a Team You’ve Inherited

When you step into a new leadership role, you face a defining moment—one that often signals how the rest of your tenure will unfold. How will you approach the team you inherit? I recently worked with a client, we’ll call her Maya, who joined a new company and within two months brought in her own leadership team, sidelining tenured leaders with high social and trust capital. Her goal was to “raise the level of talent,” but the move created lasting damage. We started working together six months after the changes when her engagement survey showed the dust hadn’t settled. She couldn’t shake the fear and distrust she had sparked, which destabilized the culture as employees wondered whether their jobs were next. While bold moves may appear to create momentum, they can also generate resistance, erode trust, and destabilize culture. The most effective leaders recognize that immediate upheaval rarely builds sustainable results. Instead, they adopt a thoughtful and strategic approach that balances fresh perspective with deep respect for the organization’s existing talent. Here’s a playbook for how to navigate this critical inflection point, helping you set the right tone, harness inherited strengths, and lead purposeful change. 1. Lead with curiosity, not conclusions. The pressure to perform quickly in a new role can lead even seasoned leaders to make hasty judgments about their inherited team. But quick assessments and defaulting to replacing people often stem from unconscious biases, not data. Affinity bias can lead you to favor individuals who feel familiar in background, interests, or experiences. An availability heuristic can lead you to make hasty judgments based on the loudest or most visible data points rather than deep analysis. And the halo (or horn) effect can cause you to make sweeping judgments based on positive or negative first impressions. Instead of replacing team members, start by adopting a curious mindset. Ask questions. Observe dynamics. Listen more than you talk. People may surprise you once they feel safe enough to reveal their true capabilities. Give yourself time to spot not only talent gaps, but hidden strengths and untapped potential. 2. Conduct an objective talent assessment. To combat bias and quick judgment, take time to conduct a fair talent assessment. Rather than relying solely on your gut, approach this evaluation as a structured process. Build a full-picture understanding of your team by gathering data and conducting a listening tour: Look at team members’ performance evaluations from the past 12 to 24 months to understand how predecessors and stakeholders perceived their performance. Dive into company engagement or pulse survey data from the past year to understand teams’ sentiments about their leaders, identify blind spots, and surface patterns that may not show up in performance reviews alone. Conduct stakeholder interviews within your department and cross functionally to gather more details about past performance, current perception, and any untapped potential. Consider asking each leader to participate in a formal 360 review, or share their most recent one, to gain nuanced insights into their leadership behaviors and how they’re perceived within the company culture. This approach protects against oversights and ensures that any changes you choose to make are grounded in evidence, which builds credibility with your team, shows fairness, and reinforces a culture of performance and accountability. Fairness doesn’t guarantee that everyone will stay, but it does mean everyone gets a fair review and evaluation. 3. Invest in trust, even if you plan to make changes. Bringing in leaders you’ve worked with in the past can create a sense of psychological safety for you—after all, they already understand your leadership style, share your language, and are predisposed to support your vision. But if your goal is to lead transformational change without triggering unnecessary emotional or operational disruption, it’s equally important to invest in building trust with the existing team you’ve inherited. Start by leading with transparency. Clearly communicate your expectations, the process you’ll use to evaluate the team’s capabilities, and the values that will guide your decision-making. As you begin identifying what needs to change, engage in open dialogue. Share feedback, provide developmental context, and give your team members a meaningful opportunity to step up under your leadership. This kind of performance-based runway not only earns you credibility, but it gives your team clarity, dignity, and a fair chance to contribute. This may feel counterintuitive if your early assessment suggests that some current team members won’t be part of the long-term picture. But even short-term allies, when treated with dignity, respect, and transparency, can become powerful advocates for your leadership and the culture you’re trying to shape. Their support can be instrumental in stabilizing morale and maintaining continuity during uncertain transitions. And don’t underestimate the trust capital your inherited leaders may already hold. Their relationships, influence, and institutional knowledge can serve as bridges between the past and future. Even if you eventually choose to restructure or part ways, recognizing and honoring that trust capital allows for more graceful transitions and demonstrates the kind of respect that reinforces your long-term leadership brand. 4. Weigh preservation with transformation. Even if you know exactly what needs to happen to right-size your department and set it up for success, abruptly replacing long-tenured leaders or experienced contributors can lead to significant fallout in a few areas: Psychological safety: As Amy Edmondson notes in The Fearless Organization, sudden changes can erode team trust and silence voices—just when you need open feedback and innovation the most. Employer brand damage: When respected internal leaders are terminated without clear rationale, word travels inside the company and outside, especially when those terminated employees have deep relationships with external customers and stakeholders. Loss of institutional knowledge: Longtime employees often hold nuanced, context-rich insights that can’t be captured in handoffs or spreadsheets. Their departure can lead to slower onboarding, repetitive mistakes, and hinder decision-making. Yes, some change is often necessary. But don’t confuse urgency with recklessness. Smart change honors inherited strengths while addressing real capability gaps. It’s a balance—not a binary choice between preservation and transformation. 5. Balance fresh perspective with continuity. New leaders bring fresh eyes. You may spot talent gaps, inefficiencies, or cultural patterns your predecessor missed. That fresh perspective is an asset, but the reflex to replace existing leaders with those who have shown allegiance in previous workplaces can signal insecurity rather than strategic clarity. Dismissing tenured employees quickly without giving them a chance to adopt the fresh perspectives and be part of the solution can mean losing the very people who hold cultural continuity, high-trust relationships, and engage in institutional stewardship. Sustainable change doesn’t require a clean sweep. It requires a discerning eye. Who has the will and skill to evolve? Who’s blocking progress? Who’s quietly carrying the culture? Who could thrive if given different support or a new challenge? A high-trust, high-performance team doesn’t have to start from scratch. It can be built from the pieces you inherit—if you take the time to understand them. . . . The mark of a great leader is not how quickly they act, but how wisely they decide. When you inherit a team, you’re not just managing headcount; you’re shaping or reshaping culture. How you show up in those early days sets the tone for your leadership brand. Do you lead with empathy and insight, or ego and impulse? The best leaders lead with both urgency and patience. They make decisive moves, but only after gathering the right information. They bring fresh vision, but also honor the work that came before them. And they recognize that performance, trust, and culture are intertwined with each one shaping the others. Lead with a vision and the same thoughtfulness you hope to inspire in them.

5 Steps for Leading a Team You’ve Inherited

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