I learned many things during 15 years in sales leadership.  I took over teams that were high functioning and low functioning.  I took over teams that were full of rookies and teams that were full of tenured people.  No matter the situation, I always learned more from my mistakes than I did from my successes.

Last week I began a series based on lessons I learned taking over new teams.  In that post, I laid out 5 Key Steps for new leaders taking over new teams.  They are:

  1. Communicate With The Previous Leader
  2. Meet Face to Face With The Influence Leaders
  3. Bring The Team Together Physically
  4. Build Trust With The Team
  5. Bring The Team Together Culturally

Step 1:  Communicate With The Previous Leader

5 Steps

I found out the hard way there is information I can use and there is information shouldn’t use from the last leader.

Information I CAN use when I am taking over a team:

On going initiatives:

Don’t do what I’ve done.  I stepped into a team and began implementing new strategies and moving people around before I knew what the current priorities were for the team.  Ask questions about:

  • What progress has been made?
  • Who on the team is responsible for these intiatives?
  • What are the deadlines?
  • What are the goals?

Key client relationships:

It doesn’t matter if I am in sales, marketing, operations or manufacturing, I have clients and customers I must become familiar with.

Some of these clients will be external clients (i.e. organizations or individuals who purchase my companies products or services.)  Some of these clients will be internal clients (i.e. departments and department heads with whom I collaborate.)  What should I know?

  • The top 3 external and internal clients
  • The key individuals within each client organization
  • The current state of the relationships:  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Critical operational/historical reports:

There is nothing worse than stepping onto a team without any objective information to begin evaluating.  Without objective information that comes from these reports, I am at the mercy of the opinions of others.  What type of reports are key?

  • Sales and Profit Reports
  • Income and Expense Tracking Reports
  • Trend reports:  What has been happening over the last 36, 12, and 6 months.

Outstanding promises made to superiors, peers, employees and customers:

Trust me.  Superiors, peers, employees and customers expect promises to be fulfilled.  They never cared whether I was the one who made the promises to them or not.  I must find out what promises the outgoing leader left unfulfilled.

  • Any non-standardized reporting to superiors.
  • Any on-going personnel issues that my superiors or HR are currently involved in.
  • Collaborative projects with peers.
  • Promises to employees about leadership opportunities, expense allocations, vacation allowances…
  • Unfulfilled promises to external customers that require my follow-up.

Information I SHOULDN’T use when I am taking over a team

The biggest mistake I watched others make when inheriting a new team, was soliciting too much information about the personnel they were inheriting.  I avoided this mistake thanks to the advise of a wise leader at early point in my career.

He told me to ignore the personal opinions of the previous leader as well as any performance reviews or previous documented coaching, unless that individual employee was close to being fired.  Why?

  • To keep my mind free of both the positive and negative biases of someone else.
  • My opinions should be based on what I observe moving forward, not based on what someone else observed.  Everyone deserves a clean slate.
    • That is what I want as a leaders as well.  I want my people to evaluate my leadership based on what they observe, not based on rumors. I need to do the same for them.
    • When I announce to the group that I have not and will not review their personnel files, this builds instant trust.  Whether someone was a perennial favorite of the previous leaders or in their doghouse, they all know my opinions will be based on what I see, not what I hear.

I am speaking from positive experience.  I’ve seen careers revived because of the trust I was able to extend to them as a result of my lack of bias.  In one case, the individual was promoted even though his previous leader had a low opinion of him.

At the same time, the true problem children will step forward quickly enough.  This approach has also helped my coaching of them be based solely on my observations and thus watering down any of their arguments about preconceived biases.

 The Bottom Line:

Getting information from the previous leader may be difficult depending on why they left or where they went.  However, the information I suggest you get and the information I suggest you avoid will help you avoid problems I encountered or have seen others encounter in the past.

Now the key is how do you use this information.  Step 2 and Step 3 in this series discuss how I use this information with my Influence Leaders and in my first team meeting.

Question:

What key pieces of information should someone obtain from the former leader that I did not elaborate on?