Meeting everyone on a new team

This resource first appeared in issue #43 on 25 Sep 2020 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Other, Becoming A Manager: One-on-ones

Meeting everyone on a new team - Anna Shipman

Last time we talked about leaving a team, this time an article about doing one specific thing when joining a new team as a manager or director - speaking with every person in your new organization. Shipman describes having 30 minute meetings with each person in her new 50 person organization over the course of several months. Long time readers will recognize it as looking a bit like the first half of a weekly one-on-one; mostly listening, driven by the team member. Shipman made it clear that this was for informational purposes, and that she wasn’t intending to attach the team member’s name to comments, and structured the discussions around five questions:

I’d love you to tell me a bit about yourself – as much or as little as you feel like sharing
What do you think the most important things we should be doing over the next year?
What will get in the way of us doing that?
What’s going well, i.e. what should we make sure we don’t change?
Is there anything you think I should know about?