Your first 90 days leading a team

Skills you'll practise

• Explain how relationships, fairness and confidentiality change when you move from peer to lead, and act consistently
• Plan a listening tour that gathers what to keep, what gets in the way and what to change
• Agree priorities, decision limits and an update rhythm with your own manager
• Build a stakeholder map and read the team's key numbers before deciding what to change
• Choose early improvements that are small, within your authority and reversible, and decide what not to change yet
• Write a 30/60/90 plan for yourself and identify where to get help and support

Course outline

1. 1.Your first 90 days leading a teamVideo · 2 min
2. 2.From peer to leadLesson · 12 min
3. 3.Listen and learn: people, work and numbersLesson · 14 min
4. 4.Expectations, early changes and what to leave aloneLesson · 13 min
5. 5.Your 30/60/90 plan and getting supportLesson · 11 min
6. 6.Your first 90 days leading a team: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 18 questions
7. 7.Your first 90 days leading a team: practical exerciseKnowledge check · 1 question
8. 8.Week one as Jordan's leadScenario
9. 9.Final exam10 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out

Sources it draws on

The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.

• US Office of Personnel Management: Leadership Development (supervisory development; US federal example)
• 5 CFR 412.202: Training (supervisors, managers and executives; US federal example), via Cornell Law School LII
• General people-leadership practice for team leads and managers