How to onboard the first manager(s) in your startup (with a free onboarding plan template!)
So, you’ve considered your options and decided to bring your first manager(s) into your startup. While your company might have structures for individual engineers, engineering organisations grow the fastest early on, so you likely won’t have a lot of resources to rely on for onboarding them. I’m here to help! In this post I’ve contained a few exercises that you can work through alone, and by the end you’ll have an effective onboarding plan for setting your new manager up for success. I’ve also put together a downloadable onboarding guide which you can use to guide your onboarding process with not just new managers, but all new employees.
And don’t forget, your role will change as well! Read my Managing Managers Guide to learn how to start adapting your own mindset. This post is also usable for onboarding new team leads or senior managers, and anyone else who has people management responsibilities as part of their role.
What’s important for onboarding new managers?
First, decide whether they’re going to onboard incrementally or go all-in from day one. I generally recommend to:
Check with the new manager to see what they’re comfortable with, and, ideally:
Get them to take on the full role as quickly as possible. This will help them take ownership of the role and responsibilities, but has additional benefits:
If the manager is new to management, it allows them to fully embrace the role and shift their mindset and operational approaches. They will also know much more quickly if they actually enjoy this work.
If they’re an experienced manager, it allows them to hit the ground running, and means you can shift to doing the work that you actually need to do, without getting in their way. At the same time, it will also help the two of you calibrate faster and will highlight potential misalignments or growth needs.
Decide on future reporting lines. You essentially have two options:
You decide. Upside: Clearer constraints from the start, avoids potentially uncomfortable conversations.
You both decide together. Upside: More involved, more ownership for the new manager.
You will quickly need to elevate your own role to a higher operational level. As you do this, expect that a lot of your previous work will still be on your mind, but you’ll be much less actively involved than you’re used to. This can be a quite stressful transition, and it helps to be deliberate about it. You’ll find lots of details on this in my posts about what to expect as you start managing managers and how to be successful in your first months as a manager of managers. In a nutshell, your role now becomes about:
Sharing context about the broader business.
Coaching a coach, instead of coaching engineers.
Transferring your knowledge to others, including your new manager.
Operating at a much higher level than you’ve been used to, and having less direct operational insight and immediate control.
Adjusting what being successful in your role means to you, and how to achieve it. This will require some discipline from you, as you will likely initially gravitate towards the work that you already know how to be good at.
Prepare for the onboarding
I highly recommend taking time to actually prepare the new hires’ onboarding - even just 30 minutes will go a long way. Unfortunately, manager onboarding takes a back seat in many organisations. While it may be tempting when you finally have another person on board to be as hands off as quickly as possible, it often has ripple effects later on when it becomes clear that context is missing or employee handovers weren’t done thoroughly.
Work through this article, take notes, and fill in the onboarding template, and by the end, you’ll have an onboarding plan that you can share with the new manager.
Template with comments & context
You can download the full manager onboarding plan template here. Use the comments and notes below to guide your thinking as you work through it.
Defining the role
The new manager’s mission at a high level
Frame a mission for the new manager, and capture the essence of their role and work. Examples:
Take full ownership from day one of the team’s delivery, well-being, and help them deliver on their current goals. You have my full support wherever you need it, but you’ve got this!
Onboard gradually to your new role. We’ll start with taking on the first direct reports and delivery management. Within three months, you’ll fully own the role.
Success in the role
Define what will constitute success for the new manager in their first 3-6 months. Examples:
Complete the onboarding goals.
Fully take on work with the team, while making sure I have regular visibility into the team at a high level; we will define together what this means.
Project xyz completed.
Team decreases their cycle time by 10% within your first 6 months.
Ownership & boundaries between roles
What will the new manager own?
What responsibilities do you want to keep/take on now?
Examples:
You will be fully accountable for everything about your team. This includes the team’s well-being, goal accomplishment, technical decisions, stakeholder relationships, and individual team member’s professional development.
I would also like you to give input on some bigger initiatives that I’m working on, like our new architecture. Out of scope for your role will be higher-level strategy and tactics for all of engineering, which I will focus on.
Setting mutual expectations
Especially if this is your first new manager hire, you may be worried about letting go of a lot of work that you’ve been handling directly: How can you make sure they’re actually managing the team properly? Are they going to cultivate the culture in a productive direction? Questions like these are natural.
That’s why clarifying your expectations towards one another is an important step to successfully onboarding the new manager. I’d recommend giving some thought to what you need, having an open conversation with them, and asking follow-up questions to understand their thoughts.
This may feel a bit awkward at first and you should expect to learn more about them over time as you get to know each other better. Talking about this early on signals that these topics are important to you and creates space for them.
Talk about topics like:
Visibility into work: You may have a hard time letting go of control, especially when you’ve been the only manager for the team for a while, and that’s okay! As you calibrate with the new manager, you’ll build trust and be able to adjust. What kind of regular visibility do you need to facilitate this, while letting them own their job? I recommend starting out with a weekly cadence of asynchronous status updates, e.g. every Friday by EOD. This post includes a template you can start with.
Include relevant team metrics and progress towards goals.
Don’t forget qualitative data! For many managers handing off teams, it’s also important to keep a pulse on the team.
How are the team members doing?
What questions does the new manager keep hearing?
Communication & context: You will need to develop a new muscle of leading through context. Think about what information may be useful to share regularly, and how/where, and ask what they need.
Feedback will be important for you both as you adjust to your roles, so talk about how you’ll share it with each other.
Goals for 30/60/90 days
Typically, it takes new managers around at least 90 days to be fully operating in their new role. In organisations that move at a slower cadence, this may take longer, and you can adjust the time frames accordingly. Here’s how I recommend thinking about setting 30/60/90 goals for managers:
Goal setting principles
Goals should be as measurable as possible. Use SMART goals or a similar framework where you can. In some areas such as relationship building.
Expect that you and the new manager will need to calibrate especially over your first months, in particular on how you communicate and collaborate.
Typically, the first 30 days should be more clearly defined than the 60 and 90 day time frames. First of all, in their first 30 days, everything will be new; secondly, I’d also recommend explicitly partnering with your new manager on further goals, and getting their input.
30/60/90 day goals for managers - template
You can download the fully editable template here.
First 30 days: foundations to set the new manager up for success
Many of the items here won’t be “finalised” within the first month, but getting started will help them later on
Relationship building in all directions:
Direct reports: this should include a context handover from the previous to the new manager. You can use this template which outlines my process and a structure to fill in.
Direct partners, e.g. Product Managers, Platform/Product Teams, and other close collaborators
Boss
Peers
Understanding foundational context
Corporate vision, strategy
Knowledge transition from you and other team members. Initially, there will be a lot where they won’t know what to ask for and what they don’t know. Therefore, I recommend setting up a few 1:1 meetings with you and other team members who have a lot of context, and let them take over from there.
Political topics (no organisation likes to admit it, but every organisation has political hot potatoes, and they should hear about them early on from their own manager; otherwise they’ll hear it from someone else).
Getting to know the team
Team vision, mission, strategy
Team ownership, domain
Relevant team metrics
Current team goals
Team delivery metrics
Building a regular reporting cadence
I recommend asking new managers for regular reports early on, to help with visibility and trust building (see here for more on this).
Identifying potential first wins
This one is crucial: As they build context, I always encourage new managers to watch out for areas where they can gain quick wins with and for their team, as well as for stakeholders.
Using their “new person perspective”
Everyone who’s new to a role or company brings a fresh perspective that is incredibly valuable. Encourage them regularly to share with you what they think is odd, interesting, or both!
Getting & giving feedback
They may have some ways of doing things from their former organisation that don’t align with the culture in the new one. Call those points out quickly to help them calibrate.
First 60 days: First big wins
First bigger wins are possible now, given they have started building initial context and relationships. This may include improvements with the team, for stakeholders, or both.
Encourage them to implement the first big wins quickly. This can be really motivating for the new employee as well as for the beneficiaries, and helps to build trust.
Assign a mentor/coach within or outside the organisation. I always recommend managers partner with someone who can offer an outside perspective and help them learn faster.
Support operational needs. Their new team most likely has some projects or product work that needs their support, and now is the time for them to really dig in there if it hasn’t already happened. They may also need to start preparing for goal setting for the next cycle, or work on roadmaps or similar topics.
Manage up. You may still be learning how to manage managers, so encourage them to manage up.
Ask the new manager for their thoughts on (further) goals, and what they’d like to include based on their first observations!
First 90 days: Fully own the role
Deliver their first project. I always want new managers to not only focus on their direct reports, but also look around and tackle projects that reach across a few teams or the organisation.
Develop a new vision and strategy for the team. Now is the time to bring in their perspective on the evolution of the team.
Ask the new manager for their thoughts on (further) goals, and what they’d like to include based on their first two months here!
Bringing a new manager into any organisation is exciting, and even more so when they’re the first manager you’re bringing in to take over the team you’ve been leading so far. Remember that preparation, open communication, short feedback loops, and clear expectations go a very long way. They won’t just help you focus on the work you need to do now, but will also help the new manager who you were so excited to hire actually succeed in the role.
Contact me if you’d like support in moving your role to a more strategic level, want to improve how you lead through others, or would like coaching for the new manager on your team.
