The first 90 days of a new job are the most important, they can either get an employee fired up about a great career move or have them regretting their choice and looking to bail as soon as their signing bonus clears the bank.
How most managers think about the first 90 days
For most, the goal of those first 90 days is for the new teammate to feel like they know what they need to do, they have the resources to do it, and they feel like they have momentum from some early wins. I won't go too much into those three because I think they're obvious and they're so specific to every role, so you just need to build a plan that checks these boxes for your team.
Here's what else you need to do
However, I think there's an even more important goal of those first 90 days, and that's for you and your new employee to lay the foundation of a rock-solid working relationship. Most of the time, managers just jump right into the work, without discussing how you're doing to do the work together, I think that's a big mistake.
Framing up the 'working together' conversation
Here's what I typically do here. At some point in the first couple weeks, I tell my new employee that I'm going to schedule a time for us to talk about our working styles, my goal is to figure out not only what work we're going to do together, but also the best way to get that work done. Usually they're intrigued and curious what I mean by that.
I go on to say I'm going to send them a list of questions that we can use as a conversation starter. I don't expect them to give me a detailed response on every single one, but I do expect that come prepared to talk through most of them. Then about a week before the conversation I send over this list of questions:
- Why did you ACTUALLY join us? Not the 'interview' answer, you have the job now! Give me the real reason(s) you left your last company and joined us. :) I'm oftentimes surprised by the answers I get.
- What are your superpowers? What gives you energy?
- What do you hate doing? What drains your energy?
- Please describe your best manager, what made them great for you?
- Please describe your worst manager, why are they the worst?
- How do you like to be praised? Example(s)?
- How do you prefer to get negative feedback? Example(s)?
- Have you ever felt like you had a coach, not just a boss? Please explain.
- How would you prefer to be held accountable?
- Tell me about the last time you felt really motivated? And demotivated?
- What personal and career goals are really important to you? Have you written them down? Why do you care about them?
Then when it comes to having the conversation itself, it's their show, I sit back and ask a lot of questions. I'll start with something like, 'What'd you think of the questions I sent over, any of them stick out to you?' or 'Any strong opinions on any of them?'
The conversation can go a lot of different ways but I always come away having learned something. Sometimes my teammate comes with thoughtfully prepared (and typed out) answers to each question and we learn a ton. Other times we only get through a few questions because they really want to dig into a small number of them.
Sometimes the conversation doesn't go as you expect
Occasionally, the conversation isn't very interesting. I only get very surface level answers and it's obvious that the conversation feels forced. In my experience this typically means one of two things.
First, it could mean that I haven't built up enough trust with this person in order for them to feel like they can truly open up, in that case, I table the conversation and come back to it in pieces later. Meaning, as I get more trust, I'll sprinkle the same questions into other coaching conversations and see whether I get more.
Second, it sometimes is the first signal that I've made a bad hire. If they have no interest in building a strong working relationship, then it's going to be difficult for us to build trust and really work through challenges together.
Invest in your working relationships like you do your personal relationships
To wrap up, in many cases, we spend more time with our work teams each week than we do with our friends and family. That being said, it's really important that we invest in our working relationships to ensure us and our teams feel great about showing up for work every day.
Hopefully this is a playbook you can use to start building stronger working relationships with your team.
