Joining an organization is a stressful period for anyone, but particularly so if you’re in a senior leadership position. Your new colleagues will be eager to understand you as a leader, a manager and as a person, and many will be quick to judge you on what you do in those early days. 

So, what is the best approach to taking a leadership role with an organization? Here is a three-step process:

Step 1: Ask the right questions. Every leader should be continually asking questions throughout their tenure. Also, coming into a business is a great opportunity to dig deep into the organization. 

As a newcomer, you will see things that those within the organization miss. They will be suffering from “Experience Blindfold”—the acceptance that the current situation and the way we do things are the norm and impossible to challenge. Use your lack of experience as a superpower.

Next, discover what defines the culture. What are the company’s values? Who is valued and why? How do decisions get made? How does work get assigned? Then, try to understand what your peers require from you. 

Step 2: Understand the role. Make sure you fully understand the nature of the leadership role you’ve taken on. Different leadership roles have different characteristics. 

A business manager, for example, combines being a strategist, architect of worldwide asset and resource configuration, and the coordinator of transactions across national borders. Their overriding responsibility is to further the company’s global-scale efficiency and competitiveness. 

Meanwhile, a regional manager must be sensitive and responsive to the local market. It’s often a role that comes into conflict with the business manager who has a glo­bal focus. 

A functional manager—an often unrecognized role—frequently has to serve as a linchpin connecting their areas of specialization throughout the organization. They’re often scanning for information worldwide then cross-pollinating knowledge, best practices and innovations that may offer transnational opportunities and applications. 

Finally, the corporate manager plays one of the most vital roles, leading in the broadest sense while developing talented business, regional and functional managers. 

Step 3: Nail initial tasks. Make sure you cover these key areas in your first few months: 

• Assume leadership early. Good early decisions will have a material impact on your reputation as an effective leader. Demonstrate awareness of important operational issues, swiftly solve urgent problems and achieve quick wins. Focus on the team. Focus on your direct reports at the outset and quickly confirm or adjust the team’s compositions and goals. 
• Work with your stakeholders. Gain the support of people over whom you have no direct authority. Identify those stakeholders and develop a plan for how and when to connect with them. Arriving with little or no relationship capital means you will have to invest energy in building these connections. 
• Engage with the culture. Get up to speed on the organization’s values, norms and guiding assumptions that define accep­table behavior. However, there’s a fine line between working within the culture and seeking to improve it. 
• Define strategy. You must be clear about the journey ahead—whether you are developing an existing strategy or have been hired to develop and implement an entirely new approach. 

Effective integration is much more likely when leaders understand how much progress they’ll need to demonstrate during their first few months before they start. If they know that, they’ll be in a much better position to prioritize time effectively and hit the ground running.

John Ainley is chair and senior leader coach at The Alexander Partnership.