"She Should Expect My Resignation By The End Of The Day": Boss Regrets Demanding Her Best Employee Come To The Office More Often

Change can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be difficult to get accustomed to. Especially in the workplace, when we’re used to doing things a certain way, it can be frustrating to suddenly be told that the rules are being updated. So to learn more about how managers can make their transition into a new team as smooth as possible, we reached out to author and educator Jim Morris. Jim works with leaders to build workplace culture through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens, and was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda and share his insight on this topic. When it comes to the challenges that new managers face, Jim says, "Each team, business unit or group has a culture that is comprised of spoken and unspoken norms, processes, practices and ways of communicating. A savvy manager will do what they can to understand the existing culture as they make plans for changing things."

"Managers entering an existing team should take a beat and slow down enough to do some assessment of the culture and situation before jumping into action," he went on to explain. "This act alone can be hard because we often have to resist the urge to try to make a big splash upon arrival, but taking the time will pay off. Good managers can morph to the situation versus just doing what they have always done. If the team is doing well and producing results, their goal should be to use the team member's natural strengths to do grow the the team's impact. If the team is under-producing and it's unclear where the problem(s) are, it's essential to keep resisting the urge to do anything too disruptive until they have a good fix on the problem, and then to move compassionately but decisively. Even then, I advise managers to change one or two factors at a time if that can versus upending everything unless absolutely necessary so they can get a better fix on where the issue is."

We also asked the expert for advice on how new managers can implement their changes without upsetting their new team members. "People confuse being compassionate with not stepping on toes," he told Bored Panda. "If possible, begin with building some resilience and openness to change within the team before implementing big, disruptive changes. Secondly, people support that which they create, so help them create and implement the changes if possible. In this scenario, your role is to continually talk about what isn't working or is less productive and invite the team to explore new solutions outside of the status quo to solve the problem. Some will respond well to this, others will resist it. Realize that you need both - status quo disrupters and resistors - to arrive at great solutions. The folks who can't build the resilience or openness to change will, ideally, self-select out."

And as far as how teams tend to change when new management comes in, Jim says organizations need to be prepared for some employees to jump ship. "In any big organizational or cultural shift, expect at least 30% of the group to either not agree with your direction, resist it or opt-out," he told Bored Panda. "Given that reality, unless you have some known underperformers whom your predecessor tried to help grow, it's important to publicly set the intention that you would prefer to have the existing team make the changes necessary to survive. And that, if some just can't get behind or accept the changes, you'll understand if people want to opt-out."