Who are you and what do you know about how we work?

When you start a new role at a different company, you can feel exposed, like the new kid at school.

This is top of mind for me because my 8-year-old son started at a new school this fall. It’s been nineteen school days. He doesn’t dislike it, but the change is starting to feel permanent. What worries him most is his friendships: that his friends from his old school will forget him and that they won’t invite him to their birthday parties anymore.

I feel guilty every time he brings it up. Making the change was the right decision, but it tortures me to see him upset and hear him ask, almost daily, if he can go back.

What he’s missing are the relationships he built over the past five years. Leaders who change companies lose those too. At the old place, people knew what you could do and respected you for it. At the new one, they know your title and maybe your résumé. They don’t know you yet.

Most leaders assume the hardest part will be proving themselves to the people above them. Often, the bigger challenge is earning the trust of the team they’ve inherited.

My friend “Anita” lived this when she left a director role at a large bank to become a VP at a fintech scale-up. Her new team’s initial reaction was essentially: who are you, and what does someone from a big bank know about how we work? She was, in her words, “up at midnight trying to figure out basic things” while the senior team expected her to operate at a VP level from day one. Even the tools were new. Switching from Microsoft to Google and Slack slowed her down (If you’ve ever ‘discovered’ 90 Slack messages you had no idea existed, you know the feeling). It was at least six months before her team started to trust her. Today, her leadership team holds one another accountable and pushes back on her.

Your experience comes with you. Your credibility doesn’t, at least not automatically.

If you’re in this position, here are two places I’d focus.

First, find out what matters to your team before deciding what needs to change.

Early on, run a new leader assimilation: a structured conversation that surfaces what your team wants you to understand about how they work, what they don’t want you to change too quickly, what gets in their way, and what they need from you as their leader. It works best when someone outside the team facilitates, so people can speak candidly.

You can learn some of this in 1:1s, but bringing the team together shows you which concerns everyone shares, and it lets them hear from one another too. You were hired for your experience, not because you already know every process and unwritten rule.

Second, make one of your first wins matter to them.

There can be pressure to choose an early priority that gives you something visible to point to. Instead, look for a problem your team has been living with that you can help solve. Your first win isn’t there to prove you’re smart. It’s there to prove you’re useful.