Building Your Team
A systematic process for assessing, restructuring, and aligning inherited teams during leadership transitions
Building an inherited team is like repairing a leaky ship in mid-ocean: you cannot ignore the repairs, but you must not change so much so fast that the ship sinks. This framework provides a systematic approach to the most important decisions you make in your first 90 days: people decisions.
The process has four phases that must run in parallel with organizational alignment work. First, assess team members against six criteria (competence, judgment, energy, focus, relationships, trust) while factoring in functional expertise, teamwork requirements, STARS context, and position criticality. Second, evolve the team by classifying each person (keep in place, keep and develop, move, replace, or observe) and executing changes while maintaining performance. Third, align the team using push tools (goals, metrics, incentives) and pull tools (vision, inspiration). Fourth, establish team processes for meetings, decision making, and conflict resolution.
The framework emphasizes that evaluative criteria should vary depending on context. A turnaround demands A-players who can perform immediately; a sustaining-success situation allows time to develop B-players. Independent work teams can tolerate less interpersonal cohesion than interdependent project teams. And the criticality of each position determines how much tolerance you have for subpar performance in it.
- The most common mistake is keeping underperformers too long, not removing them too quickly
- When you shake the tree, good people can fall out too; reassure top performers early
- Avoid team-building activities until the core team is in place; strengthening bonds with people who may be leaving is counterproductive
- Team building must happen in parallel with organizational alignment, not in isolation
- Evaluate not just players but positions; a B-player in a non-critical role may be acceptable
- The right mix of push and pull tools depends on STARS context and individual preferences
- Culture cannot be changed directly; it must be influenced through organizational architecture and leadership behaviors
- Treat everyone with respect throughout the process; your reputation depends on how you handle personnel changes
- 1. Establish Evaluative CriteriaDefine the six criteria you will use to assess team members: competence, judgment, energy, focus, relationships, and trust. Distribute 100 points among them according to the relative weight you place on each. Identify your threshold issue, the one criterion where failure to meet a basic standard makes everything else irrelevant. Most leaders choose trust.Pro tipCheck your assumptions about what you can and cannot change in people. If you weight relationships low, you may be assuming you can fix team dynamics. If you weight judgment high, you may believe it is immutable. Make these assumptions explicit so you can test them.WarningYour evaluative criteria may reflect blind spots. If you score competence high and relationships low, you may build a technically strong but dysfunctional team. Step back and ask whether your weightings truly match what the role demands.
- 2. Assess Individual Team MembersMeet one-on-one with each team member using a consistent interview template. Ask about strategy strengths and weaknesses, short-term and medium-term challenges, underutilized resources, team improvement ideas, and what they would prioritize in your position. Observe verbal and nonverbal cues, note what people do and do not volunteer, and watch how individuals relate to each other outside meetings.Pro tipTest judgment specifically by getting people to make predictions in domains where feedback will come quickly, then probing their reasoning. Someone who has developed expert judgment in a personal passion area is likely to have done so professionally too.WarningDon't suppress early impressions, but don't act on them immediately either. First impressions are data points, not conclusions. Factor in the STARS situation: someone who looks like a B-player may be an A-player suited to a different STARS context.
- 3. Classify and Evolve the TeamBy the end of roughly the first 30 days, provisionally assign each person to one of six categories: keep in place, keep and develop, move to another position, replace (low priority), replace (high priority), or observe for a while. Begin acting on high-priority replacements while developing backups. Consider alternatives to termination: shifting roles, shrinking responsibilities, or moving people elsewhere in the organization.Pro tipAs soon as you are reasonably sure someone will not make it, begin discreetly searching for a successor. Use skip-level meetings to evaluate the talent pool below your direct reports. Ask HR to launch external searches quietly.WarningDon't defer implementation-dependent decisions until all new team members are in place if the cost of delay is too high. But weigh the benefits of speed against the lost opportunity to gain buy-in from people you will bring on board later.
- 4. Align and Motivate the TeamBreak down organizational goals into individual responsibilities and hold each person accountable. Use push tools (quantified goals, performance metrics, aligned incentives) and pull tools (compelling vision, meaningful narrative, evocative language). Calibrate the mix of individual versus collective incentives to match whether the work requires independent performance or true teamwork.Pro tipCraft a vision that taps into intrinsic motivators, makes people part of a larger story, and uses evocative language. Then reinforce it relentlessly through repetition, stories, and metaphors. But above all, live the vision: inconsistent leadership behavior is worse than no vision at all.WarningGetting incentive alignment wrong is dangerous. Don't reward individual performance when cooperation is essential, or reward group performance when independent excellence is what matters. Misaligned incentives drive exactly the behaviors you don't want.
- 5. Establish Team ProcessesAssess how the team previously handled meetings, decisions, and conflicts. Preserve what worked and change what didn't. Decide on meeting frequency, participants, and agenda-setting processes. Clarify decision-making authorities and communication norms. Consider whether meetings need to be more inclusive or more exclusive and use that decision to signal your leadership values.Pro tipOne powerful early signal is changing who participates in core meetings. Broadening overly exclusive meetings signals openness; streamlining overly inclusive meetings signals efficiency and focus. Either change sends a clear message about your leadership style.WarningDon't plunge into redesigning team processes before understanding what existed before. Changing too much too fast can destabilize a team that was functioning adequately and create unnecessary resistance.
Watkins developed this framework through his work with hundreds of transitioning leaders who consistently identified people decisions as their most consequential and most anxiety-producing challenge. The framework integrates insights from organizational behavior research on team effectiveness with practical tools refined through application in corporate leadership development programs.