3 Things To Stop Doing In Week One
The skill that got you promoted, now hurts you
You think this promotion means holding your team to your standard until they meet it. It doesn't. Here's the switch nobody explains in week one.
You know exactly what good looks like. Then you get promoted — and expecting everyone else to hit that exact standard becomes the thing quietly wrecking your team.
Early in my first management job, I assigned a team member to write a performance report. Routine work — something we did every cycle. I expected it back in my style: my structure, my tone, the way I’d always written performance reports myself.
It came back close. Not quite what I wanted. So I rewrote it myself before it went out.
Side note — I don’t actually think my version was better. It was just mine.
Next cycle, I assigned the same report again. Same result. Still not what I wanted.
That’s when it hit me.
I wasn’t managing. I was doing the same job with extra steps — assign, disappoint, rewrite, repeat. If I kept redoing it every time, I wasn’t training anyone to write it my way. I was just making sure nobody ever had to learn.
Here’s the belief nobody warns you about: you think the promotion means holding your team to your standard until they meet it. It doesn’t. It means transferring the standard, so the work stops needing you in it.
You’re not behind for missing this. More than half of new managers get zero training for the role, according to Cegos’s 2025 survey. I didn’t get a memo either — I got two rewritten reports and a slow, annoying realization.
The Role Rewrite
Here’s the tool I built out of that realization. I call it The Role Rewrite — three short lists, filled out before old habits calcify into how you manage.
1. STOP
The big one: stop rewriting the work back into your own style because it’s faster than teaching the standard behind it. It feels like quality control. It’s actually just you, doing the job twice, forever.
Also stop assigning the same task again without changing anything about how you hand it off. A second disappointing result isn’t proof they can’t do it — it’s proof you haven’t actually shown them what “good” looks like yet.
2. START This is the part most new managers skip, because it feels slower than just fixing it yourself. It isn’t.
Start writing down what “good” actually means before you hand off the next task — the structure, the tone, the standard that’s currently only in your head
Start reviewing with the person instead of rewriting around them — walk through what you’d change and why
Start naming the shift out loud. Your team is watching for it whether you say it or not
3. KEEP
Keep your standards — just hold them through feedback and coaching, not through redoing the work yourself
Keep showing up close to the work sometimes, so “good” doesn’t stay locked in your head where nobody else can see it
If I kept rewriting it every time, I wasn’t training anyone. I was just making sure nobody had to learn.
The Reset Conversation
Write your three lists. Then have one short conversation with your team:
“I want to name something. When I hand off work, I’ve been expecting it back exactly the way I’d do it myself — then quietly redoing it when it isn’t. That’s on me, not you. Next time, let’s talk through what ‘good’ looks like before you start, not after you’re done. And if I take something back over without explaining why, call it out.”
Say it in week one. It’s easier to set the frame early than to walk it back after months of quietly redoing everyone’s work for them.
I wrote more about surviving the mechanics of those first months here: Your First 90 Days as a Manager.
This is exactly the kind of thing that should get named in a 1:1, not just discovered after the second rewrite. If structuring that conversation feels awkward, I put together a free guide for it: No More Awkward 1-on-1s.
You don’t have to be the one holding the standard alone anymore. That’s not a demotion. It’s the whole job now.
Know someone who just got promoted and is quietly rewriting everyone's work? Forward them this one.
What's one thing you had to consciously stop doing in your first month as a manager?
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