Congratulations on becoming a leader!! This can be one of the most exhilarating – and terrifying – moments in your business journey. While it’s important to be excited about your new hire, it’s equally as important to manage your expectations as a new leader. This will help ensure you both have a great start in your new roles.

New leaders often struggle the most in the first 90 days. And, studies have found that 1 in 4 new hires quit within the first 90 days. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Hiring an employee is about so much more than posting a job and making an offer. New leaders must take the time to get in the right mindset, prepare for bringing someone new into their business, and create a plan to ensure success.

When you don’t, you have a much higher chance of encountering problems such as employees who are:

• Confused about their role,

• Not performing up to expectations, and even

• Quitting soon after they’re hired.

In this article, we’ll explore 4 common mistakes new leaders make when onboarding their new team members. By understanding what can go wrong and managing your expectations as a new leader, you’ll be able to avoid similar pitfalls and set yourself and your new hire up to hit the ground running together!

4 Common Mistakes New Leaders Make When Onboarding New Hires

Common Onboarding Mistake 1: The “Wing It” Approach

Flying by the seat of your pants and figuring things out as you go may be a business strategy that has worked for you in the past. However, when it comes to hiring an employee, you don’t want to take this investment lightly.

If you want your new hire up to speed quickly, make sure you have a well-thought out plan and goals to help them be successful in their role. This will also ensure that you get the best return on your investment, so it’s a win-win for you both.

By taking the time to thoughtfully consider what you need for this person to do, your expectations of them, and how you’ll work best together, you’ll avoid a lot of confusion and chaos that typically plagues those first days and weeks after your new hire starts.

Common Onboarding Mistake 2: The “Firehose” Effect

Your new hire’s first day, week, and even their first month is not the time to open up the firehose and spray them down with everything you know. One of our clients also described this as “word vomiting” all over her new hire. However you choose to think about it, we can all agree it’s not a good thing.

When we “spray and pray” we’re not setting our new team member up for success and we’re often overwhelming them with too much information, too quickly. 

Consider what information is relevant, timely, and important for your new hire to know now vs. later and share accordingly. Break it down by thinking about what they need to know on their first day, first week, and first month. And remember, less is more! 

Common Onboarding Mistake 3: The “Hard Way” Mentality

This is an old school corporate mindset that’s steeped in patriarchal undertones and one we need to shake loose from as leaders. You often hear it in conversation as, “I had to learn it the hard way.” or “I wasn’t spoonfed how to do everything.”  

It’s a method some have used to hoard information, allowing them to protect their status in the corporate structure by refusing to share anything of substance with their coworkers. This is a toxic and harmful practice, both for people and business. No one wins except the person hoarding the information (and I’d even debate that).

As leaders, it’s our job to help our employees get up to speed more quickly than we did. That means sharing information, providing support and access to resources, and ensuring that your new hire starts off 10 steps ahead of where you did. This will help the employee win by feeling confident in their role and the company will win by seeing faster results and greater progress toward fulfilling its vision and goals. Anything else is an exercise in wasted time, skill, talent, and expertise on both your parts.

Common Onboarding Mistake 4: The “5 Years in 5 Minutes” Expectation

While you may have hired an expert in their field, they’re not an expert in your business. It’s important to remember this and manage your expectations around what your new hire should reasonably and realistically be able to know and do in their role as they get started, but especially during their first 90 days. They simply cannot learn in 5 minutes what you’ve been doing for 5 years. 

Not only is this completely unrealistic (no human alive can possibly know or learn everything you’ve ever done or been through on your business journey), but it also puts unnecessary pressure on you both. You feel pressure to get it all out and quickly (ala the Firehose Effect mentioned above) so you don’t forget a single thing. And the person you hired feels pressured to write it down and remember it all because they don’t want to make a bad first impression and be seen as incompetent or incapable.

Do both yourselves a favor and be strategic about what you share and when. And if your new hire is catching on quickly, share additional information sooner than you had planned. You get to take cues from how they’re performing and what they can handle. When you go slower, you may actually find that they catch on much more quickly!

Final Thoughts

If you’ve taken the time to hire the right person for your team, you want to make sure that they stick around for the long term.

Slow down, breathe, plan ahead, and consider what’s relevant, timely, and important for your new hire to know right now in order to do their job. Not what they may need to know one time in six months from now for a special circumstance.

Understand that being successful in a new job takes time, typically around 90 days. It requires learning a little bit, then having the chance to practice in order to solidify it in their mind. When you rush this process too much, you create openings for confusion, frustration, and overwhelm to settle in for you both.

Let’s make sure you both feel successful in your new roles, so that you can hit the ground running together and set the world on fire! 

Authored by Ashley Cox, PHR, SHRM-CP