A ninety-day guide to leadership ethics for new managers

You have just been put in charge of something: a team, a unit, a function. What people believe about how conduct works under you is decided in the first ninety days, mostly by things you do without noticing.

This guide is sequenced by the moments that arrive in roughly the order they arrive. Each one is a test you sit whether or not you know it, and the team is marking.

What to take away

Week one: find out what is tolerated

Do not make a speech. Ask questions, one to one, of everyone who reports to you and of two or three people who work alongside the team.

The questions that get real answers are specific. What does this team do that you would not want described in print? What did the last person in my job let slide? Who gets away with what, and why? If you needed to raise something serious, who would you go to, and would you?

You will hear things that are awkward. Write them down, without names, and say thank you. Do not act on any of it in week one. The point is to know what the team believes the rules are, because that, not the code, is what you are inheriting.

Week two: your first meeting on standards

Now say something, briefly. Three things, not ten. Pick them from what you heard in week one, so the team recognizes them as real rather than as a recital.

Then stop. A leader who talks about ethics for an hour has told the team it is a topic. A leader who names three things in five minutes has told them it is a rule.

The first exception request

Within a month someone will ask you to approve something the rules do not allow, for a good reason. A customer needs it. A deadline requires it. The last manager always let them.

Treat this as the most consequential decision of the quarter, because it is. Whatever you grant will be requested again, by someone else, citing the precedent. Whatever you refuse will be tested again, from a different angle, to see if the refusal holds.

The method: ask what the rule is protecting. Ask who bears the cost if the exception is granted. If you grant it, put it in writing, with an end date and a reason, and tell the person that it is logged. If you refuse, explain what the rule protects and what you will do to help with the underlying problem.

Never grant an exception verbally, and never grant one you would not want the rest of the team to know about. A working code of conduct keeps an exception log; if yours does, your exceptions belong in it.

The first time the top performer crosses a line

It will be minor. A discount offered outside policy, an expense that stretches the rule, a comment to a junior colleague that was not acceptable. And it will be the person whose numbers you depend on.

You already know what the team is watching for, and the pillar on leadership ethics explains why this test outweighs everything else you will do. What it does not tell you is how the conversation goes.

Have it the same week and privately: state what happened, the rule, what you expect, and what happens if it recurs. Do not ask them to explain; you are informing, not investigating.

If the team saw the incident, let the team see a conversation happened, without its content; "I have spoken to X about that" is enough. If the team did not see it, do nothing publicly.

The Department of Justice's guidance on compliance programs tells prosecutors to look for whether the rule reaches people whose results the organization depends on.

If the conduct was serious rather than minor, you are past a conversation. You are in a process governed by employment law and the organization's procedures. Involve the people function and, where needed, counsel, before you act.

The first piece of bad news

Someone will come to you with something that has gone wrong. Their tone will be apologetic and their information incomplete.

The next two minutes set the price of every future piece of bad news, and asking "why didn't you catch this earlier" raises that price, while asking "what do we know, and what do we need to know" lowers it.

Deal with the problem first. Later, separately, deal with how it happened, mostly by fixing the system, not the person.

Then thank them, specifically, for bringing it. Do this even if you are angry. Especially then. Whether it arrives on time is set by what they see happen to the messenger, and that is also the mechanism covered under employee ethics, from the messenger's side.

The first time you are wrong

You will make a call in the first quarter that turns out to be mistaken, and someone on the team will know before you do.

Say so, to the team, in the same forum in which you made the call. State what you decided, what you now know, and what you are changing. Do not explain at length; explanations sound like excuses. One sentence of acknowledgment and two of correction.

This costs a small amount of standing in the moment and buys a large amount over the year. It tells the team that being wrong is survivable under you, which is the precondition for them telling you when you are.

The first request from above

At some point your own manager, or someone senior, will ask you to do something you are not sure about. Not clearly wrong; not clearly fine.

Ask questions before you comply. What is this for? Who else has approved it? Can I have the request in writing? These questions are not insubordination. They are what a careful person asks, and a request that cannot survive them should not be complied with. If the answer to the third question is no, that is itself an answer.

If the request is one you conclude you cannot carry out, say so early, to the person who asked, with your reason. Do not go around them first. Do not comply and complain later.

The routes beyond that conversation depend on what the request was, and in some countries a disclosure about certain wrongdoing carries statutory protection: the UK's whistleblowing rules are one such regime. Where it touches anything legally governed, that is a conversation for counsel, and the structured approach to weighing conflicting duties is set out under ethical dilemmas.

Day ninety: what you should be able to say

If any row is blank, that is the work for the next thirty days. If the top performer row is blank because nothing happened, be skeptical: in ninety days something usually has, and a blank there often means you did not see it, which is the problem the whole guide is about.

What this does not cover

Everything after day ninety. The first quarter establishes what people believe about you. Keeping it true is a different job: doing the same things when they have become boring and when the pressure to make an exception has become specific and expensive.

That job, and its costs, are in the pillar. The questions to keep asking yourself are there too; this guide is the sequence for arriving at a position from which they have honest answers.

Common questions

What if the team tells me nothing in week one?

Ask again in week three, one to one, of the people who seemed most guarded. Silence on the first ask is normal. Silence on the second is a finding about what happened to the last person who spoke.

Should I revisit exceptions my predecessor granted?

Yes, by the end of the first month, in writing. Confirm each with an end date or withdraw it with a reason. Inherited exceptions with no owner are the rules the team actually works to.

What if my own manager is the top performer who crosses a line?

Then the guide's section on requests from above applies, the questions are the same, and the routes beyond that conversation are the ones the code names. Where the conduct is serious, that is a matter for the people function and possibly counsel, not for you alone.