If you’re a CEO worth their salt, I am sure you are familiar by now with the five stages of existence of a team: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.
What you might not know, though, is that the arrival of a new CEO is always throwing an executive team back to the forming stage.
WHY IS THE EXECUTIVE TEAM GOING BACK TO FORMING WHEN A NEW CEO TAKES OVER?
There are two main reasons executive teams are thrown back to forming when a new CEO takes over:
- The CEO has a new vision. This vision may have to deal with the company overall, with the structure of the executive team, or with the ways of working together as a team. Even the smoothest new CEO striving to ensure a maximum of continuity will make some waves at the beginning of their mandate.
- The new CEO / company vision impacts the structure of the executive team. May we like it or not, the majority of companies are going through fundamental transformations these days. New products, services, and lines of work are emerging; some products and services are eliminated. It’s impossible for transformation to avoid the executive team completely. This is why you can expect the new CEO to be also the carrier of structural changes in your executive team.
NOT ALL FORMING STAGES ARE BORN ALIKE
Besides accepting that your fresh CEO arrival has thrown your executive team back to the forming stage, you would also do well by taking the pulse of the intensity of the forming stage in your new team.
Alas, not all forming stages are born alike.
In some cases, the forming intensity is low. If you’re the only new person in the team, we could say that, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the minimum and 10 is the maximum, the intensity of your forming is at 1-2.
However, if you are new and 2-3 more team members are new as well, your forming intensity goes up to 5-6.
And if, for all your sins, your new executive team has more than 70% of new team members whom you didn’t select yourself, your forming intensity is probably closer to 9-10.
Assessing your team’s forming intensity is essential because it will help you choose your next steps and calibrate your leadership interventions with more clarity and intentionality.
WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON IN A FORMING TEAM?
So, now that we agreed that a new CEO means that the executive team is going back to forming, let’s explore what happens in a forming team.
In general, in a forming team you will find two prevalent emotions:
- Excitement, and
- Anxiety.
Unfortunately, neurologically they look exactly the same, so you won’t be able to differentiate them unless you engage in deep talks with your team members.
Once you have those talks and you can now recognize who in your team is excited and who is anxious, you need to do your best to manage these emotions constructively.
Here is the trick: While the excited people will expect to get their hands on the job and start with the new vision as soon as possible, the anxious people will linger, hold on to old certainties, and even try to sabotage your new intentions.
Fortunately, there is one pill to calm down both emotions: clarity.
Provide your new team with clarity around your intentions for working together. Tell them what you do know, and share what you don’t know – or what you partially know, but want to spend more time assessing.
Give them a timeline by when they can expect vital decisions to be made. Set milestones for team development, then hold on to those milestones.
In an ideal world, you should use your first three months on the job to assess the suitability of your current executive team members for the job, then make the hard decision of who stays and who needs to leave. This should give you enough time to start the hiring process for new team members so you can start your second half of the year on the job with a truly new, fully formed, and ready to work executive team.
SHOULD YOU GO FOR AN EXECUTIVE TEAM RETREAT DURING YOUR FIRST 3 MONTHS AS THE NEW CEO?
My answer is yes.
Why, if I am about to change people anyway? Won’t we just burn budget in vain? You may ask.
Well, how can you expect to get a real hang of your people, of the existing team dynamics, of their style of relating to you, of their needs for trust and psychological safety, and of their real long-term motivation if you don’t hang out with them outside work?
One of the greatest mistakes I see new CEOs making is that they prefer to keep the members of their executive team at arm’s length during the first three months because they are afraid they could attach to each other and then it would be emotionally harder to lay them off.
No one is saying that you need to deep dive into a powerful emotional relationship with your new executive team members. But know them outside of your office you need.
Otherwise, you truly run the risk of making strategic mistakes, confusing anxiety with incompetence, and throw the baby with the bathwater simply because you didn’t take the time to get to know your team members before you needed to make some serious decisions, which are your job anyway.
So, to recap, if you’re the new CEO:
- ACCEPT that your arrival in the new role has thrown your executive team back to the forming stage.
- ASSESS the intensity of the forming stage in your team.
- CLARIFY what you know and what you don’t know so you can alleviate both enthusiasm and anxiety.
- GET TO KNOW THEM OUTSIDE WORK so you can assess them informally as human beings.
- MAKE THE HARD DECISIONS of who stays, who needs to go, and who will replace them.
Only then, when your truly new team is in place, you can say you’ve truly landed in forming and you can start moving through storming and norming towards excellent performing. One thing is sure though: Most probably, you will spend your first year on the job in the forming / storming phase. Get ready for it – this stage will require the best of your leadership and will set the tone of your future success.
LET’S TALK
📲 Do you want to succeed in your new leadership role? Drop me a message via WhatsApp: and let’s talk: +420 776 574 574
📞 Are you ready to discuss your unique path to new CEO success? Book a direct call with me and let’s talk: https://calendly.com/cristinamuntean/shared-vision-with-cristina-muntean.
🏆 Did you like this post? Send me an email and let me know: cristina.muntean@vornica.com
💡Would you like more unique CEO insights and how-to advice? Follow me on LinkedIn: My newsletter The CEO Elevator® and my personal posts.
