Truth 45. You don’t have to inherit the problem employees

Unless you spend your life exclusively in serial start-ups, with each promotion you’ll probably be managing previously established workgroups. Their systems, codes, behaviors, and organizational memories will already be in place when you show up. And you’ll feel like you’re constantly interrupting a long-running conversation. One of those conversations will be each employee’s past performance on the job. And some of those old stories won’t be pretty. As the new manager, you have the blank-slate choice of deciding whether these are “to be continued” stories or fresh-start opportunities for both you and the problem employees:

Take the past in moderation. Your predecessor may have had the ...

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