Latest / New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics / New Managers How to Read Your Team Dynamics Early
Transcript
- Lucas: Here's something that doesn't get enough attention when you step into a management role for the first time. You walk in, you've got your 30-60-90 day plan, you're scheduling one-on-ones, you're reading the team's quarterly goals — but the thing that will actually determine whether you succeed or flame out is something you can't find in any spreadsheet. I'm talking about team dynamics. The hidden currents. Who defers to whom. Who talks over whom. Who gets listened to, and who gets cut off. Luna: Yeah, that's the stuff that makes or breaks a new manager. And it's hard to see because no one's going to hand you a map of the power structure on day one. Lucas: Exactly. So I want to talk about a specific case. A woman named Priya — I'm not using her real name — took over a product team at a mid-sized SaaS company last year. Fifteen people. Strong performers. But three weeks in, she realised something was off. Every time she asked a question in a team meeting, all eyes went to one person — a senior engineer named Derek. He'd answer, or he'd nod, and then the conversation moved. And if Derek disagreed with something, the room just went quiet. Luna: So he was the de facto leader. Even though Priya was the official manager. Lucas: Right. And it wasn't malicious. Derek wasn't undermining her. But the team had a habit — a pattern — of deferring to him. And that pattern was invisible to everyone except maybe the people who'd been there the longest. Priya had a choice. She could try to assert authority immediately, or she could start mapping the dynamics. She chose the latter. Luna: What did she do? Lucas: She started what I'd call a 'conversation map.' For two weeks, she tracked every meeting she was in. Not formally — just mental notes. Who spoke first. Who built on whose ideas. Who got interrupted, and by whom. Who brought up problems versus solutions. She also looked at Slack threads — who was tagged for decisions, who was cc'd. It's a low-tech exercise, but it showed her a clear pattern: Derek was the hub. Two other engineers, Maya and Carlos, were also frequently consulted. Everyone else was more peripheral. Luna: So she had a map of influence. But then what? You can't just walk in and say 'I've mapped your social network.' Lucas: No, that would backfire. What she did was use that map to redesign her one-on-ones. She started meeting with Derek, Maya, and Carlos individually — not to sideline them, but to understand their perspectives. She asked questions like 'What do you think is the team's biggest unspoken challenge?' and 'If you could change one thing about how we work, what would it be?' And she listened. She didn't try to fix anything immediately. Luna: So she was building trust with the influencers first. Smart. You don't fight the power structure — you align with it. Lucas: Exactly. And then, about six weeks in, she started mixing up meeting formats. She introduced a round-robin check-in at the start of team meetings, so everyone had to speak — not just the loudest voices. She also started assigning decision topics to different people ahead of time. So instead of Derek naturally dominating a product roadmap discussion, she'd say 'Maya, can you come prepared to lead the conversation on the API timeline?' That gave Maya — who was quieter — a structured opportunity to contribute. Luna: That's a concrete tactic. And it probably felt less threatening to Derek because it wasn't about shutting him up — it was about distributing airtime. Lucas: Right. And Priya told me that after a couple of months, Maya started speaking up more even in unstructured discussions. What's interesting is that a 2025 Gallup study actually quantified this. They found that 42 percent of new managers fail to identify team conflict or power imbalances within their first six months. And those managers had significantly higher turnover on their teams — about 23 percent higher attrition in the first year. Luna: Wow. So ignoring dynamics is a real cost. And Priya's approach — mapping first, acting second — seems like the antidote. Lucas: It is. And there's another layer here. Priya also noticed that some team members — especially two junior designers — were consistently left out of decision-making Slack threads. They weren't being deliberately excluded, but the team's norm was to loop in the 'experts,' and the junior folks weren't seen as experts yet. Luna: That's a classic new manager blind spot. You focus on the loud conflict, but the quiet exclusion can be just as damaging. Lucas: Yeah. So she set a new norm: for any decision that affected design or user experience, the two juniors had to be tagged in the thread and given at least 24 hours to weigh in. She didn't make it a rule — she framed it as 'let's make sure we're getting diverse input.' And because she'd already built trust with Derek and Maya, they supported it publicly. Luna: That's the key — she had allies. If she'd tried to impose that without their backing, it would have felt like a power play. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the big lesson for new managers. Your first job isn't to make a big splash or prove you're in charge. It's to understand the system you've stepped into. Who holds informal influence. Where the silos are. Who's heard and who isn't. Only then can you start shaping the dynamics intentionally. Luna: This resonates because I think a lot of new managers come in thinking they need to assert authority immediately. But Priya's story shows that patience and observation are actually more powerful. Lucas: Totally. And look — we talk about this kind of stuff every week, and honestly, if today's episode was worth a coffee to you, that's the link: buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Listeners like you are what keep the show ad-free, and it's a small way to say this content matters. Luna: Yeah, and it really does help us keep doing deep dives like this. So if you're finding value, that's the spot. Lucas: Alright — back to Priya. By month four, she had completely reshaped how the team communicated. She ran a quick anonymous survey — not formally, just a Google Form — asking 'do you feel your voice is heard in team meetings?' The score went from 65 percent positive to 88 percent positive. And she didn't fire anyone or restructure the org chart. She just paid attention to the invisible currents. Luna: That's a huge shift. And it's a reminder that team culture isn't something you can set with a mission statement. It's built in the small interactions. Lucas: Absolutely. So if you're a new manager, or you're about to become one, my advice is: spend your first 30 days mapping. Don't try to prove yourself. Watch who talks, who listens, who gets interrupted, who gets cc'd. That map will tell you more than any onboarding deck. Luna: And if you're on a team with a new manager, maybe share this episode. Because odds are, they're navigating these dynamics too. Lucas: Yeah. I'd love to hear from listeners who've tried something like this. We're at fexingo dot com. Until next time.