📣 Rosetta Williams, Sr. Director, People Talent & Culture @ Immigrant Justice Corps:
When a new manager frequently says, “Well, I didn’t do that where I used to work,” it’s often a sign of cultural misalignment or difficulty adapting to a new organizational environment. In an international firm—especially in finance—this can quickly erode team cohesion and credibility.
Why It’s Problematic:
- Signals resistance to change.
- Undermines current practices and norms.
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Can confuse or demoralize teams.
- Creates a divide between leadership and staff.
HR Strategies to Address It:
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Leadership Onboarding: Ensure new managers receive cultural orientation—not just operational training.
- Peer Mentoring: Pair them with a seasoned leader who models the firm’s values and communication style.
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Feedback Mechanisms: Use 360 reviews or pulse surveys to surface concerns constructively.
- Coaching Conversations: Encourage framing ideas as contributions, not comparisons. E.g., “Here’s something that worked well before—how might it fit here?”
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Protecting Culture: Reinforce organizational values in team communications and leadership forums.
Bottom Line: HR must help leaders transition, not just transfer. The goal is to integrate their experience without alienating the existing culture.
📣 Sandi Creyaufmiller, SVP Culture & Talent @ Marine Bank
This is a failure of upline management and HR for not properly introducing the new manager to "How we do things around here." What are the organization's values? How are they incorporated into the business?
This new manager was brought in because of their experience, so you need to balance the experience with how it can add value here. Perhaps a mentor would be helpful to aid this new manager in their role.
If the new manager is reluctant to accept a mentor, let them know this is how we can set them up for success.
📣 Sondra Norris, OD/OE Consulting
A new manager needs all sorts of orientation to how they will be successful at a new company, and a great conversation can be had.
1. SET THE STAGE. Our values, why they're important and how we use them to build and reinforce trust in all our leaders - specifically what we ask managers to do. In general through the course of getting normal work done, managers should be referring to our values and making examples of how we protect them, how we actively prevent violations of them, and how we balance them.
For example "Delight our customers" can often conflict with "Our employees come first" when customer care constantly requires hero behavior, listening to the loudest voice, failing to attend to core operating problems. This can be a very rich conversation by asking the manager how this worked and didn't work at their last place - and encouraging to them because here they'll be able and expected to do this.
2. COMPARE AND CONTRAST. What lessons, good and bad, has the new manager learned in their lifetime of being in a position of influence and leadership? Orient the manager: they may be carrying "good lessons" that actually won't work here.
3. SET UP FOR SUCCESS. "Here's what being a great manager looks like here." Highlight the most important manager competencies - for what we're trying to achieve in the business. Sometimes it's more collaboration than individual expertise - sometimes it's the reverse.
Sometimes it's more develop a junior team than it is let your team of senior, experienced people do their thing. Another great conversation comes from this to set up 30-60-90 day goals around metrics and learning and actions.
Specific to this situation, this isn't HR's responsibility - it's the new manager's manager's responsibility to help this person be successful in their new role. A very direct response to this person when they say, "We didn't do it that way at my last company" is to get curious AND to inform. "Here's why we do it this way here ..." and "How did you do it that was different? What were the business circumstances that led to that approach?" and "What was required for success?" and "What were the results?" and "How could you see that working here?"
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