Dear Bob... I was just blessed with a new job offer. It puts me back on my career track where I was three years ago before the great layoffs (train wreck?) began. I am interested in your advice on inheriting a new team of employees. I'm the new "boss" and I wish to make sure I gain their respect and trust, making the team excited and vibrant. Fortunately, I interviewed with the senior consultant on the team and Dear Bob…I was just blessed with a new job offer. It puts me back on my career track where I was three years ago before the great layoffs (train wreck?) began.I am interested in your advice on inheriting a new team of employees. I’m the new “boss” and I wish to make sure I gain their respect and trust, making the team excited and vibrant. Fortunately, I interviewed with the senior consultant on the team and he seemed to like my style and approach. So that’s a good thing. In the past, I grew my own team after being with the company for a while and know how to manage technical people (by assuming we are all un-manageable and require vision and leadership, not micro managing). I tend to have a results-oriented style and like to let people get there by their own means.I’d like your thoughts on how I can enter this new role and have a road map for success in place before I start.– Wanting to start out on the right foot Dear Wanting …For the long version I’m going to refer you to two articles I wrote on this subject awhile back:http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=181 and http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=183. Here’s the short version:Listen.I suppose I should offer some advice that’s halfway between the short and long versions, too. Here it is: Spend your first months finding out what’s going on. Meet with your staff frequently, both as a team and one-on-one. Define the meetings as formal briefings to help you understand what you’re getting yourself into. Have lunch with your peers – you need to build a lot of rapport with them; you also need to figure out who you can trust and who you can’t. Your staff can help you understand the politics, too, but be careful – if you involve them too much or are too overt in asking for this kind of information you’ll be telling your staff that you’re a political manipulator.Find out if anyone on the current team wanted your job. If so, meet one-on-one and have a direct, but respectful conversation that acknowledges the potential awkwardness of the situation, establishes that this individual will have to be your most vocal supporter in public, offers your support for his or her career goals, and makes it clear that if he or she can’t work for you as your most vocal supporter you’ll provide as much help as you can finding them a different opportunity, but that the relationship can’t work under any other circumstance.Meet with key end-users who make use of whatever it is your group does. Find out what they think of it. Likewise the business managers. If one doesn’t already exist, you might consider leveraging your initial meetings to create a key users group you meet with monthly to keep strong communications going. Steadfastly refuse to even hint at any new directions, strategies, initiatives or goals until after the month is finished.Then you can start to offer leadership.– Bob ——– Technology Industry