A useful exercise to go through at the beginning of your transition is to sit down and make a list of all the things that are awesome about the current state of the world. Does everyone get along? Are your processes efficient? Is your team known for rigorous and high-quality work?

Now, next to that, create a list of all the things that could be better. Is your team cagey about deadlines? Does it seem like priorities are always shifting? Is there that one really long weekly meeting nobody wants to attend?

These two lists give you the start of a plan for what you should and shouldn’t change. You don’t need to fix what isn’t broken, but neither should you feel like you’re stuck in a time machine of this is how it was always done. After all, that’s why you got the job! Taking the time to reflect on the biggest opportunities for improvement helps you understand how to best act as a multiplier for your team.

Set Clear Expectations at the Beginning.

Imagine that you decide to hire a trainer to improve your workouts. Does she immediately ask you to do some push-ups before giving you any pointers?

No. The first thing she’ll do after introductions is sit down with you to discuss your goals. Then, she’ll tell you what you should expect from training and how you can make the most of it. Though her advice won’t yet be specifically tailored to you, it’s what she thinks you need to know given her experience training others.

It may seem counterintuitive, but the feedback process should begin before any work does. At that point, you should agree on what success looks like— whether for a given project or for a given time period—get ahead of any expected issues, and lay the foundation for productive feedback sessions in the future. It’s like starting a journey with a well-marked map versus blindly walking a few miles and then asking if you’re on track.

When the sailing gets rocky, the manager is often the first person others turn to, so it’s common to feel an intense pressure to know what to do or say. When you don’t, you naturally think: Am I cut out for this job?

The second reason is that you are constantly put in the position of doing things you haven’t done before. For example, say you have to fire someone. How do you prepare yourself for such a task? It’s not like improving your skills in drawing or writing, where you can invest time on nights and weekends to sketch or compose short stories. You can’t just snap your fingers and say, “I’m going to practice firing a lot of people this month.” You must actually go through the real thing in order to gain the experience you need.

Management isn’t an innate skill. There is no such thing as an “all-around great manager” who can transition effortlessly between different leadership roles. We must look at the specific context.

When you think about formal training, the question to ask isn’t Is this worth doing right now given all the other things on my plate (or all the other things I could spend money on), but rather One year from now, will I be happy I did this? When framed that way, the choice tends to be clearer.

If a company-wide meeting attended by five hundred employees isn’t engaging or memorable, then the company will have wasted five hundred people-hours—ten thousand dollars if you assume a twenty-dollar-per-person hourly wage. Spending even five hours of five people’s time (five hundred dollars total) to prepare for that meeting is undoubtedly worth it. Even one recurring weekly meeting with a handful of attendees can translate to thousands of dollars of wasted productivity over the course of a year if that time together isn’t well spent.

After the meeting, the follow-ups need to be treated with as much care as the preparation. A single meeting is not an end unto itself; it is a stepping-stone in the much longer path of creating something valuable for the world. In the last few minutes of a meeting, get into the habit of asking, “So before we break, let’s make sure we agree on next steps . . .” After the meeting, send out a recap to the attendees with a summary of the discussion, a list of specific action items and who is responsible for each, and when the next check-in will be.

If a decision was made, then that should be communicated to the right people. If feedback was given, then that should be acted upon. If ideas were generated, then the meeting organizer should clarify what the process is to take those to the next stage. These follow-ups can then anchor the agenda for when the group reconvenes.