Six weeks after the promotion, your new manager’s 1-on-1s with you are pleasant and short. The team is “settling in.” The project is “on track.” Everything is fine. Then one of their people asks for fifteen minutes with you, closes the door, and says they are thinking about leaving.
If you manage someone who has just become a manager, this page is for you. It goes deeper into the part of our first-year plan for onboarding a newly promoted manager that belongs to you, the boss, rather than to HR. The short version of that plan is that HR can design the first year, but the person who shapes most of a new manager’s daily experience is the one they report to. The long version is below.
Why “everything is fine” is the default answer
Our guide for new managers on telling their boss they are struggling is blunt with them: it is unfair to expect you to notice, and they have to say it out loud. That is good advice for them. It does not change the situation you are in, which is that your new manager may well not say it, at least not early.
The reasons are not mysterious. You are the person who promoted them, or at least the person who now judges whether the promotion worked. Admitting the job is harder than expected feels, from where they sit, like evidence that you made a mistake. They were promoted for being good at something, and being visibly not good at something is a new and unpleasant experience. And the struggle itself is often hard to name. “I am not sure what I am supposed to decide on my own” is a real problem, but it does not feel like one you bring to your boss.
So the work splits in two. You make it easier for them to tell you. And you learn to see what they are not telling you.
What the research says your part is
Two findings are worth knowing before the practical part, because they explain why your role matters more than any program around it.
You are where they learn the job. Lisa Dragoni and colleagues followed 110 first-line leaders through a job transition for about ten months, measuring them at four points in time. They looked at two things a supervisor can do: model effective leadership, which they called “show”, and give the new leader information about the job, which they called “tell”. When supervisors did both, new leaders’ sense that they understood their new role grew faster. The effect was strongest for leaders who had never worked for an exceptional leader earlier in their careers. And leaders who reported understanding their role better went on to spend more of their time actually leading others (Dragoni et al., Journal of Applied Psychology, 2014).
That last point is the practical one. A new manager who does not understand the role falls back on the work they already understand, which is their old job. You will not fix that by telling them to delegate more. You fix it by explaining how the job works and letting them watch you do it.
You are where they decide whether the company backs them. Across three studies with several hundred employees each, Robert Eisenberger and colleagues found that how supported people felt by their supervisor shaped how supported they felt by the organization as a whole, and that this sense of organizational support carried the link between supervisor support and lower turnover. The effect was stronger when the supervisor was seen as having standing in the organization (Eisenberger et al., Journal of Applied Psychology, 2002). Those studies were about employees in general, not new managers specifically. But for a new manager, you are the organization in the most literal sense. If they do not feel backed by you, they do not feel backed at all.
Neither study says that support is the same as being nice. Both point at something more specific: information, a model to learn from, and the sense that someone senior is on their side.
Eight signs your new manager is struggling
Since you will rarely be told, it helps to know what to look for. None of these is proof on its own. Two or three together, in the first six months, deserve a direct conversation.
- Your 1-on-1s with them are only status updates. Projects, dates, numbers. Nothing about people, nothing they are unsure about. A new manager with nothing they are unsure about has not looked closely yet.
- They are still the best individual contributor on the team. Their name is on the hardest deliverables. Their old work did not go anywhere.
- They are working much longer hours than before. Usually because they are doing their old job and the new one at the same time.
- Decisions that are theirs come to you. Or the opposite: nothing ever comes to you, including things that should. Both are signs that the boundaries of the role are unclear.
- Their people start coming to you directly. A team member going around their manager is often telling you something about the manager before they tell you anything about themselves.
- Their 1-on-1s with their team keep getting moved. The first thing a busy new manager drops is the meeting where problems would surface.
- You hear about problems from someone else first. A missed deadline from another team. A complaint from HR. A resignation, as in the opening of this page.
- They defend the team against everything, or blame the team for everything. Either way, the manager is not yet standing in the middle, which is where the job is.
If you want a structured way to talk about it, ask them to take the Am I a Good Manager? quiz before one of your 1-on-1s. It walks through fifteen everyday scenarios across five areas, direction, feedback, delegation, trust and growth, and hands back a single next step for the weakest one. The result is theirs to share, not yours to grade, and the conversation about it is usually more useful than the score.
The weekly 1-on-1 with a new manager
For the first 90 days, meet weekly. Not “my door is always open”, which in practice means they come to you only when something is already on fire. A recurring meeting that survives busy weeks.
The agenda matters more than the length. If the meeting is about project status, you will get project status. Four questions change what comes back:
- What decision did you make this week that you were not sure about? This invites them to bring uncertainty without having to call it a problem.
- Which conversation are you putting off? There is almost always one, and naming it is half of having it.
- Who on your team do you understand least right now? This keeps people, not projects, at the center of the meeting.
- What do you need from me that you are not getting? Ask it every week. The first few times the answer will be “nothing”. Keep asking.
Then add one item of your own, the “tell” part: one unwritten rule of how things work. Who actually decides budget questions. Which meeting matters and which one is theater. How bad news is expected to travel. These are obvious to you and invisible to them, and a new one each week adds up quickly.
If you want them to set realistic expectations for themselves, the manager ramp-up calculator is a useful thing to run together in an early 1-on-1. It is a planning model, not a measurement, but it estimates when a new manager starts producing more than they cost, and it makes the point that month three still feeling hard is normal rather than a failure.
Show, not just tell
The “show” half of the research is the one bosses skip most, because it does not feel like support. It feels like asking someone to watch you work. That is exactly what it is.
Good opportunities are the ones where the new manager will soon have to do the same thing on their own:
- A difficult conversation you are having with one of your own direct reports, with that person’s agreement.
- A planning or budget discussion where trade-offs get made.
- A hiring debrief, where you explain why you would or would not hire someone.
- A tense meeting with a peer team, where you hold a position without escalating.
The watching is only half of it. Spend ten minutes afterward explaining what you did and why. Why you opened the hard conversation the way you did. What you deliberately did not say. What you would have done if it had gone differently. That explanation is where most of the learning happens.
Correct them without undermining them
You will sometimes disagree with a decision your new manager has made. How you handle that teaches their team who actually manages them.
Give feedback in private, always. Never correct them in front of their team, even mildly, even as a joke.
If a decision has to be reversed, let them reverse it. Explain your reasons to them, agree on the change, and let them deliver it to their team. A reversal that comes from you makes their next decision weaker before they have made it.
Do not take over the first hard case. When their first real performance problem arrives, prepare them, rehearse with them, offer to be available afterward. Do not run the conversation for them unless there is a legal or safety reason to.
Separate the person from the decision. “That call was wrong, here is why” is feedback. “I am not sure you are ready for this” is a verdict, and new managers hear verdicts much louder than you mean them.
Skip-level conversations, carefully
Talking directly with the new manager’s team gives you a view you cannot get any other way. It can also undermine the manager faster than anything else on this page.
The rule from our guide to running 1-on-1s holds here: always tell the manager first, and frame it as staying connected to the team, not as checking up on them. Three more things matter when the manager is new.
- Do not act on what you hear without going through the manager. If a team member raises a problem with their manager, your job is to help the manager deal with it, not to deal with it yourself. The exceptions are harassment, discrimination, safety and anything legal, which go to HR immediately.
- Do not hold skip-levels only when something is wrong. If they happen only after a complaint, everyone, including the manager, reads them as an investigation.
- Share themes, not quotes. “A couple of people are unclear about priorities” helps the manager. “Sam said you never reply to messages” makes Sam’s next 1-on-1 with their manager worse.
When to step in
The hardest judgment for the boss of a new manager is when to let them learn from a mistake and when the cost of the mistake falls on someone else.
Let them learn when the cost is mostly theirs: a meeting that ran badly, a plan that was too ambitious, a conversation they handled clumsily and can repair.
Step in when the cost falls on other people:
- Anything involving harassment, discrimination, safety or the law. Not a learning opportunity. Bring in HR the same day.
- Someone’s job is at risk unfairly. A rating, a performance plan or a termination that you believe is wrong is not something to let play out.
- The same problem keeps coming back after you have coached it. Once is learning. Three times is a pattern the team is paying for.
When you do step in, do it with the manager, not around them. “I want us to handle this one together” keeps their authority intact in a way that taking the problem away does not.
What not to do
Do not wait for the 90-day review. By then, the habits of the first three months are set, and so is the team’s view of their new manager.
Do not judge them by their old job. The things that made them a strong individual contributor, speed, personal output, being the person with the answer, are often the things that get in the way now. Praise the new behaviors, even when they are slower.
Do not disappear after the first month. It is easy to invest heavily in week one and then return to your own work. Months three to six, when the first hard conversations and real delegation arrive, are when they need you most.
Do not make your support conditional on good news. If every bad week they bring you costs them something in your eyes, they will stop bringing bad weeks. That is how “everything is fine” begins.
What this guide leaves to other pages
- The full first-year plan, including HR’s part: the pillar guide on onboarding a newly promoted manager, with the day-one conversation and seven checkpoints.
- The same problem from the new manager’s side: your boss does not know you are struggling.
- Their first 90 days, written to them: the 90-day action plan.
- If they were promoted over their former peers: yesterday a colleague, today the boss.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I meet with a new manager who reports to me?
Weekly for at least the first 90 days, in a recurring meeting that does not get moved when things are busy. After that, you might move to every two weeks, but the right test is whether the new manager is still bringing you things they are unsure about. If they are, keep the weekly rhythm.
Should I hold skip-level meetings with a new manager’s team?
Yes, but carefully. Tell the manager first, frame it as staying connected to the team rather than checking on them, hold them regularly rather than only after complaints, and share themes rather than quotes. Do not act on what you hear without going through the manager, except for harassment, discrimination, safety or legal issues.
How do I give feedback to a new manager without undermining them?
Always in private. If one of their decisions has to change, explain why and let them deliver the change to their team. Separate the decision from the person: say what was wrong with the call, not whether they are ready for the job.
What should I do if a new manager is clearly struggling at 90 days?
Treat it as a support problem before you treat it as a performance problem. Go back to what success was supposed to look like at 90 days, find the one or two gaps that matter most, and agree what you will do differently, not only what they will. Add structure: a weekly 1-on-1 if it slipped, one thing for them to watch you do, a peer manager to talk to. If the same gaps are still there at six months despite that support, that is the point for a harder conversation about fit.
The one-line version
Your new manager will not tell you they are struggling, so make it easy to say, watch for what they do not say, and teach the job by showing it, not just describing it.