Lessons for new leaders
The Right Move at the Wrong Pace Still Fails
Hi! I’m Molly. I write about what it actually takes to lead inside growing, changing companies: the frameworks that help, the honest truth about what it feels like, and the messy work of shaping a career that actually fits.
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Every time I’ve stepped into a new leadership role, I’ve made the same mistake:
I’ve gone too slowly.
I’ve hesitated to make the changes I already knew were needed… waited too long to reorganize, to reset strategy, to fire a leader who wasn’t a fit. And if I’m honest, it wasn’t because I didn’t know what to do; it was because I didn’t trust myself enough to do it.
So when a CEO friend texted me this question:
“As a new leader, how do you balance having a strong point of view and driving change with listening deeply and bringing people along?”
…I shared it with Glue Club and asked for their thoughts. This tension — between moving fast and listening deeply — is one every leader faces. And this group is full of people who’ve learned these lessons the hard way: by taking over teams and stumbling, by getting it right on the second or third try, by watching new leaders crash and burn, or by watching turnarounds succeed against the odds.
The conversation that unfolded was one of those moments that reminded me why this community exists.
What follows is a summary of the collective wisdom from a thread with Jared Moray-Wolf, Jeremy Reynard, Karly Segal, Kate Kruizenga, Maddie Chavez, Mari Nazary, Mindy Eihusen, Neema Jayadas, Sean Twersky, and Vanessa Lauf. So grateful to these leaders and the amazing Glue Club community for always teaching me something new!
The group also linked to three external resources that are worth checking out: this fabulous LinkedIn post from Katie Burke, the Support Continuum from Mike Derezin (which I mention below), and the book Decide & Conquer.
Here we go!
1. Listen first — but not forever
Almost everyone agreed on this: the fastest way to earn trust and build credibility is to start with a short, intentional listening phase. Not a three-month campaign. Not a hundred interviews. A few weeks spent with the people closest to the work.
Ask questions like: What’s working right now? What’s broken? What drives you crazy? What would you change if you had a magic wand?
You learn the most important things in the first few weeks because you still have “new eyes.” You’re not indoctrinated yet. You’re allowed to ask naïve questions. People will actually answer them.
This early listening does two essential things at once:
It builds context, so you don’t trip over landmines later,
and it builds trust, because people feel heard before they feel led.
One member summed it up perfectly: “Sometimes you need to go slow to go fast.”
If you skip the listening phase, every change later gets harder. If you do it well, everything later moves twice as quickly.
Listening isn’t about deferring action. It’s about setting up the conditions that make your eventual actions land.
