There’s a kind of pressure that shows up when a leader steps into a team they didn’t build.

You don’t fully trust how things are working yet, so you start tightening your grip, assigning tasks to individuals, checking progress closely, filling in gaps yourself. It feels responsible. Like you’re helping.

But over time, the team starts to fragment.

People focus on their own tasks instead of shared outcomes. Decisions slow down because everyone is waiting for direction. And the very things you were hoping to see: initiative, experimentation, sound judgment…don’t really take hold.

I’ve been on both sides of this, and what I’ve noticed is that pressure often steps in where alignment is missing. If the team doesn’t have a clear sense of what matters, or how they’re meant to work together, it’s easy for a leader to default to managing individuals instead of enabling the team.

But that shift – from individuals to team, from tasks to purpose – is where trust starts to build. It doesn’t happen perfectly or all at once, but enough for people to move without being pushed.

I’m still figuring this out in my own work.

When you step into a team, that isn’t yours yet, how do you resist the urge to add pressure and instead create alignment?