Jesse James Garrett

It’s tough to be the follow-up act.

People talk a lot about being the first leader: zero to one, built from scratch, vision to realization. But the challenges of being the second leader for a team can be even bigger. Success as the second leader depends a lot on what you step into—and whether you’re being asked to build on past successes or turn around an unfulfilled promise.

Vuokko Aro, VP of design for UK digital-only bank Monzo, touched on these challenges when Peter and I spoke with her for the latest episode of our design leadership podcast Finding Our Way. Her story resonates with others I’ve heard from my coaching clients—the key to success is strategically assessing the shadow of the past.

First there’s the team you’ve inherited—their capabilities, but also their shared histories together, for good or ill. Then there are the hopes and dreams that led to that team’s creation in the first place. And then there’s simply how things went for the first leader, and whether their own limitations have left the team struggling to deliver value. If so, you may also have elements of your mandate as second leader that are entirely new and non-negotiable.

Trust leads change. Be willing to reconsider everything, but be cautious about making too much change too quickly before building trust with the team (and especially the leaders within it). Listen to everyone, but notice also what they are listening for—there’s usually some sort of implicit promise that comes with every change of leadership, but what that promise is may vary.

Define the narrative of your leadership transition. Are you the trusted lieutenant elevated to carry forward the good work of a beloved mentor? Are you the outside expert helicoptered in to level up a team that’s falling behind? And importantly: what’s possible now that might not have been possible under the first leader?

Honor what went before but be willing to make clean breaks. Teams develop patterns of communication and orchestration that are often set or modeled by the first leader early on then never revisited, carried forward by sheer inertia. Separate what’s genuinely helpful to the team from the stuff that people are just doing because that’s how it’s always been done.

Being the second leader means you probably have something to live up to—or something to live down. Taking ownership of the transition itself with purpose and intention enables you to escape from the straitjacket of the past and chart your own future for yourself and your team.