The first hundred days in a new role: the stress nobody sees

“Everyone keeps congratulating me. And every morning I sit in the car outside the entrance for five minutes before I can summon the courage to go in.”

This is said by someone who took over a leadership role six weeks ago. From the outside, everything is as it should be: the appointment was expected, the board is pleased, there was no resistance from the team. The first meetings went well. On the inside, though, something else is happening — a vigilance that never switches off, thoughts at night circling every sentence spoken during the day, and a quiet fear that others will soon notice that choosing them was a mistake.

The first hundred days in a new leadership role are a period about which a great deal has been written — how to set priorities, how to secure early wins, how to get to know the organisation. Much less has been written about what is happening inside the person in the meantime. This piece is about that second part: the stress nobody sees, because the person carrying it hides it so carefully.

Why the beginning is so draining

A promotion is good news. That is exactly why it is confusing when you don’t feel good about it. Yet the body does not separate good and bad changes as neatly as we would like. In 1967 the psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe published a scale of life changes that people experience as stressful. On it, the death of a spouse carries 100 points, marriage 50 — and a change in responsibilities at work 29 points, even though this is often a change the person wanted and worked hard for. The scale is old and simplified, but its message still holds: every major adjustment uses up energy, whether it is a happy one or a sad one.

With a new role, almost everything changes at once. People who were your colleagues yesterday report to you today. Those who were distant superiors are now your peers — and your rivals. Information you used to pick up in passing now reaches you filtered. Decisions you used to be able to comment on are now yours. Each of these changes would be manageable on its own. Together, they mean that for a few weeks the brain runs in a constant state of readiness, because it no longer knows what is safe and what isn’t.

In the knowledge base we call this state a transition — a period when the old no longer applies and the new does not yet feel like home. I have written about transitions in general in New job, new city, new chapter: the psychology of life transitions. Here I would like to focus on what is particular about the transition to the top.

A hundred days everyone is counting

The idea of “the first hundred days” comes from politics, and it was carried most convincingly into business by Michael Watkins in his book The First 90 Days. His central message is that transitions into new roles are periods of particular vulnerability: you have to learn the organisation, earn trust and show first results all at the same time, and mistakes made early have disproportionately large consequences. The book is practical and useful. But it has a side effect Watkins probably did not intend: many people experience their first hundred days as an exam in which everyone is marking them.

And everyone is. The team is watching to see what kind of leader you are. The board is watching to see whether it made the right choice. Those who wanted the role for themselves are watching for where you will trip. When you are at the centre of so many gazes, it is understandable that you start watching yourself too — every word, every facial expression, every email before you send it. This self-monitoring is exhausting because it never stops. Even in the evening, when you are already at home, part of you is still sitting in the meeting.

It matters that you recognise this as a normal response to an abnormal situation, not as a sign that you are not up to the job. Vigilance has a purpose: it helps you read a new environment quickly. The trouble starts when vigilance becomes a permanent state and the body no longer knows how to come down.

An ending, an in-between and a new beginning

William Bridges, who spent decades studying transitions in organisations, distinguished change from transition. Change is an external event — the appointment, the new office, the new title on your business card. It happens in a single day. Transition is the inner process in which a person lets go of an old picture of themselves and slowly grows into a new one. It takes longer and, according to Bridges, has three phases.

The first part, the ending, is the least visible when you are promoted. What could someone lose when they have gained more? And yet they lose quite a lot: the team in which they were “one of us”, the sense of mastering their work, the right not to know something now and then. Those who skip over this loss often feel it later — as an odd emptiness, irritability or nostalgia for a time when things were “simpler”.

The second part, the in-between, is where most people are during their first hundred days. It holds the most uncertainty and also the most learning. Bridges stressed that this phase is not a fault to be fixed as quickly as possible, but a necessary space in which a new identity takes shape. Those who try to skip it with decisive moves in the first week often make exactly the mistakes Watkins warns against.

Impostor syndrome in the new chair

“When will they find out I don’t know what I’m doing?” In a new role this thought is almost the rule, not the exception. In 1978 the psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes described it as the impostor phenomenon: the belief of successful people that they owe their success to luck or to other people’s mistakes rather than to their own ability. A later review of the research (Bravata et al., 2020) found that estimates of how common it is vary widely — depending on who was measured and how — but that it is a common experience, especially during transitions into new roles.

A new leadership role is fertile ground for this feeling. Expectations are high, feedback is scarce and comparisons are everywhere — with your predecessor, with other members of the leadership team, with how you imagined the role would be. You can read more about where the feeling comes from and what feeds it in Impostor syndrome: why successful people doubt themselves, and there is a short explanation in the knowledge base under impostor syndrome.

For the first months, one thing matters above all: impostor syndrome is not a reliable measure of your ability. It is a measure of how new you are to something and how much you care. People who don’t care rarely doubt themselves. Doubt in a new role is not proof that you can’t do it — it is the price of taking it seriously.

What is worth watching, though, is how you deal with the doubt. Some people silence it with work: first in, last out, reading every document twice. Others hide it behind decisiveness: they decide quickly because hesitating feels as if it would betray their uncertainty. Both are understandable. But both have a cost — the first in the body, the second in your relationships with the team.

The team you inherit

When you step into a new role, you don’t just get an office and authority. You also inherit a system of relationships that existed before you: alliances, old grudges, unwritten rules, stories about what happened to your predecessor. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we look at the family as a system in which everyone has their place, and when someone arrives or leaves, the whole has to adapt. An organisation is not a family, but in many ways it behaves like one. There is more on this in Attachment at work: how the pattern shows with your manager and colleagues.

That is why a team does not respond to a new leader only as themselves. It also responds to someone who has taken somebody else’s place. If the predecessor was well liked, the new leader will for a while carry part of the team’s grief — and often its mistrust. If the predecessor was disliked, people will expect a rescue from the newcomer that nobody could deliver. Either way, people’s reactions end up being less about what you have done and more about the role you have taken on.

When you don’t see this, every cool glance can feel like a personal rejection and every objection like proof that you can’t cope. When you do see it, you can judge more calmly what is yours and what isn’t.

A conversation might sound like this (a composite, not a real person):

“One of the heads of department answers me in single words at meetings. I’m convinced she thinks I’m the wrong person for this job.”
“Maybe. What do you know about her relationship with your predecessor?”
“They were very close. They built that department together.”
“Then perhaps she isn’t rejecting you. Perhaps she is still grieving for someone who is no longer there.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I thought it was all about me.”

A shift like this doesn’t solve everything. But it is the difference between defending ourselves and understanding what is going on.

What stays at home

You don’t live your first hundred days only at work. Your partner, children and friends meet someone who is absent even when physically present. Dinner passes with the phone, weekends pass preparing for Monday. Because it is “only a transitional period”, it often seems there is no need to talk about it. But that is precisely the trap: a period that was meant to last a few weeks can quietly stretch into a year, while the family gets used to you not being there.

It helps to say at home, early on, what is happening — not just “I’ve got a lot of work”, but also “I’m unsure and I’m afraid I won’t manage”. For many people in senior roles this is harder than any presentation to the board. Yet the people closest to you are exactly the ones in front of whom you don’t need to be a leader. If you play the role of someone who has everything under control at home as well, you are left completely alone with your fear.

How loneliness at the top deepens over time is the subject of Loneliness at the top: why leaders have no one to talk to.

The body keeps a different calendar

One of the most common consequences of the first months is poor sleep. Not necessarily insomnia in the full sense — more a sleep that doesn’t bring rest, waking early with a meeting that is still to come already on your mind, or drowsiness in the middle of the afternoon that you smother with coffee. When the body is on alert for a long time, it shows. You can read more about how prolonged strain affects the body in the knowledge base under chronic stress, and about why you wake at three in the morning in Waking at three: what cortisol and a racing mind are telling you.

Other signs are less obvious: irritability at home that you don’t show at work, more alcohol in the evening “to calm down”, headaches, tight shoulders, a sense that you can’t read a book because you can’t concentrate. None of these signs on its own means something is wrong. Together, they say the body is carrying more than you admit.

The gap between what you show and what you experience has a cost. The sociologist Arlie Hochschild called it emotional labour: the effort we put into displaying the emotions a role requires. In a new role this work is especially intense, because you don’t yet know how much you can afford to show. There is more on this in When you have to set the example: the tiredness you can’t show.

Exercise: a weekly review for the first months

This exercise takes about fifteen minutes. Do it at the end of the week, ideally on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning — not on Sunday evening, when your head is already in Monday. You need a sheet of paper, not a computer.

1. Write down three things that went well this week. Not big wins, but concrete moments: a meeting where you asked a clear question, a conversation after which things felt more open between you. In a new situation the brain mainly notices dangers; this step rebalances it.
2. Write down one moment when you felt like an impostor. Describe the situation and the thought that came up, word for word. Then ask yourself: what would I say about this situation to someone I respect who was in the same position?
3. Look at one relationship in the team that puzzles you. Ask yourself: how much of what is happening is about me as a person, and how much about the role I have taken on? You are not looking for an answer, you are looking for another possibility.
4. Check in with your body. How did you sleep this week? How much coffee and alcohol? When did you last spend an evening without work? Don’t judge, just write it down.
5. Choose one thing for next week that has nothing to do with work — and put it in your diary with the same seriousness as a meeting. A walk, a dinner without the phone, an hour with a friend who doesn’t work in your field.

If you do this review for a few weeks in a row, you will start to see patterns: when the doubt gets louder, which relationships drain you, what gives you energy back. This is valuable knowledge you won’t find in leadership handbooks, because it is yours alone.

Where this view doesn’t apply

I wouldn’t want this piece to give the impression that every strain in the first months is a psychological problem. Some things are simply hard. If you have taken over an organisation in crisis, with too few people and unrealistic targets, then your anxiety is not impostor syndrome — it is a reasonable response to a genuinely difficult situation. In that case working on your self-image doesn’t help; what helps is saying clearly what you need, and treating negotiation over resources as part of your role rather than as an admission of weakness.

There is also the possibility that the role really isn’t right for you. Not in the sense that you can’t do it, but that it doesn’t fit what matters to you. Some people realise after a few months that they wanted the recognition, but not the everyday work the role brings. That is not failure. It is information. And it is better heard early than after five years.

And finally: if poor sleep, anxiety or low mood don’t settle after a few months, or if you notice that you can no longer function without alcohol or sedatives, this is no longer just the stress of a transition. Then it is worth talking to your GP, who can assess whether further help is needed. If thoughts appear that it would be better if you weren’t here, in Slovenia you can call the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) or the Samaritans line Zaupni telefon Samarijan on 116 123, available around the clock. In an emergency, call 112.

What talking can offer

People in senior roles often have mentors, coaches and advisers who help them with strategy and leadership. That is valuable. But there is another space these relationships don’t cover: a space where you don’t have to be successful. Where you can say that you are afraid without it having consequences for your career. Where you can ask why this particular relationship in your team affects you so much — and perhaps discover that it reminds you of something far older than your new job.

In therapy it often turns out that the hardest part of a transition is connected with patterns we carry with us: the place we had in our family, how we learnt to deal with authority, what we had to do to be accepted. A new role wakes these patterns up, because it puts us in a position where we are both the authority and under scrutiny. That is exactly why it can also be a period in which you learn more about yourself than in the years before.

What to remember

• A promotion is a stressful change, even when it is a good one. The body counts it as an adjustment, not a reward.
• Change happens in a day, but transition takes longer — and it includes losses we often overlook.
• Impostor syndrome in a new role is common and is not proof that you are not up to the job.
• Some of your team’s reactions are not about you but about the role you have taken on and the history that came before you.
• At home you don’t need to be a leader. If you play the role there too, you are left alone with your fear.