The first ninety days in a new team: why it is more emotionally draining than you expect

Week three. At twelve o’clock three colleagues get up from their desks almost at the same moment. One grabs a jacket, another says “shall we?”, and within two seconds they are at the door. You stay at your computer and act as if you urgently need to finish a spreadsheet. Nobody excluded you. Nobody invited you either. And for the rest of the day a question you would never say out loud keeps turning in your head: did that mean something?

In the evening you are exhausted, as if you had spent the day carrying sacks, although in reality you read a few documents, sat through two meetings and learned seven new names. When people describe this period, they often talk not only about tiredness but about shame. They are ashamed that something so “ordinary” wears them out so much. They are adults, after all, they have experience, they wanted this job.

In this post I would like to show why the first months in a new job are so emotionally demanding — and why that is not a sign that you can’t cope, but a sign that your nervous system is doing very serious work. I will lean on the perspective I come from as a marriage and family therapist in training: a workplace is a system, with roles, unwritten rules and alliances, much like a family. When you join a new team, you are not only taking on a new professional challenge. You are entering a family that formed without you.

Why you are tired in the evening when you have barely done anything

In 1980 the organisational researcher Meryl Reis Louis published a paper that became a classic for understanding newcomers. She noticed that what wears people out when they enter a new organisation is not so much the work itself as constant surprise. A newcomer arrives with expectations — about the work, about the people and about themselves in the new role — and every day discovers again where those expectations do not match reality. Every surprise like that demands an explanation. Why did the manager reply so briefly? Why did the room go quiet when I suggested a change? Was that a joke or a warning?

Louis called this process sense-making. It is invisible work that runs in the background all day. In a familiar job you interpret the same situations automatically, because you know the people and the context. In a new one you interpret each of them consciously, and that costs something. On top of it comes something that is well researched today: the constant, quiet checking of whether you are being accepted.

How sensitive we are to signs of exclusion was shown by an experiment that Kipling Williams and two colleagues ran over the internet in 2000. In a simple computer game, participants tossed a virtual ball to one another, and then the other players stopped throwing it to them. 1,486 people from 62 countries took part. Even though they were playing with strangers they had never seen, after a few minutes of exclusion they reported a worse mood, a weaker sense of belonging and a reduced sense of control. If a ball on a screen does that to us, it is no wonder a lunch we were not asked to can occupy a whole afternoon.

A new team is a family that formed without you

In systemic therapy we see a family as a whole in which every member affects all the others — you can find a short explanation in the knowledge base under the family as a system. The same logic applies to a team. A team has its own history, its old grudges and its proud moments. It has a balance: who takes on the thankless tasks, who calms the manager down when they are in a bad mood, who is allowed to complain and who prefers to keep quiet. Murray Bowen, the founder of one of the most influential systemic approaches, described how systems strive for stability — when something changes, the system first tries to return to its old state.

You are the change. Even if you are welcome, your arrival shifts the balance. Someone loses the role of the youngest, someone perhaps the role of “the only one who knows how to do that”, someone gains an ally, someone a rival. People feel this, even if they don’t talk about it. And you feel their feeling, even if you can’t name it. Part of your tiredness is exactly this: you are bringing unrest into a system that hasn’t got used to you yet — and experiencing it yourself at the same time.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, one more layer matters. Christian Gostečnik describes how each of us unconsciously brings into new relationships the emotional atmosphere of the relationships we grew up in. In a new team this happens faster than elsewhere, because there is a lot of uncertainty and little to hold on to. I will come back to this a little later.

Unwritten rules: why you only notice them when you break them

You learn the written rules in your first week: working hours, software, procedures, who signs what. The others are much harder. A few examples people mention most often:

• How long “right away” is. In one team it means within five minutes, in another by the end of the week.
• Who speaks first in a meeting and whether you may disagree with the manager in front of everyone or only in private.
• Emails at nine in the evening — an expectation, an exception, or a quiet competition in dedication?
• What is not talked about over coffee — salaries, the previous manager, that project that fell through.
• Who may joke at whose expense and who is off limits for jokes.

Edgar Schein, who studied organisational culture for decades, pointed out that the deepest layer of a culture is made up of assumptions its members are no longer even aware of. They seem self-evident. That is why nobody can explain them to you. When you ask, you hear “we don’t really have any special rules here”. The rules only show themselves when you break one: someone raises an eyebrow, the meeting cools down, a colleague later quietly tells you in the corridor, “you know, here we don’t …”.

Seen systemically, unwritten rules at work are very similar to family ones. In every family something holds that nobody says out loud: we don’t talk about that uncle, Mum must not get angry, we don’t cry at the table. A child learns them without explanation. An adult newcomer learns them in the same way — by watching, by making mistakes and by reading faces very carefully. It is tiring because the stakes are high. A mistake with an unwritten rule doesn’t cost you a finished task; it costs you a small piece of belonging.

Belonging is not politeness, it is a need

In 1995 Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary argued, in a wide-ranging review paper, for an idea that is widely accepted today: the need to belong is one of the fundamental human motivations. We try to form and keep at least a few lasting, meaningful relationships, and when that need is threatened it shows in our emotions, our thinking and even our health. You can read more in the knowledge base under belonging.

Research on newcomers confirms this from its own side. In 2007 Talya Bauer and colleagues published a meta-analysis of research on adjusting to a new workplace and found that three intermediate factors matter for a good outcome — satisfaction, commitment to the organisation, good performance and staying on: role clarity, confidence in your own abilities and social acceptance. Being accepted, then, is not a pleasant extra on top of the “real” work. It is one of the pillars everything else stands on.

So it is not immature that you think about lunch. Your nervous system is gathering information about whether you are safe. And because there is so little information, ambiguous signs are very loud. A short reply to a message, laughter behind a door you don’t understand, a meeting you weren’t invited to — in a familiar setting they would pass, in a new one they catch. When uncertainty is high, we interpret ambiguous things as dangerous more often. That is not pessimism but old, survival-minded caution.

The predecessor’s shadow and the role already waiting for you

You rarely arrive in a truly empty place. Someone was there before you — they retired, left, were let go or were promoted. The team liked them or found them a burden. Either way, the team has feelings about your position before you even arrive. And for the first few months those feelings land on you.

Sometimes it sounds like a comparison: “Mojca used to do it differently.” Sometimes like relief, which is just as much of a burden: “Finally someone who will sort out this mess.” In the first case you get the role of someone who isn’t good enough. In the second, the role of a rescuer who has to live up to expectations nobody asked you about. In families we know similar positions — the child who is constantly compared with an older brother, or the child who is expected to fix whatever went wrong in the family. I have written more about such roles in Roles in the family: the hero, the scapegoat, the invisible child.

Sometimes what awaits you is not only a role but a camp. If one part of the team hired you against the wishes of another, or if you arrive in the middle of an old dispute, some will read you as “theirs” before you have said anything. How a workplace splits into camps, and why that is a matter of the system rather than of character, I described in Office coalitions.

What can you do? To begin with, ask about your predecessor with curiosity, not defensiveness. “How did your former colleague handle this? What did you like about it?” That way you learn what the team misses, and at the same time show that you are not competing with a shadow.

When your old family speaks up in a new job

Being the newcomer is a position we all know from before. The first day at school. Arriving in a new class. The birth of a younger sibling, when the amount of attention you got suddenly changed. When we join a new team, these old patterns wake up faster than we would like — because the body recognises a familiar situation: I am not accepted yet, I need to work out how things go here.

If you grew up with the sense that you were loved when you were good and successful, you will often overwork in the first months. If you learned at home to be invisible, you will disappear — you won’t ask, you won’t speak up in meetings, you’ll wait for someone to notice you. If you were the one at home who calmed arguments, by the second week you will be mediating disputes that aren’t yours. I described in more detail how an attachment style shows towards a manager and colleagues in Attachment at work, and wrote about the manager who suddenly makes you feel like a child in The boss who reminds you of your father: why we slip into old family roles at work.

A conversation about it might sound like this (composed, not a real person):

“It’s my second week and I’m already staying until seven. Nobody told me to.”
“What happens inside you at five, when you see the others leaving?”
“That I have to prove they chose right. So they won’t say they made a mistake.”
“Who first gave you the feeling that people could make a mistake about you?”
“… Nobody at work, I think. But at home it was always like that — to be loved, you had to be good.”

An insight like this doesn’t on its own stop you staying until seven. But it opens up a choice. Once you know that an old fear is speaking in you, you can separate it from what the new job actually expects. It often turns out that the team asks much less of you than you ask of yourself.

The first ninety days over time

There is no magic line after which a newcomer is suddenly at home. In many places, though, the first three months count as an induction period, and emotionally you can often recognise a kind of arc in that time. The picture below is not a rule but a rough guide — so you know that what you feel in week five is not necessarily what you will feel in week ten.

In the first weeks people are usually kind to a newcomer, but that kindness is still general — it belongs to the newcomer’s role, not to you. In the next period come the surprises Louis wrote about: things are not as they seemed at the interview, and you are not as you thought you would be. This is often where the question “did I get it wrong?” appears. Towards the end of the third month your place begins to take shape. The team starts assigning you a role, and you decide — sometimes consciously, more often not — how much of it you will accept.

This last part matters more than it seems. The role you are given in the first months tends to set. If in the first weeks you are the one who always says “yes, I’ll do it”, you will probably stay that person. So it is worth pausing at the end of this period to look at the place that is forming for you — and whether you want it.

It also helps to let your belonging grow slowly. Relationships at work don’t form at the induction meeting but in hundreds of small exchanges: in a question you ask, in help you offer, in a coffee you go for even though you would rather stay at your desk. None of these exchanges decides anything on its own. Together, though, they slowly weave the sense that you belong somewhere.

Exercise: a map of the unwritten rules

You can do this exercise tonight. It takes about a quarter of an hour, and then you add to it for a few weeks.

1. Divide a sheet of paper into three columns: “What I know for sure”, “What I have noticed”, “What I don’t understand”.
2. Fill in the first two. In the first, write the written rules you know. In the second, at least five unwritten ones you have noticed — who speaks first, how long “right away” is, what isn’t talked about.
3. In the third column, write down situations that surprised or stung you. Next to each, write your first explanation, then two different ones that are just as likely. (“He didn’t ask me to lunch because he doesn’t like me” — “because he always has the same company at twelve” — “because he thinks I’m swamped.”)
4. Choose one colleague who seems well-meaning and ask them one question from the third column: “I’ve noticed that … How does that work here?” A newcomer has permission to ask. Use it while it lasts.
5. Every evening, add one line about your body: when you were most tense today and when you relaxed. In two weeks you will see where the system already carries you and where it doesn’t yet.

The point of the exercise is not to master the rules as fast as possible and submit to them. The point is to see them. Once the rules are visible, you can decide which ones you will accept and which ones you will calmly resist.

When it is not just about adjusting

Everything I have written assumes that the system you are entering is healthy enough and that your difficulties come from the newness itself. That is not always true. So, a few limits.

Some systems really are unhealthy. If after several months you are still being systematically excluded, humiliated in front of others or deliberately denied information you need for your work, that is no longer induction. Trying harder to belong is not the answer then. It helps to keep notes and to seek support — from a trade union, from the person in the company responsible for such complaints if there is one, or from the Labour Inspectorate of the Republic of Slovenia. I can’t give you legal advice, but I can help you hold on to the sense that you are not the one who is “too sensitive”.

Sometimes the job simply isn’t right. The first months are not only a time when you adjust, but also a time when you check whether this system suits you. Deciding to leave is not necessarily a defeat. Sometimes it is more mature than deciding to stay at any cost.

Not everything is the system. If sleeplessness, anxiety, low mood or physical complaints last for several weeks and get worse, it may be more than adjustment — perhaps the change has strengthened something that was in the background before. Then your first port of call is your GP.

If you arrive as a manager, the picture is different. A manager doesn’t only enter a system but has to steer it at the same time, which carries its own weight. I wrote about that in The first hundred days in a new role: the stress nobody sees.

Where talking can help

Changing jobs is one of life’s transitions — periods when the old has already ended and the new isn’t really yours yet. What happens in such periods in general I described in New job, new city, new chapter, and you will also find a short explanation in the knowledge base under transition.

In therapy, when it comes to a new job, we usually don’t work on how to be more efficient. We work on which parts of what you are experiencing belong to the new system and which you brought with you. Once these two come apart, things get much easier. A manager’s criticism stays a manager’s criticism and no longer becomes proof that you are not enough. A lunch you weren’t invited to stays a lunch — and the next day you can ask yourself: “Mind if I join you?”

What to remember

• The first months in a new job are tiring because of constant sense-making and checking whether you are accepted — not because you are weak.
• A team is a system with roles and unwritten rules, much like a family. Your arrival shifts its balance.
• In research, social acceptance is one of the pillars of successful adjustment, not a pleasant extra.
• Old family roles like to speak up in a new team. Once you recognise them, you can choose differently.
• The role you get in the first months tends to set — so at the end of this period, ask yourself whether it is the place you want.