Inherited Leadership: Lessons from a Team I Didn’t Build

No. 1 — I Didn’t Choose the Role. The Role Chose Me

I didn’t want the job.

That’s not how leadership stories are supposed to start, but this one doesn’t need a filter.

At the time, I was in a good spot. Strong performance. Clear lane. Things were working. Then came the conversation.

“This would be a great opportunity for you.”

(Translation: you’re taking this role.)

I pushed back. Respectfully. Thoughtfully. (Naively.)

“I’m not sure it’s the best fit…”

They nodded. Then came the closer.

“You can say no. It may limit your career.”

Ah. Choice. The corporate kind.

So I said yes.

Not because I felt called to it. Because I understood the game. And if you’ve been around long enough, you know exactly how that game works.

Then I walked into it.

On paper, the team looked solid. Capable people. Good experience. Strong resumes.

In reality… I stepped into a pile.

You could feel it almost immediately.

Conversations were polite, but guarded. People chose their words carefully. (Always a great sign.) There were pauses where there shouldn’t be pauses. Side glances. Half-answers.

And then there was Sarah.

Sarah reported directly to me. Smart. Engaged. Knew what she was doing. Also… seemed to be at the center of more than a few conversations I didn’t fully understand yet.

Nothing obvious.

Just… present.

Which, in hindsight, was my first clue.

I told myself, “Give it a few weeks. Learn the dynamics. Don’t overreact.”

That sounded wise.

It was also incomplete.

Because I didn’t inherit a team.

I inherited a story.

Actually, several.

Depending on who I talked to, I got a different version of reality. One person raised concerns. Another defended. A third suggested there was more going on beneath the surface.

Helpful.

I remember walking out of a few early conversations thinking, “Alright… someone’s not telling me the full truth here.”

Turns out, everyone was telling their version of it.

And I was trying to piece it together like there was one correct answer.

That was my first mistake.

I tried to figure out who was right.

Wrong question.

Because when trust is low, facts get replaced by narratives. And narratives don’t feel like opinions. They feel like truth.

Confident. Polished. Convincing.

I was trying to solve a people problem like it was a math problem.

(It wasn’t.)

Looking back, it was a turnaround situation. I just didn’t call it that at the time. There were strained relationships, inconsistent trust, and tension that everyone felt but no one addressed directly.

Including me.

What I thought I needed to understand was the work.

What I actually needed to understand was how people were working together.

That’s where things were breaking down.

That’s where leadership was required.

And that’s where I was slower than I should’ve been.

That season started shaping something in me I couldn’t fully name yet.

That how you lead… how people communicate, trust, challenge, and align… matters more than what’s getting produced on paper.

I just hadn’t put language to it.

Leadership challenge: When you step into something new, are you trying to figure out who’s right… or what’s really going on?

Because if you get that wrong early, you don’t just inherit the problem.

You help sustain it.

No. 2 — Strong Talent, Weak Trust

On paper, the team was solid.

Smart people. Capable. Experienced. The kind of group you’d expect to perform.

And to be fair… they did.

But something wasn’t right.

It didn’t show up in the work. It showed up in the way people worked together. Or didn’t.

I started hearing it in conversations. Not directly, of course. That would’ve been too easy.

It came out sideways.

One-on-one comments.
Carefully worded concerns.
“Well, just so you’re aware…” (always a promising start)

One person would question another’s performance. Someone else would defend that same person. A third would quietly suggest there was “more going on.”

Helpful.

Sarah was often in the middle of those conversations.

Not always the one raising the concern. But close to it. A participant. A validator. Sometimes a translator of what “others” were thinking.

Again, nothing blatant.

(That would’ve made this easier.)

Just consistent enough to notice.

At some point, I wrote it down as plainly as I could.

The team doesn’t like each other. The root issue is trust.

Not a skills problem. Not a workload issue. A trust problem.

Which is significantly harder to fix.

Because you can coach skills. You can adjust workload.

Trust? That’s earned, lost, and rarely repaired quickly.

Individually, people showed up strong. Sarah included. She could deliver. She knew the business. She stayed engaged in what was happening across the team.

Collectively, something broke.

There was hesitation in meetings. People chose their words carefully. Feedback was filtered. Conversations felt managed.

And the more I paid attention, the more I noticed something else.

Trust wasn’t just low.

It was directional.

Certain people trusted certain people. Others didn’t. And those lines weren’t always visible unless you were looking for them.

I remember thinking, “This doesn’t make sense.”

Which, in hindsight, was the first clue that it made perfect sense.

Because high-performing individuals don’t automatically become a high-functioning team.

That requires trust.

And trust was in short supply.

Here’s where I went wrong early.

I focused on performance.

Who’s delivering? Who’s not? Where are the gaps?

All reasonable questions.

None of them the real issue.

Because you can have strong individual performance inside a broken team. In fact, sometimes performance masks the problem.

People still hit deadlines. Work still gets done. On paper, everything looks fine.

Meanwhile, under the surface, relationships are strained, assumptions are growing, and narratives are forming.

Sarah wasn’t the only one contributing to that.

But she was consistently part of the environment where it showed up.

And I didn’t fully connect that early.

I thought I had inherited a performance challenge.

I hadn’t.

I had inherited a trust problem.

And I was slower than I should’ve been to treat it like one.

Leadership challenge: Is your team actually aligned… or just producing?

Because those are not the same thing.

And if trust is missing, performance won’t fix it.

It just hides it.

No. 3 – The Quiet Campaign

It didn’t show up as a confrontation.

No raised voices. No direct accusations. Nothing you could point to and say, “That’s the issue right there.”

It came in the form of concern.

“I’ve been hearing some things…”
“There’s a perception…”
“This might be bigger than it looks…”

(“Perception” is one of those words that sounds helpful and usually isn’t.)

The focus of the conversation was one of my team members.

Depending on who I talked to, his performance was either a concern… or completely fine.

Which is a problem.

Because that’s not a small gap. That’s two different realities.

The feedback I was getting wasn’t isolated. It was consistent. Referenced as coming from “a number of people.” Framed as something I needed to be aware of before it became a bigger issue.

And Sarah was close to it.

Sometimes she was the one raising the concern. Other times she was reinforcing it. Adding context. Helping shape how the situation was being interpreted.

Again, nothing overt.

(There’s a theme here.)

Just steady.

And that’s what made it effective.

At first, I did what you’d expect.

I listened.

Took notes. Asked questions. Tried to understand the situation from multiple angles.

That’s leadership, right?

Except something didn’t sit right.

Because alongside that feedback, I was hearing something else.

Positive input. Different experiences. Less coordinated. Less polished. But just as real.

So now I had two streams.

One consistent, aligned, and clearly communicated.

The other more scattered, but not insignificant.

And I had to decide what to trust.

This is where I missed it.

I gave more weight to the consistency.

Which sounds logical.

If multiple people are saying the same thing, it must be true.

Not always.

Sometimes it just means the message is being reinforced.

And I didn’t fully recognize that at the time.

I thought I was being informed.

Looking back, I was also being influenced.

That’s a hard realization.

Because as a leader, you want to believe people are bringing you truth. Not shaping a narrative.

But over time, it became clearer.

The feedback wasn’t forming organically.

It was being built.

Conversation by conversation. Comment by comment. Always pointing in the same direction.

And I had allowed it to carry more weight than it should have.

Not because I was careless.

Because I didn’t slow down enough to separate what I was observing from what I was being told.

And those two weren’t fully aligned.

That was the lesson.

Leadership isn’t just about listening.

It’s about discerning.

Not every concern is clean.

Not every pattern is accidental.

And not every consistent message is neutral.

If you’re not careful, you start making decisions based on a version of reality that was shaped before it ever reached you.

I learned to ask better questions.

What have I actually seen?
What’s been verified?
Who’s consistently driving the conversation?

Not cynical.

Just… awake.

Because once a narrative takes hold, it’s hard to unwind.

And if you get it wrong, you don’t just misread the situation.

You impact the team.

Leadership challenge: When you’re hearing consistent feedback, are you evaluating the message… or also the pattern behind how it’s being built?

Because both matter.

More than you think.

No. 4 When Accountability Gets… Complicated

This one didn’t stay a simple performance issue for long.

Sarah reported to me. And one of her direct reports was struggling.

Not in a subtle way.

There were clear gaps. Communication issues. Defensiveness. Missed expectations. The kind of things you can work with… if you address them directly.

So I pushed Sarah to do just that.

Address it. Be clear. Hold the standard.

She didn’t agree.

Not outright confrontation. Just resistance. Hesitation. A different read on the situation.

(Which is always helpful when you’re trying to lead through something cleanly.)

So now we had a layered problem.

A performance issue.
A disagreement on how to handle it.
And a leader in the middle trying to create clarity.

We moved forward with the rating.

“Meets Some.”

Not ideal. But supported. Documented. Fair.

Then it escalated.

The employee went to Employee Relations claiming retribution.

That’ll get your attention.

Now we’re not just talking about performance.

We’re talking about intent.

And I’m in the hot seat.

Explaining decisions. Reconstructing conversations. Walking through documentation.

And doing it with Sarah… not exactly aligned beside me.

Uncomfortable all the way around.

Fortunately, we had done the work.

Specific examples. Clear documentation. Consistent feedback.

That’s where my civil treatment training kicked in.

Stick to the facts.
Stay calm.
Don’t get pulled into emotion.

(Which is easier said than done when someone is questioning your integrity.)

The investigation ran its course.

The claim was ruled unsubstantiated.

Which was the right outcome.

But it didn’t feel like a win.

It felt like survival.

Because even when you’re right, situations like that take something out of you.

Eventually, the employee was let go.

And then we learned something we didn’t expect.

She had falsified her job application.

Listed a college degree she didn’t have.

Which was required for the role.

At that point, you just sit back for a second.

Not because it changes what happened.

But because it reinforces something.

You can do the hard things right.

You can document. Communicate. Lead with integrity.

And it can still be messy.

Really messy.

What I learned in that stretch wasn’t just about performance management.

It was about alignment.

If your leaders aren’t aligned, accountability gets complicated fast.

It was about preparation.

Documentation isn’t bureaucracy. It’s protection.

And it was about composure.

Because when things escalate, how you show up matters as much as what you know.

Leadership challenge: Are you addressing performance issues early… and are your leaders aligned when you do?

Because if you’re not aligned on the front end, you’ll feel it on the back end.

And by then, it’s usually louder than you want it to be.

NEW: No. 5 – When “Just Give It Time” Backfires

After the Employee Relations situation, I told myself things would settle down.

We had clarity. Documentation held up. The right decision was made.

Naturally, the environment should stabilize.

(That was the theory.)

In reality, not much changed.

The tension didn’t disappear. It just shifted. Conversations got quieter. More careful. Less direct.

And Sarah was still in the middle of it.

Not in an obvious way. Nothing you could point to and say, “That’s the issue.”

Just… consistently present.

Involved in conversations. Influencing how situations were framed. Close to the flow of information in ways that didn’t always build clarity.

By this point, I had already had several conversations with her.

Coaching around communication. Alignment. How things were being perceived.

Good conversations.

Thoughtful. Professional. Seemed to land in the moment.

And then, over time, the same patterns would show up again.

Different situation. Same dynamic.

That’s when it gets frustrating.

Because now you’re not dealing with a one-off.

You’re dealing with a pattern.

And patterns don’t respond to “good conversations.”

They require clarity. Expectations. Follow-through.

Looking back, I gave it more time than I should have.

(There’s a theme here.)

I told myself, “Let’s see if this sticks.”

“Let’s not overreact.”

“Let’s give her space to adjust.”

All reasonable.

All delaying what needed to happen.

Because while I was waiting, the environment wasn’t improving.

It was settling into something.

And the team could feel it.

People weren’t more open. They were more cautious.

Feedback wasn’t more direct. It was more filtered.

And underneath it all, trust still wasn’t where it needed to be.

Here’s what I didn’t fully appreciate at the time.

When you tolerate a pattern, you normalize it.

Not because you agree with it.

Because you don’t interrupt it.

And from the team’s perspective, those two things can look the same.

That was the uncomfortable part.

I wasn’t endorsing the behavior.

But I also wasn’t being clear enough, fast enough, about what needed to change.

And in leadership, timing matters.

You don’t have to react to everything immediately.

But when something repeats, that’s your signal.

I eventually got there.

Clearer expectations. More direct conversations. Less room for interpretation.

But I didn’t get there as quickly as I could have.

And that delay had a cost.

Not catastrophic.

But real.

That season reinforced something for me.

Time doesn’t fix patterns.

Clarity does.

And if you wait too long to bring it, the pattern usually gets stronger.

Not weaker.

Leadership challenge: Where are you telling yourself, “just give it time,” when the pattern is already clear?

Because time won’t change it. But your leadership might.

No. 6 When It’s Not the Work… It’s the Wake

By this point, I wasn’t trying to figure out if there was a pattern.

There was.

The harder question was what to do about it.

Because Sarah was still delivering.

That’s what made this tricky.

She knew the business. Stayed engaged. Got things done. If you looked strictly at output, you could make a case that things were working.

(And I tried, for a while.)

But there was something else.

A wake.

Not the kind behind a boat you notice immediately. More like something you feel after the fact.

A conversation that didn’t land well.
A situation that escalated more than it should have.
A teammate who seemed more guarded after an interaction.

Individually, none of it was enough to act on.

Collectively, it told a story.

And Sarah was consistently near it.

Not always the cause. But often part of the environment where things got more complicated instead of clearer.

That’s when the distinction hit me.

It’s not just about what someone produces.

It’s about what they leave behind.

Energy. Clarity. Trust.

Or the lack of it.

I remember walking through a few recent situations and thinking, “Why does this feel familiar every time?”

Same tension.
Same confusion.
Same extra layer of effort to get back to alignment.

Different topic.

Same wake.

That’s when you stop asking, “What happened here?” and start asking, “What keeps happening?”

And once you ask that question honestly, it gets harder to ignore.

Now, to be fair, this wasn’t all on Sarah.

The team already had trust issues when I walked in. There were multiple dynamics at play. Multiple personalities contributing to the environment.

But she was a consistent part of it.

And as her leader, that made it my responsibility.

I had to separate two things that are easy to blur together.

Capability.

And impact.

She had capability.

No question.

But the impact… was mixed.

And impact is what the team experiences.

That was the shift for me.

Up to that point, I had been giving more weight to what was getting done.

Now I had to pay equal attention to how it was affecting the team.

That’s a different standard.

And a necessary one.

Because you can have someone who delivers strong work and still makes the team weaker over time.

Not intentionally.

But consistently.

And if you ignore that, you don’t just miss the issue.

You reinforce it.

That was the tension I had to work through.

Not whether Sarah could do the job.

But whether the way she was doing it was helping or hurting the team.

That’s a harder conversation.

Because now you’re not talking about tasks.

You’re talking about patterns, perception, and impact.

And you have to be clear enough to name it.

Leadership challenge: Are you evaluating your team based only on what they produce… or also on what they leave behind?

Because output matters.

But impact is what shapes the team.

No. 7 — Fix the System, Not Just the Symptoms

By this point, I’d had the conversations.

Coaching. Feedback. Direct discussions with Sarah about what I was seeing and what needed to change.

Some of it landed.

Some of it didn’t.

And the pattern?

Still there.

Different situations. Same dynamics. Same friction. Same cleanup required on the back end.

At some point, you stop asking, “What else should I say?” and start asking, “What am I allowing structurally?”

Because I realized something uncomfortable.

It wasn’t just behavior.

It was the system.

How information moved.
Who talked to whom.
How feedback was shared… and reshaped along the way.

There were too many layers. Too many side paths. Too many opportunities for conversations to drift before they ever got to me.

And Sarah was operating in the middle of that.

Not alone. But consistently.

Which meant I wasn’t getting clean signal.

I was getting interpretation.

That’s a problem.

Because you can’t lead what you can’t see clearly.

So I made a decision.

Not a subtle one.

I changed the structure.

Everyone reported directly to me.

On paper, that looks like an org chart adjustment.

In reality, it was a leadership decision.

I needed:

direct conversations

fewer filters

less narrative building between layers

more visibility into what was actually happening

And frankly, more accountability.

Because when things move through multiple channels, it’s easy for meaning to shift.

Intentionally or not.

This wasn’t about control.

(It never feels like control when you’re the one doing it.)

It was about clarity.

Removing the space where misalignment was growing.

Creating a system where:

feedback was direct

expectations were clear

and I could actually see the team, not just hear about it

Now, this didn’t magically fix everything.

If only.

But it did change the environment.

Fewer side conversations.
Less room for interpretation.
More direct interaction with each person.

And for the first time, I felt like I wasn’t reacting to the system anymore.

I was shaping it.

That was the shift.

Up to that point, I had been trying to coach my way through a structural problem.

That doesn’t work.

You can’t out-coach a broken system.

At some point, you have to redesign it.

Not because people are incapable.

Because the environment isn’t helping them succeed.

That was the lesson.

Sometimes leadership isn’t another conversation.

It’s a decision.

Leadership challenge: Where are you coaching around a problem that actually needs a structural change?

Because if the system is creating confusion, no amount of coaching will fully fix it.

At some point, you have to change the system. Good. Now it actually closes the loop instead of sounding like a leadership journal entry you’d rather not reread.

No. 8 — The Job I Didn’t Want… That Changed Me

I didn’t want the job.

Worth repeating.

Because at the time, I saw it as a detour. A box to check. A role I took because I understood the consequences of saying no.

Not exactly inspiring.

And for a while, it felt like I had been dropped into something I didn’t choose, didn’t fully understand, and wasn’t sure I wanted to fix.

There was stress.

The kind that followed me home. Sat with me in the car. Showed up in conversations I replayed more than once.

There was confusion.

Not about the work. The work was fine.

Confusion about people. About what was real. About what I was supposed to do with what I was seeing.

And if I’m honest, some second-guessing.

Am I handling this right?
Am I missing something?
Why does this feel harder than it should?

(Always a comforting set of thoughts.)

And then there was the weight of it.

The team. The dynamics. The repeated patterns with Sarah. The decisions that weren’t always clear but still had to be made.

So I did something simple.

I prayed.

Not long. Not polished.

Just honest.

Lord, help me see this clearly.
Give me the right words.
Keep me steady.

And over time, something shifted.

Not the situation.

Me.

I got clearer.
More direct.
Less hesitant to address what needed to be addressed.

Still imperfect.

(Consistently.)

But growing.

And here’s what I didn’t see at the time.

That job I didn’t want?

It was doing something in me I couldn’t have gotten any other way.

It was forcing me to deal with:

ambiguity

tension

misalignment

difficult conversations

Not in theory.

In real time.

I wasn’t just learning leadership.

I was being formed by it.

Because it’s one thing to talk about how you lead.

It’s another thing to lead when:

you don’t have clean information

people aren’t aligned

and the outcomes aren’t guaranteed

That’s where this started to take shape for me.

Not as an idea.

As a conviction.

That how you lead matters more than what you produce.

Because I could produce.

That was never the question.

The question was who I was becoming while doing it.

And I didn’t fully appreciate that until later.

Because that season prepared me for opportunities I couldn’t see at the time.

Situations that required:

clarity under pressure

discernment with people

the ability to address what others were avoiding

Things I didn’t have fully developed walking in.

Things I couldn’t have developed without it.

I didn’t choose the role.

But it changed me anyway.

Leadership challenge: Is there a role or season you didn’t choose… that might be shaping you more than you realize?

Because the assignments we resist are often the ones that prepare us the most.

Just not on our timeline.

This series is done. The conversation isn’t. Find more at prestonpoore.com.