Liz Truss’ spectacularly short and disastrous time as British prime minister holds many lessons for politicians and economists, no doubt. (Note: try not to tank your country’s economy.)

But what about more general leadership lessons? Her 44-day tenure got us thinking about leaders who make major mistakes in the early days of landing a new position. What are the best strategies for avoiding these mistakes? And if they can’t be avoided, what can leaders do to try to recover?

To explore the question, I reached out to Harry Kraemer, a former CEO at Baxter International who is now a clinical professor of management and organizations. We’ll hear his thoughts today.

How Leaders Can Avoid Big Mistakes Early On

Kraemer, who is also an executive partner with Madison Dearborn Partners, a private-equity firm based in Chicago, is the author of several books on how to be a values-based leader. (We spoke to him in the spring about what makes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky such a strong leader.)

I talked with him last week at length about the leadership lessons we can learn from the Truss debacle. (Again, the economists and the politicians are drawing their own lessons, so Kraemer is focusing on what it means to truly be a leader.) I’m working on a longer article based on our conversation, so stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, here are some of his thoughts on how leaders can avoid making massive mistakes early on in a new role. The key, he said, is for new leaders to be explicit with their whole teams about how they plan to lead. And this should be done on their very first day in the job.

KRAEMER: “Part of that is ‘yes, I am here as the leader and I’m honored to be the leader, and I will make the final decision on the major issues that need to be addressed at my level. However, I am well aware of the fact that I don’t know all the answers, and I need to rely on all of you. If any of you have views that are different than mine, I want to understand those views before I make a decision, and I am always open to changing my mind before I make the decision. And if I decide to do something different than your recommendation, you will always know why.

And occasionally we will make a bad decision. That’s going to happen, because we’re never going to be perfect. If you notice me make a bad decision, please tell me. And if I make a bad decision, I’ll admit it. Because as a leader I have absolutely no need to be right; instead, I am fanatically focused on doing the right thing.’

If that expectation is set on my first day, if we blow it a week later, you have no hesitancy coming to me and saying, ‘gee, Harry, that didn’t work. What do we do now?’ Not only is that the right thing to do from a values standpoint, but it’s the right thing to do as a team: you become comfortable challenging me and I’m comfortable hearing it.

Now, let’s say you didn’t do all that. You’ve made a terrible mistake and it’s had a devastating impact. If you have lost the trust of your team or the ability to relate to your team, then the right course of action is for you to step down.

I’ve advised some CEOs who have lost their jobs in this way, and there’s sometimes a view that it wasn’t fair. They’ll say, ‘I don’t know if I was the cause of that.’ And I tell them a story: ‘When things were going unbelievably well at Baxter, they didn’t put 50,000 people on the cover of Forbes magazine. It was me.’

The point being that you get a disproportionate amount of the credit when things are going well because you’re the one leading. So when things go into a meltdown you need to take the responsibility for that, too. And if you take the responsibility early on, the situation could be salvaged! But if you don’t take the responsibility initially, if you don’t appear vulnerable, if you lose the ability to relate, guess what? You’re gone.”

How Have You Motivated “Quiet Quitters”?

Yes, quiet quitting is the buzz word du jour. For some, it’s truly a new phenomenon of people doing just the bare minimum in their jobs to avoid burnout; for others, it feels like the actual definition of work, where you do what you’re asked to do.

In either case, if you’re hoping to motivate your team to do more—to go above and beyond on a certain project, say—you might need to negotiate with them to figure out what will light that fire.

Which is why we reached out to professor Leigh Thompson, an expert on negotiations, for an upcoming The Insightful Leader podcast episode. In preparation for our interview with her, we wanted to hear from you about successes you’ve had motivating reluctant members of your teams. Please share your stories with us at insight@kellogg.northwestern.edu. We may use them on the episode (but will check with you first). Thanks!

LEADERSHIP TIP

“Shareholders’ value maximization is one very clear metric. It’s easy to quantify and understand. When we think about ESG, or corporate social responsibility, they’re not as easy to measure. … Even if executives are trying to maximize stakeholder value, what does that mean in practice? How do they elicit and weigh the different preferences of all of these stakeholders, and how does that translate into action?”

—Professor Carola Frydman in HBR IdeaCast, on the challenges in transitioning from maximizing shareholder value to maximizing stakeholder value.