You learn it in your first week. Your predecessor was very good and very much liked. People mention her in meetings. We used to do it like this. She always knew the answer to that. Every mention lands on you as a small comparison you appear to be losing.
Two reactions come naturally and neither works.
The first is imitation. You try to become the person they miss, adopting her habits and her phrases. You will always be a slightly worse copy of somebody who is not there, and people can see the effort.
The second is erasure. You change things quickly to mark the job as yours, and every change reads as a criticism of somebody the team still respects. You spend goodwill you have not earned yet.
There is a better approach, and it starts with taking the mentions literally rather than personally. When somebody says she always did this, they are usually not grading you. They are telling you what they relied on. That is extremely useful information, and almost nobody else will hand it to you so freely.
So ask directly. What did she do that you most want to keep? What would you not miss? Most people answer both honestly, and the second answer is often the most valuable thing you hear that month. Asking also tells the team you respect the person they liked, which is what lets them start to trust you.
Then keep the specific things that mattered, in your own way, and say out loud that you are doing it. She used to send a weekly summary and I am going to keep that going. Change the other things slowly, with a reason each time.
Remember that you are being compared to a memory, and memories are generous. Your predecessor had bad weeks too. Nobody recalls them now, and in a year nobody will recall your first few either.
The mentions fade on their own, usually within a few months, and they fade faster for people who did not flinch at them. One day somebody will say we used to do it like this about something you started.
– Asael Shinder
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