Sink or Swim Is Not an Onboarding Strategy

Sink or Swim Is Not an Onboarding Strategy

This week, I added a new team member. She has four legs, the sweetest face, and she’s scared of her own shadow. Because of her fear, she’s been in the shelter for a while. No one wanted to put in the time it would take to help her adjust.

Working with her this week made me think…

How many companies treat their new hires the same way? 

In this episode, we explore why “sink or swim” is not onboarding — and why expecting performance without structure is a leadership failure.

In This Episode We Cover:

• The 4 Parts of Effective Onboarding:

1. Acclimation
2. Expectations
3. Training & Patience
4. Support & Tools

• Why production cannot come before orientation
• The cost of unclear expectations
• The difference between exposure and training
• Why most performance problems are actually onboarding failures
• The hard questions leaders need to ask themselves

Reflection Questions:

Do you have a documented onboarding plan — or just a checklist?

Have you defined 30, 60, and 90-day expectations?

Is training structured — or random exposure?

Do you check in consistently during the first 90 days?

When someone struggles, do you blame the person — or evaluate the system?

Onboarding isn’t paperwork. It’s leadership.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with another leader who needs to hear it. Until next week — Lead with confidence. Focus on your people. Let’s build a better business.

Want more like this? Get your copy of my latest book: 

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 https://www.lftconsult.com/leadership-book

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:38

So when you're in the office on the outside, you are just grabbing your first cup of coffee. Let's just start your week so you can lead better, work smarter, and build a better business. Welcome back to the podcast. I want to let you know I hired a new team member this week. She has four legs, the most adorable face, and is scared of her own shadow. Because of her fear, she's been in the shelter for a while. No one's been willing to put in the effort it's going to take to bring her out of her shell. And while I've been working with her the last few days, it made me think about how many companies treat their new hires the very same way. If you brought home a brand new dog, would you open the front door, lead them in, and then say, Good luck, figure it out? Of course not. You wouldn't expect that dog to magically know where to go to the bathroom, know when to eat, know what furniture is off limits. You would know how to walk on a leash, and they wouldn't know how to sit or stay. But for some reason, we hire new employees and expect them to know everything. Today I want to talk about this. You can't just set them at a desk and hope they figure it out. And if you want productive, confident, accountable employees, onboarding is not an option. If you've listened to me long enough, you know I like a little structure. So there are four parts that we're going to talk about today for effective onboarding. Acclimation, setting expectations, training, support and tools. So let's take a minute and walk through these. First, acclimation. When you bring home a new dog, you give them time to adjust. You let them sniff. You let them learn about the layout of the yard. You let them figure out where the water bowl is. New employees are the same. The first few days, maybe even the first few weeks, are about orientation, not performance. They're learning who's who, how decisions get made, what the culture feels like, whether it's safe to ask questions, what gets rewarded, what gets ignored. And here's the mistake most leaders make. They expect production before acclamation. You can't evaluate someone's output before they understand the environment. If you rush this stage, you create anxiety, and anxious people don't perform well. They protect themselves instead. Acclamation is not wasted time. It's the foundation. Number two, expectations. Let's keep working with the new dog. You can't get mad at a dog for going to the bathroom in the house if you never showed them where to go. You can't get frustrated when they jump on the couch if you never made it clear that the couch was off limits. You can't say they should just know. You define expectations immediately and you reinforce them consistently. But too often in business, we hire someone and say things like, just jump in or shadow someone. Oh, you'll pick it up. Ask if you have questions. That's not onboarding, that's hoping. Clear expectations sound like this. Here's what success looks like at thirty days. Here's what I expect from you in meetings. This is how we communicate here. Here's how quickly emails should be returned. Here's what ownership looks like. You set milestones for thirty, sixty, and ninety days. If you don't define what good looks like, they'll define it for themselves, and you may not like their definition. The third part of onboarding is training, and patience here is not optional. When you teach a dog to sit, you repeat it over and over and over again in a calm voice. You don't say it once and then scream, why didn't you get it? But that's exactly what many leaders do. They explain something once fast while multitasking, and then three weeks later they tell the employee, I already showed you this, why don't you remember? Training is not exposure. Training is repetition, correction, encouragement, and feedback. And the person doing the training must be clear, patient, and consistent. You cannot be irritated and expect someone to learn. Let's be honest, some leaders don't like training, but if you refuse to train, you will always have beginners. Number four, when you bring home a new dog, you have to think about what you're going to need for them. Things like a leash, a collar, a bed, food. They need these things to help them blend in to the family. Employees need tools to succeed as well. They need proper equipment, system access, clear workflows, documentation, introductions to the key players, and regular check-ins. Onboarding is not here's your desk. Onboarding is here's your structure. And one of the biggest failures I see is no follow-up, no weekly check-in, no 30-day conversation, no how are you feeling? No, what's confusing? And no, what do you need? How can I help? And then leaders say, oh, they just weren't a good fit. Or maybe they were never given a chance. What I see all too often is sink or swim onboarding. It's easier, it requires less planning, it feels efficient, but it's expensive. It leads to turnover, frustration, gossip, underperformance, and leaders consistently putting out fires. And the worst part, you blame the employee when the real issue was the system. If you bring a dog home and it chews the furniture or pees in the house, or ignores commands, or pulls on a leash, would you say this dog is just terrible? Or would you say I need to train her better? Leaders need to ask the same thing. Is this truly a performance problem? Or is it an onboarding problem? Now I know not every employee works out, I'm not that naive. But far more performance issues are onboarding issues than we want to admit? Let me ask you this. Do you have a documented onboarding plan or just a checklist? Do you have clearly defined 30, 60, and 90 day expectations? Do new hires get structured training or just random exposure? Do you check in consistently during the first 90 days? And here's the big question. If someone fails in your organization, is it because they couldn't swim or because you never taught them how? Onboarding shouldn't be sink or swim. You don't put them at a desk and hope for the best. You create structure. You define expectations. You train with patience. You provide all of the necessary tools. You check in consistently. That's how you build a productive, accountable, confident team member. Not by throwing in a deep end and hoping they can swim. If this episode resonated with you, share with another leader who thinks onboarding is just about paperwork. Oh, and by the way, the new team member's name is Lucy, and you'll be hearing more from her as her onboarding continues. Until next week, lead with confidence, focus on your people, and let's build a better business.