The Day After the Firing (Part 2): What Happens on Monday?
Or: why two wins felt like a turning point… until they didn’t
The thing about the “new manager bounce” is that it feels real when you’re in it.
The Boston Red Sox went into Baltimore and won. Then they did it again. For a brief moment, it looked like exactly what you expect after a leadership reset — sharper execution, better energy, a team that suddenly remembered how to play together.
And then they lost the next two to the Toronto Blue Jays. Just… lost. The kind of losses that quietly remind you that whatever changed wasn’t permanent. The bounce was real, but it wasn’t durable.
That part doesn’t get talked about as much, probably because it’s less interesting. It doesn’t fit into a clean narrative. There’s no headline for “things returned to normal,” even though that’s what usually happens.
Yesterday I was working out of the New York City office. Someone whose opinion I respect — one of those leaders who doesn’t waste words — asked me a simple question:
“So what are you actually going to do differently on Monday to make sure that ‘manager bounce’ isn’t just a moment?”
It wasn’t framed as a challenge, but it certainly felt like one.
Because it’s was easy to write about the “new manager bounce.” It’s observable, it’s relatable, and if you’ve been around teams long enough, you’ve probably lived through it more than once. What’s harder — what’s much harder — is turning that observation into something actionable without defaulting to clichés or pretending there’s a clean, universal answer.
The worst thing you can do is give the answer that you think they want to hear.
I didn’t respond right away. Not because I didn’t have thoughts, but because I had too many of them, and most of them felt incomplete.
Then I found myself on a train from New York City to Boston, staring out the window for long enough to realize two things: first, I should have flown, and second, the answer to that question depends entirely on the situation you’re walking into.
Not all “bounces” are created equal.
And if you treat them like they are, you’re going to get a short-lived lift followed by a very predictable drop.
Not every team needs the same Monday
The mistake I’ve seen — myself included — is assuming that sustaining momentum is about doing more of whatever created it in the first place. More energy, more visibility, more communication, more presence.
Sometimes that works.
Sometimes it does the exact opposite.
Because the “bounce” is not a single phenomenon. It’s a combination of things happening at once: relief, attention, effort, clarity, maybe even a little bit of fear. What matters is understanding which of those is actually driving the change in your specific environment.
If the bounce came from relief, your job is to protect that space.
If it came from urgency, your job is to stabilize it.
If it came from clarity, your job is to reinforce it.
And if you misread it, you can unintentionally reintroduce the very friction that just disappeared.
If the team feels relief, don’t rush to fill the silence
This one feels really weird, especially if you’re stepping into a new leadership role and feel the need to prove that you belong there.
When a team has just gone through a leadership change, and the immediate reaction is relief, the instinct is often to step in quickly with vision, structure, and direction. It feels responsible. It feels like leadership.
But relief is fragile.
It usually means the team has been carrying something — uncertainty, pressure, second-guessing — and they’ve just put it down. If you immediately replace that with a new layer of noise, even if your intentions are good, you risk recreating the same environment under a different name.
The better move, at least early on, is quieter than it sounds. Listen longer than is comfortable. Let conversations breathe. Ask questions that don’t have an immediate agenda behind them.
I’ve started using a version of listening - I’m trying to pay attention to what people don’t say right away. The comment after the meeting. The hesitation before answering. The “it’s fine” that clearly isn’t.
None of that shows up in a dashboard.
All of it matters.
If the team is running on urgency, don’t let it turn into anxiety
There’s another version of the bounce that looks very productive on the surface. The team moves faster, works longer, closes gaps quickly, and everything starts to feel like it’s finally clicking.
This is the version that’s easy to celebrate.
It’s also the version that burns out the fastest.
Urgency can be useful. It sharpens focus and cuts through noise. But left unchecked, it turns into anxiety, and anxiety is where decision quality starts to degrade, even if activity levels remain high.
This is where structure matters — not the heavy kind, but the kind that reduces stress. Clear priorities, explicit trade-offs, and a willingness to say, “we’re not doing this right now,” even when everything feels important.
One of the more practical things leaders should start doing is being clear about what moves down on the priorities list, not just what moves up to the top. It sounds obvious, but in high-performing teams, the ability to say no is often more valuable than the ability to say yes.
Without that, urgency doesn’t stabilize — it compounds.
If the bounce came from clarity, your job is repetition, not reinvention
This one, I think, is the most important.
Sometimes the reason a team improves after a leadership change is simply that things become clearer. Expectations are more direct, communication is more straightforward, and people understand how their work connects to outcomes.
There’s no magic in that. It’s just alignment.
The trap here is thinking that clarity needs to evolve quickly to stay effective. It doesn’t. In fact, most teams benefit from hearing the same priorities repeated consistently, rather than watching them get repackaged every few weeks.
People don’t need a new narrative; they need to trust the one they’re already operating within.
It’s less exciting for the leader, but significantly more effective for the team.
The part nobody wants to say out loud
Sometimes the bounce happens because something — or someone — was actively getting in the way.
And when that ‘block’ is removed, performance improves not because something new was added, but because something was taken away.
If you’re stepping into leadership, that’s worth remembering.
Because the goal isn’t always to introduce something better. Sometimes it’s to avoid repeating what didn’t work in the first place.
What I’m actually trying to do differently
I wish there was a clean checklist here. There isn’t.
Try to listen longer before we decide what needs to be fixed.
Be more explicit about what we’re not doing, not just what we are.
Repeat the priorities more than feels necessary, because it usually is necessary.
Resist the urge to fill every gap with activity, even when doing less feels like the wrong answer in the moment.
None of that is particularly groundbreaking.
So what happens on Monday?
That was the original question, remember?
Why wait for Monday? This is not a New Year’s resolution.
For me, today is less about introducing something new and more about caring for people in my charge. I have to make sure they all feel safe and protected.
The “new manager bounce” is easy to observe and even easier to celebrate.
Sustaining it requires something quieter.
It requires knowing when to step in, when to step back, and having the discipline to tell the difference.
Still working on that.
Appreciate you reading.
Dmitry Gorbatov
© 2025 Dmitry Gorbatov | #dmitrywashere