Leaders taking on new roles often inherit existing teams. The first thing leaders will do is assess and determine what needs to be realigned on their new team. The result may be a significant delay in achieving key objectives, or it may be outright derailment.

Yesterday, Promotional Consultant Today shared four traps to avoid when taking over a new team. Today, we share four more.

1. Not holding on to the good people. One experienced manager shared hard-won lessons about the dangers of losing good people. "When you shake the tree," she said, "good people can fall out, too." Her point is that uncertainty about who will and will not be on the team can lead your best people to move elsewhere. Although there are constraints on what you can say about who will stay and who will go, you should look for ways to signal to the top performers that you recognize their capabilities. A little reassurance goes a long way.

2. Undertaking team building before the core is in place. It is tempting to launch team-building activities right away, but this approach poses a danger; it strengthens bonds in a group, some of whose members may be leaving. So avoid explicit team-building activities until the team you want is largely in place. This does not mean, of course, that you should avoid meeting as a group. Just keep the focus on the business.

3. Making implementation-dependent decisions too early. When successful implementation of key initiatives requires buy-in from your team, you should judiciously defer making decisions until the core members are in place. Of course, there will be decisions you cannot afford to delay, but it can be counterproductive to make decisions that commit new people to courses of action they had no part in defining. Carefully weigh the benefits of moving quickly on major initiatives against the lost opportunity of gaining buy-in from the people you will bring on board later.

4. Trying to do it all yourself. Finally, keep in mind that restructuring a team is fraught with potential complications. Do not try to undertake this on your own. Find out who can best advise you and help you chart a strategy. The support of a good HR person or executive coach is indispensable to any effort to restructure a team.

Source: Michael D. Watkins is the chairman of Genesis Advisers, a professor at IMD, and the author of the expanded edition of The First 90 Days (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).