Onboarding Struggles in a New Job: Why They're Normal and How to Move Through Them

If your onboarding is proving difficult, this piece is for you. Onboarding is hard. Getting used to your team, your manager and new people; adapting to the environment and the work; clarifying expectations. Sometimes, while trying to be the best you can be, you collide with the feeling of not being enough.

The Pressure to Show Your Best Version

To create the best first impression, you want to display everything you know. You try to join a team that is already used to each other, or to be accepted as a manager. You stand on a very fine line: sometimes you bend, sometimes you want to set firm rules.

The Flexible Vessel Metaphor

Know this: if you are flexible, you learn to take the shape of the vessel you are in. If you are rigid, either you break the vessel or you break. Adapting to a new environment is not losing your identity; it is showing flexibility.

Give Yourself Time

If you are struggling, first give yourself time, at least six months. In that period you will get used to the work, the culture and the people you work with, and you will also understand how to position your own style in this environment.

This is a process, not a one-off exam. Coaching can make it far more comfortable, especially when it comes to noticing your own needs during adaptation and acting accordingly.

You Are Not Alone

Almost every new joiner feels the same thing in the first month: "Everyone is more at ease than me, why am I struggling?" But the truth is: they were once exactly where you are; they simply forgot.

Where did you struggle most in this process, or where are you struggling now? That awareness can be the first step to moving faster.