Even new managers with the best of intentions are bound to make mistakes, and it would be so lovely to know what those mistakes are ahead of time, so you can pivot before things take a turn for the secret happy-hour vent session. Enter Lindsay McGregor, a former McKinsey & Company consultant who coauthored Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation .

McGregor got incredibly candid about the mistakes she made as a young manager—or, to use her words, a “hands-off” leader. “I was the type of manager who knew enough to not be toxic, but not enough to be inspiring,” she said. “Yes, I was friendly and asked everybody about how their weekends were, but I thought people wanted autonomy, to be left alone. Turns out, that’s not what creates the highest level of motivation. A team really wants you to be invested in them, and to really help each person figure out what inspires them.” Learn from her common missteps, and you’ll hit the ground running strong from day one:

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“On my very first day as a manager, an associate shared a PowerPoint presentation with me to look over, and I spent my time fixing minor grammatical details because I wanted it to be perfect. I spent almost no time on the actual idea that was being presented. I forgot that while yes, I was there to help improve the quality of the work, what really motivates people and what improves the quality of work is someone who inspires better thinking. Someone who brings new ideas to the table, who pushes the thinking forward, who helps everyone learn and grow—and that’s the most fun part of the work for everybody.”

[Related: 4 Easy Ways To Feel Happier At Work]

“On a project that I managed, we had to asses three new investment ideas a week, which is a lot, and so to get through it all I was really focused on all of the tactical pieces of the team. I set up a daily schedule, held a huddle every morning and every evening to check on our progress, made sure all the right meetings were on the calendar, and sent lots of emails to everybody about the plans for the week. When you’re a new manager, being really on top of all the tactical processes helps you feel in control, but I was clamping down on the process so much and making it so predictable that I wasn’t leaving any room for the team to explore unexpected new ideas or to be creative. I think we probably missed a few big ideas because we were too married to the plan. Be comfortable with the fact that you won’t be able to control every detail. Instead, you need to create the opportunity for other people to innovate and experiment as the world changes more and more.”

“When explaining the rationale for doing something, I would often say, ‘The reason we need to do this slide or this financial model is because so-and-so wants it that way,” whether that be somebody more senior to me or the client. That’s a really uninspiring reason for doing something. It’s just the quickest, easiest way to tell somebody, ‘We really need to do this.’ I should have always tied the reason for doing something back to the impact it would have. So not, ‘We have to turn this presentation from PowerPoint into Microsoft Word because Jack wants it that way,’ but ‘We will have the most impact if we tell stories, and that’s going to work really well with this client because they have a long tradition of storytelling.’ I didn’t spend nearly enough time explaining the true purpose of the work, the context around the work, and the impact it would have so that the team could also realize what was going to have the most impact.”