The New Phone: A Ritual for Job Transitions

I recently got a new phone. And like some people, I didn’t transfer everything across and carry on. I took the opportunity to do a proper audit. I pared back the contacts I hadn’t spoken to in years. I deleted apps I’d downloaded with good intentions and never opened. I reorganized my home screen so the things I actually use are front and center.

I also spent a little time exploring the new features I hadn’t used before. I checked what apps were highly rated that could be useful. I was excited to try one thing intentionally.

It took a bit of time. But it left me feeling like I was changing my life in some small way instead of moving forward with the accumulated clutter and habits of the last few years.

A few days later I was working with a client who was preparing to step into a new leadership role. And I found myself thinking: what if we treated this transition the same way?

Your contacts: who do you carry with you?

Not literally... though actually, yes, partly literally. When you move roles, some relationships travel with you naturally. Others are context-dependent: they existed because you were in the same building, on the same project, navigating the same politics. Neither is better or worse. But it’s worth being intentional.

Who in your network energizes you? Who challenges you to be better? Who do you consistently go to when you need honest counsel? Those are your contacts worth keeping and worth investing in.

And the harder question: are there relationships you’ve maintained out of obligation or habit that actually drain you? A new role gives you natural permission to let those quietly lapse.

Your apps: what habits are you taking with you?

Every leader arrives in a new role with a set of default behaviors. The way you run meetings. How you give feedback. Whether you think out loud or process privately. How quickly you make decisions, and how much information you need first.

Some of those defaults will serve you brilliantly in the new context. Others were adaptations to a specific environment — responses to a particular boss, a particular culture, a particular set of pressures — and they’re no longer needed. Some might actively get in the way.

The question isn’t Who am I as a leader? as if that’s fixed. It’s: Which version of me does this new role call for?

Before you start in your new role, it’s worth sitting with the habits you’re carrying. Not to judge them, but to notice them. Which ones do you want to open every day? Which ones can you move off the home screen, or delete entirely?

Your home screen: what do you want front and center?

This is the identity question. Not your job title or your LinkedIn summary, but your actual leadership priorities. What matters most to you about how you lead? What kind of presence do you want to have in this new place?

New roles have a way of either clarifying or cluttering this. The demands come quickly. The calendar fills up. Before you know it, you’re operating on autopilot, doing the job rather than leading with intention.

The transition moment, before the noise begins, is one of the most valuable you’ll have. Use it to decide what you want on your home screen. Not everything. Just a few things that, if you did them consistently, you’d look back in a year and feel proud of.

Download one new app: what do you want to try?

Here’s the part that often gets missed in conversations about leadership transitions. We talk a lot about what to carry forward and what to leave behind. We talk less about what to deliberately add.

A new role resets something important: no one knows your defaults yet. You don’t have a reputation to protect in the same way. That’s not a vulnerability. It's an opening. It’s arguably the best moment you’ll have to try something you’ve been meaning to build into your practice.

Not ten things. One.

Maybe it’s a habit you’ve read about and never quite implemented: more structured one-to-ones, a weekly reflection practice, asking for feedback earlier than feels comfortable.

Maybe it’s a leadership behavior you’ve admired in someone else and wondered if it would work for you.

Maybe it’s something this specific role makes possible that your last one didn’t.

The key is to choose it intentionally, before the noise starts, not reactively, once you’re already underwater. Write it down. Tell someone. Treat it like a real commitment, not an aspiration.

One new app, downloaded on purpose. Not because you had to. Because you decided to.

The phone reset takes about an hour. The leadership version might take a good conversation — with a coach, a trusted peer, or just yourself, somewhere quiet, before the new role begins.

Four questions worth considering when you transition to a new role or company:

Who am I taking with me?

What habits do I keep — and what do I leave behind?

What do I want front and center in this next chapter?

And what’s the one new habit or behavior I want to try?