Good Questions to Ask a New Manager
Questions for a manager who has just taken over your team, often for the first time: what they plan to change and what they will leave alone, how much of their old job they still hold, how one-on-ones will run, what they need from the team while they find their footing, and what they cannot tell you yet.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What made you move into managing?
Why ask it
Someone who wanted the scope will behave differently from someone who took it because the team needed a manager or because it was the only route to a raise. Both can work, but the first tends to invest in the craft of managing sooner.
What do you already know about this team, and what do you want to hear from us directly?
Why ask it
New managers usually arrive with a briefing from above that is incomplete and sometimes wrong. Asking what they were told gives you a chance to correct it while their impression is still forming.
What do you plan to leave alone for the first few months?
Why ask it
Restraint is the harder half of a handover, and naming what stays gives the team something to stand on. A manager with no answer here is likely to change several things at once and then be unable to tell which change helped.
What is the first thing you want to change, and why that first?
Why ask it
The reasoning matters more than the change. Listen for whether it comes from something they have observed here or from something that worked in their last team, because imported solutions tend to fit badly.
Which parts of your old job are you keeping, and what is being handed off?
Why ask it
First-time managers are often still doing most of their previous role. Knowing what remains on their plate explains delays that would otherwise look like indifference, and tells you where not to add.
What are you still learning about the job of managing?
Why ask it
A frank answer, such as running one-on-ones or giving critical feedback, is a good sign and tells you where to be patient. A claim to have it handled in month one usually predicts a rough month three.
How do you want one-on-ones to run, and whose meeting is it?
Why ask it
The distinction is practical: your meeting means you set the agenda and can raise things going badly, their meeting usually means status reporting. Agreeing which it is stops it drifting into a task review.
What do you want to know about my work that you cannot see from the outside?
Why ask it
Tells you how they intend to build a picture of your contribution, which is what your review will eventually rest on. If they have no answer, offer one: the parts of your job with no visible output are the parts that get forgotten.
How will you decide what this team says no to?
Why ask it
New managers are eager to be seen as helpful and often accept work the team cannot absorb. Hearing an actual test, or hearing that they have not thought about it, tells you what your next quarter looks like.
When you disagree with a decision from above, what will we hear from you?
Why ask it
The two failure modes are relaying every decision as their own and quietly signalling that they think it is stupid. Ask what they will do when they have to carry something they argued against.
How do you want us to tell you when something is not working?
Why ask it
You are asking for a channel before you need it. A manager who names a format, such as raise it in the one-on-one with what you would do instead, is easier to bring bad news to than one who just says their door is open.
What does the team do that looks fine from where you sit but might not be?
Why ask it
Inverting the usual question lets you flag the things that pass inspection and should not: the report nobody reads, the process that only works because one person patches it weekly.
What do you need from me while you find your footing?
Why ask it
Asked once and plainly, this is genuinely useful; asked repeatedly it becomes flattery. Expect answers about context, introductions, and warning them before they walk into something.
What will you do differently from the last manager, and what will you keep?
Why ask it
It invites a specific comparison without inviting criticism of a person. Keeping something is the more informative half, because it shows they have looked at what was already working rather than assuming they were sent to fix things.
How will you handle it when two of us want opposite things?
Why ask it
Their answer predicts how conflict will be resolved for the next year: escalate to them, thrash it out in a meeting, or a decision rule set in advance. Avoidance here shows up later as decisions that quietly never get made.
What counts as a good week for this team, in your view?
Why ask it
A week is short enough that the answer has to be concrete. Look for whether the definition rests on output, on the team not being blocked, or on nothing having gone wrong, since each produces a different kind of manager.
How do you handle mistakes that cost real time or money?
Why ask it
Ask for the last one they were involved in and what happened afterwards. A new manager's first response to an expensive error sets the team's willingness to report the second one.
Who are you leaning on for advice as a new manager?
Why ask it
A mentor, a peer group, or their own boss all suggest they know they are learning something new. No one at all is a risk, because the errors first-time managers make are well known and easily corrected by someone who has made them already.
What would you want me to tell you in six months that you would not otherwise hear?
Why ask it
This asks them to plan for their own blind spot, and to say now that they want the uncomfortable version later. Their answer gives you a reference to point back to when you need it.
What part of this job did you not expect?
Why ask it
Usually the volume of administration, how long people take to change, or how lonely the role is. It is a good closing question because it gets you an honest sentence rather than a position.
Working with a Manager Who Just Took Over
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Remember they are learning the job too
Much of the first quarter is unfinished handover
A newly promoted manager usually still holds pieces of their previous role, and the handover of it may not have been planned. Slow replies and missed decisions in the early weeks are more often capacity than intent, so ask what is still on their plate before drawing conclusions.
They have lost a channel they used to have
A manager promoted from inside the team stops hearing the informal version of everything the day the title changes. Telling them plainly what stalls, who fixes what, and which meeting is useless replaces information they can no longer get by being in the room.
How to raise a problem with a new manager
- 1Say what happened, with a date and a number rather than a general complaint.
- 2Say what it cost: hours lost, a deadline missed, a customer affected.
- 3Offer the two options you would choose between, and say which you would pick.
- 4Say what you need from them specifically: a decision, cover with another team, or permission to drop something else.
- 5Do not ask them to reopen a decision made before they arrived unless something new has changed.
Useful things to offer unprompted
- A short written summary of what you own, what is at risk, and what you need decided. Most new managers are assembling this from scratch.
- The names of people outside the team whose agreement is usually needed, and who takes a call from whom.
- A heads up before they walk into a meeting where an old disagreement is going to resurface.
- One thing that is working well, so their picture of the team is not built entirely from problems.
What not to do
- Do not test them. Manufactured problems to see how they respond are usually transparent and are remembered.
- Do not arrive as the spokesperson for the team's collected grievances. Bring your own, and let colleagues bring theirs.
- Do not expect answers about restructures, budgets, or departures they may not have been told about, or may not be allowed to discuss.
- Do not read early caution as weakness. A manager who declines to change everything in month one is usually the better bet.