Questions to Ask Your New Manager
Questions for the first weeks with a new manager, whether you have changed jobs or your old boss has been replaced: priorities, autonomy, feedback, and where you stand.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What do you already know about my work, and what should I fill in?
Why ask it
A new manager may have inherited a description of you from someone else. This is your chance to hear it and correct it while impressions are still forming.
What are you being measured on this year?
Why ask it
Their targets become your priorities whether or not anyone says so. Asking directly saves you a quarter of guessing.
What do you want the team doing differently in six months?
Why ask it
Most new managers arrive with a change in mind. Better to hear it now than to find out when your project is the one that gets cut.
How do you like to communicate day to day?
Why ask it
Settles channel and frequency: whether to message, book time, or hold things for the weekly meeting.
How often do you want one-to-ones, and what should I bring?
Why ask it
Ask what a useful one-to-one looks like to them. Some want a status update, some only want to hear about problems.
What do you want to hear about immediately, even if it's bad?
Why ask it
The escalation threshold is the most useful thing to establish with a new boss, and the easiest to get wrong in both directions.
Where should I decide without checking, and where not?
Why ask it
Ask for an example on each side. Autonomy described in principle rarely matches autonomy in practice.
How will you judge whether I'm doing well?
Why ask it
Push for something observable. If the answer is entirely about attitude, expect an unpredictable review at the end of the year.
What does my work look like from where you sit?
Why ask it
Reveals what is visible upward and what is not. Work nobody above you can see tends to go unrewarded however good it is.
How do you prefer to give feedback, and how soon?
Why ask it
A manager who saves everything for a review cycle needs handling differently from one who tells you in the moment.
What's your read on the team so far?
Why ask it
Shows how much they have worked out and how candid they are willing to be with you. It also flags who they are already relying on.
What's the first thing you'd fix about how we work?
Why ask it
More concrete than asking about process, and the answer tells you what irritates them, which is worth knowing early.
How do you want meetings to run?
Why ask it
Agendas, notes, who speaks, whether decisions actually get made in the room. Misreading this makes a competent person look disengaged.
What do you expect around hours, responsiveness and time off?
Why ask it
Worth asking early, because these norms often change with a new manager even when the written policy does not.
How much can I push back, and how would you rather I did it?
Why ask it
Ask explicitly. The answer, and their reaction to being asked, tells you whether the invitation to disagree is real.
How do you handle disagreement inside the team?
Why ask it
Listen for whether they step in or let things run, and whether they take sides. Both patterns have consequences you can plan around.
Who else should I be building a relationship with?
Why ask it
New managers often see the wider map faster than their team does, and they will usually say so if asked.
What do you need from me that you're not getting?
Why ask it
Direct, slightly uncomfortable, and the fastest route to finding out where you actually stand.
What would you like me to be doing a year from now?
Why ask it
Turns career development into a specific conversation, and shows whether they see a path for you here at all.
What's the best way to help while you're settling in?
Why ask it
Fair to ask a manager who is new to the organization, and it puts you on the useful side of their first difficult months.
The first weeks with a new manager
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Opening the relationship
Book one longer conversation
Thirty minutes set aside for how the two of you will work together gets better answers than the same questions scattered across three corridor conversations.
Bring a one-page summary of your work
A new manager is meeting a dozen people at once. One page on what you own and what is at risk makes you easy to represent upward.
Ask what they inherited
Handover notes, half-finished plans and other people's opinions of you. All three are shaping their first impressions whether they say so or not.
What the answers tell you
- Whether their targets are already fixed, or still being negotiated above them.
- Whether they describe the team as people or as roles.
- Whether they give examples when asked about autonomy, or only principles.
- How they talk about your predecessor, or their own.
- Whether they can name anything specific they want changed.
Common mistakes
Waiting to be told
New managers are overloaded for the first month. The people who ask get defined priorities; the people who wait get whatever is left over.
Relitigating the old regime
Comparing them to the previous manager, favorably or not, shuts the conversation down. Describe how things work and let them decide what to keep.
Accepting a target you haven't checked
Inherited goals are often out of date by the time a new manager repeats them. Ask what the number is based on before you agree to it.