Questions to ask your employees and your team
When you manage people, the question you ask decides what you get told. These sets are for the manager's side of the table: one-on-ones and skip-levels, check-ins with new hires, retention and safety talks, a hard conversation with a struggling employee, and taking over a department or project.
A few to start with
How do you feel about how your pay compares to what you could get elsewhere?
Asking about the comparison rather than about satisfaction leaves room for an honest answer. If they can quote specific figures from elsewhere, treat that as an active departure risk rather than an opening move in a negotiation.
Has something changed for you here in the last few months?
Most sudden attitude shifts have a date attached: a promotion that went elsewhere, a new manager, a project cancelled, a colleague leaving. If they name one, the rest of the conversation is about that event and not about their personality.
Would you rather get better at this job, or be ready for a different one?
Both are legitimate, and confusing them wastes money. Development plans fail most often when a manager funds depth for someone who wanted breadth, and then reads the disengagement as ingratitude.
What do you want to get better at this year, and what would you need from me?
Attaching the ask to you turns an aspiration into a plan: a project, an introduction, time protected in the week. If they cannot say what they need, offer two concrete options rather than leaving it open.
Where do you think this would create extra work for someone else?
The clearest test of whether someone has thought past their own diary. Flat denial that anyone would be affected usually means somebody will be, and it is worth naming who before they find out the hard way.
If someone outside the company asked what this team is for, what would you say?
The useful data is the spread, not the wording. If six people give six different one-sentence answers, that is your real finding. If everyone recites the same deck line, ask them to say it again without using any word from the deck.