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Team discovery

15 Questions to Ask Your Team as a New Manager

Good first-week questions help you understand the system before you start changing it. Ask for concrete work, decisions, friction, and preferences — not gossip or instant judgments.

Use these questions across several conversations. Do not run all 15 like an interview. Pick the ones that fit the person and the situation.

Questions about priorities and work

  1. What are your three most important responsibilities right now?
  2. Which deadline or commitment worries you most?
  3. What work takes more time than it should?
  4. What do you own completely, and where is ownership unclear?

Questions about blockers and decisions

  1. What decision are you waiting for right now?
  2. Where does work usually get stuck?
  3. What problem keeps returning even after people think it is solved?

Questions about management and communication

  1. What kind of manager support is actually useful to you?
  2. How do you prefer to receive feedback?
  3. When should I step in, and when should I stay out?
  4. What information do you wish reached you earlier?

Questions about the team

  1. What does this team do especially well?
  2. Which handoff between people or functions causes the most friction?
  3. What should I understand before I change any process?
  4. If we could remove one recurring obstacle this month, what would make the biggest practical difference?

What not to ask too early

Avoid turning early conversations into loyalty tests. “Who should I trust?”, “Who is the problem?”, and “What did you hate about the last manager?” encourage politics before you have enough evidence. Ask for observable situations instead.

How to use the answers

Look for repeated patterns across several people. One complaint is information. The same friction described independently by five people is a stronger signal. Even then, understand the dependencies before changing the system.

Use the answers to shape priorities, clarify ownership, and plan your first 1:1s. If you still need to introduce yourself to the team, start with a short new-manager introduction.

Your first-week output

By the end of the first week, you should be able to summarize the team’s current priorities, the main risks, the decisions waiting for you, and the recurring blockers you need to investigate. That is a better foundation than a fast reorganization.

Continue with the first 30, 60 and 90 days New Manager Guide.

Keep working the problem

Turn the article into a next action.

Use the most relevant free tool, continue with the first-month guide, or apply the Plain Act framework to the situation you are managing now.