Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash
Asking thoughtful questions to your manager is very important for your own career growth. It demonstrates your interest, curiosity, ownership, and it also helps in building a rapport with your manager. By asking thoughtful questions, you can also learn more about your manager’s expectations, priorities, and goals. But what questions could you ask to your new manager?
Consider these in your first few meetings
- What are you expectations from me?
- How do you define success for my role?
- What’s your preferred mode of communication (email/chat/talk etc)?
- How do you provide feedback?
- How would you like to receive updates on progress?
- Can you share something about your experience/progression?
- What would you like to know about me?
- Can you tell me a bit about your management style?
If you are new to the team
- Is there any expectation about work hours, dress code, travel?
- What’s the team composition?
- How’s the team culture?
- How does the team fit into the org?
- What’s the team’s charter/roadmap?
- What are your top priorities for the team?
- What are team’s some of the recent achievements?
- What are some challenges for the team?
- Who are our stakeholders, partner teams?
- What processes do we have?
- Who are the POCs (Point of Contact) I can/should reach out to?
- Are there any role guidelines that I could look into?
If your manager is new to the team
- What are their thoughts on the team so far?
- Is there anything I could help you with?
- If they could share, where are they transferring from and why did they decide to join this team?
A few things to keep in mind
- Don’t ask all the questions at once or in the first meeting. Use your judgement.
- Don’t make it sound like a script.
- Career growth/path/progression is important, but I prefer not to bring it up in the first few meetings. Bring it up in your 1-1s after settling for a bit.
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