When entering a new position that has an established team, how would you best approach the team to gather info about each member, find out their strong and weak points, find out “what they do” and what makes them tick? I know this could come off as a “bad thing” day one, so I am trying to see how best to go about this to get good feedback and input without coming off as negative?

This is a really good thing to do when you first join a team. It’s a good way to get acclimated to the style of each team member and to learn about what the team is doing. If your team leader hasn’t set this up for you (they should!).

A good way to accomplish this is to jot down a few questions ahead of time that will help you achieve what you are trying to find out. Plan on spending about an hour with each team member. Create your question template, put together an interview plan and then discuss it with your team leader.

Once approved by your team leader, coordinate with your teammates to develop a workable schedule of interviews. You may find during the discussion that you want to spend more time with one member or another. If that’s the case, set that up before the time with them ends.

By the time you are done with your interviews, you should have a good handle on what’s going on with the team, what team members are working on and a bit about their style of working. The biggest value you will get out of this is the relationships you will be starting to build with others on your team. That’s something that will help you for a long time to come.