What is your work style?
What do you value in colleagues?
How should people communicate with you? Or deliver feedback?
Everyone has different answers to these questions, and the answers to these questions (and others) are what tell us how to best work with ourselves and others.
They become a user manual of sorts; a way for an entire team to have a better understanding of how to work best with the individuals on that team.
Why use it?
I’ve used User Manuals with several teams, and the results were immensely useful. And they’re immensely useful for a reason.
They cut through the noise.
It can take many months to understand the nuances of how someone operates by observation and interaction alone. But it doesn’t have to.
User Manuals are a way to cut straight to the point of how can we best work together.
How to use it?
Use the button below to create a copy of the User Manual Template.
Create your own User Manual first. If you’re familiar and comfortable with the exercise, it will be easier to extend it to the team.
Share your User Manual with the team in an upcoming meeting.
Have the team fill out their own User Manuals. Keep them in a shared folder on Google Drive or elsewhere, so that the team can view the rest of the team’s User Manuals.
On your recurring team meetings (or whatever cadence you’re comfortable with), carve out space for someone to share their User Manual during the meeting.
When new members join the team, have them fill out a User Manual and share it during a team meeting.
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