Personal user manuals for you and your team

It takes time until the people you work with really get to know you, understand your personality, what you like, what you don’t like, what you appreciate, what you avoid, how you want to handle things, what your values are, and much more.

Every new hire working with you needs to start that learning curve from scratch.

Years ago, I found myself exactly in that position. I realized that it’s always the same when hiring a direct report, always the same topics we need to align on a personal level (mutually), and more or less always the same long time that process takes us.

Inspired by an article I read back then, I decided to write a user manual, my user manual: A simple, pragmatic document describing my profile: my personality, my values, my leadership and communication style, what I appreciate when working with team members, what I don’t like, and even what’s important to me outside of work.

A manual that should help team members understand in 15 minutes all the fundamentals that would usually require many months. Often, these are months with a lot of pain we need to overcome when we’re simply not aware of the other person’s preferences and personality types.

I published my manual publicly on my website, enabling everyone considering working with me even in advance to get deeper insights about me, helping them to evaluate if this would be a good personal fit for them or not.

It worked so well that I started evangelizing about the idea. And that’s what I’m doing here again: I can only encourage you to invest an hour or so to write your own user manual, it’s enormously well-spent time that can lead to huge team efficiency improvements. You can use it until the end of your professional life.

Most often, people like me who write these user manuals about themselves are leaders. But I’d encourage everyone in your team – from junior to senior – to come up with their own user manuals. Believe me, it can quickly turn into a game changer for your team dynamics and collaboration.

Here is my user manual. At the end of that document, you’ll find some further links helping you and your team members to come up with your very own version.

My manual got too long IMHO; I’d encourage you to better go for a 2-3 page summary.

If you want to share your user manuals with my community, please send them over :)

Looking forward to many new user manuals that will be created in the next few weeks helping you and your team to reveal much more about each other, unlock more productivity, and ultimately enjoy working together much more.

This article was first published in my INFINITE DISRUPTION Newsletter for European Tech Founders and Builders. Click here to subscribe if you haven't yet.