Do you want to work wonders in a remote team?-Try creating and sharing your USER MANUAL with your team?
When you buy a new product, it usually comes with a user manual. It’s a document designed to help you make the best use of that particular product, with detailed instructions. It’s a guide to using a specific system. But when we meet a new person, we need to figure things out through trial and error. We usually start with safe ice breakers, and work our way up to understanding the person better. Why does it have to be this way? Why don’t we all have a personal user manual?
A personal user manual is a short document outlining how you like to work, collaborate, communicate, and receive feedback. It may sound serious, but it’s actually a fun way to get to know yourself and your teammates. While you can do it on your own, it’s also a great team building workshop to organise with your colleagues.
But, first: why should everyone have a personal user manual at work?
Psychological safety creates a virtuous circle where people are comfortable admitting their mistakes and learning from their failure; as a result, everyone openly shares their ideas and experiments, cultivating an innovative environment. It also prevents teams to fall prey to analysis paralysis, and leads to faster decision making.
Examples of personal user manuals
If you need some inspiration, here are some interesting personal user manuals. As you can see, they don’t exactly follow the structure above. Feel free to get creative with the questions, as long as all the essential information is included in the final version.
- User manual: Steph Smith
- An impressive personal user manual by Sid Sijbrandij, the CEO of GitLab
- Abby Falik’s personal user manual
If you want to use the template, use the below sites to know your individual characteristics and pick the best possible information to fit your manual.
MBTI TEST
BIG 5 TEST
Clifton Strengths
PUM need to be updated regularly to reflect your personality over the time.
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