Build trust in your team with the Personal User Manual
Build trust in your team with the Personal User Manual
Process and template for sharing with your team members how to best work with you.
Members of high performing teams have strong relationships, built on mutual trust, which allow them to address and resolve tensions when they arise
The best time to build trust is before any issue comes up. Sharing your personal user manual is a practical way to get started
Why write a personal user manual?
Practical aspects: be transparent and clear about how to work with you most effectively.
Build trust: trust is the most important ingredient of high performing teams. Building trust is a journey that requires ongoing nurture. The personal user manual is a practical and safe method to develop a habit of talking about your inner workings and the relationship with your colleague.
While the practical aspects are definitely useful, I consider trust building to be far more important. Hence the approach that I recommend below (which builds on the book Smooth Scaling by fellow executive coach Rob Bier) is more focused on the trust building aspect.
It follows a three step approach:
Determine your working style
Write your personal user manual
Implement by sharing and inviting feedback
1. Determine your working style
There are many frameworks that can help you understand your working style, including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), DISC assessments, Clifton Strengths Finder and others. You can find a list of the most commonly used assessments with links and cost at the end of this article. Feel free to use whichever framework you prefer or are already familiar with.
These type assignations are not without criticism. Our personalities are more complex than four letters or colours. Putting people into boxes suggests we can’t change (which of course we do). Considering these shortcomings, I see to strong benefits that all assessments provide:
They help illustrate and become aware of the differences in personality that exist between different members of a team
They provide us with a shared language to articulate the differences, and in some cases, default tactics for working with them.
Most of them are very affordable (some even free) and quick to do. Doing them as a team and sharing the results tends to generate engaged and fun discussions.
2: Draft your personal user manual
Write your answers to the following questions and give examples wherever possible. This list isn’t necessarily exhaustive, so feel free to add any information that might help others work well with you.
A. Your Preferences and Strengths
What are your working-style preferences based on the framework you use as a team?
How do these show up?
What are the implications of your style preference for how you work best with others?
How to best communicate with you?
What are your greatest strengths, and how can people best take advantage of them?
Which strengths do you tend to overuse?
How does this show up?
What is the potential impact of this on others?
What else should people know about you to work well with you?
B. Challenges
What do people often misunderstand about you?
How would you want them to think about this aspect of you?
What else have people told you is difficult about working with you?
What are one of two things that trigger you? (cause you to become upset or defensive)
C. Growth
Based on your answers to the questions above, what are you committed to improving or changing?
How can others help you with this?
What would you particularly welcome feedback on?
What is the best way to give you feedback?
There are many variations of these themes in templates that you can find with a Google search (for example this article / template on career platform The Muse) . Some go into more details of practical aspects like communication and logistics, others go deeper on motivations and values. Feel free to add as you see fit. This version allows you to open up to your colleague and practice vulnerability - which is a prerequisite for building trust.
3. Next Steps - Implementation
Share with some trusted colleagues or a friend and refine based on their feedback. Ask what is missing or is not accurate?
Share your manual with a colleague with whom you want to build relational trust with. Again, ask for feedback. In this case ask about both, the document and also about your growth area and your working together in the future.
Ask your team (and other stakeholders) to do the same exercise and share in reverse with you and one another. When both sides have shared their manuals, discuss how to work more effectively together going forward?
Use the manual frequently with new team members, when changing teams or starting a cross-functional project. Use it as a starting point to accelerate trust building and to be able to address relationship issues when they arise.
Good luck with this effort! Let me know how it goes.
I will take a break from writing for the coming weeks and will be back with a framework in the 2nd half of April. Till then all the best and always keep growing!
A few frameworks to understand your working style
Clifton Strengths Finder https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/252137/home.aspx US$25 for Top 5 strengths only and US$60 for the full set.
6 types of working genius by author and team management guru Patrick Lencioni (of The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team fame) https://www.workinggenius.com/
US$25
DISC https://www.discprofile.com/what-is-disc US$81
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) official site https://www.mbtionline.com/en-US/Products/For-you/ US$60
There are also many free versions available Online, e.g. https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-testPSIU Assessment https://organizationalphysics.com/psiu/ US$25 with discounts for teams, but people could probably self-assess without even buying the test