The Value of the Personal User Manual
There are many times throughout your career — job interviews, starting a new working relationship, planning your next career move — when you’re faced with deep, identity-related questions like:
Who are you as a leader?
What’s your process?
What are your strengths?
In what conditions do you thrive?
When trying to develop responses to these questions, I find myself turning back to the same processes again and again: visual diagramming, written reflection (journaling), and bouncing ideas with my close community. I capture those responses in iterations of my personal user manual.
Originally popularized in Adam Bryant’s New York Times article, a personal user manual is a living artifact that captures what it’s like working with you. When initially adopted by managers as a way to communicate their leadership style, the Personal User Manual was at risk of being an artifact of power dynamics — a way to learn how to work according to the preferences of your boss. The real value of the Personal User Manual is when it’s adopted across the team (and its levels of hierarchy) so that it becomes a vehicle for learning how to work with each other.
For me, it’s a document that has proven valuable throughout my career:
I originally developed my personal user manual as a team exercise to build trust through the vulnerability of sharing the areas each of us were striving to improve and wanted feedback on. By partnering up while writing our first drafts, we also built a lot of connections (lots of “me, too!”) that otherwise might not have been discovered.
Later, I incorporated parts of my user manual into my portfolio presentation for interviews to communicate my values and approach as a manager.
my User Manual as incorporated in a portfolio presentation about me as a manager
When I started a new role, I started my first 1:1 with each team member walking through my user manual to introduce myself and model the vulnerability I wanted to see on the team.
my User Manual as shared with my direct reports in our first 1:1
To build connections outside of project lines and give a space for creativity, the team engaged in writing their own manuals. The sessions when those were shared with the wider teams were some of the most fun meetings I’ve ever participated in.
When reporting lines were changing in the organization, team members revisited their user manuals and shared them as part of manager handover meetings to support continuity of management.
And now, most recently, as I’ve made a change of career, I’ve revisited my manual to provide a framework to articulate my vision and how my ways of working will support me on that journey.
my User Manual as iterated to capture a new phase in my career
Not only has the personal user manual helped throughout stages of my career, but I’ve also seen that it has simultaneous benefits at different levels in the organization:
At a personal level, it helps you set or find conditions for peak effectiveness. It can serve as a declaration of boundaries or a rubric when considering a new role.
For leaders, having your team write and share their own manuals helps you learn how to engage and motivate each person in ways that work for them.
For teams, the practice of sharing user guides can accelerate time to the Norming and Performing stages of group development (as outlined by Bruce Tuckman), quickly passing through Norming and Storming by intentionally acknowledging differences between team members and rooting out any assumptions around the working relationship.
User Manuals have value at Individual, Leader, and Team levels
If you’re interested in drafting your user manual, see my article on Writing Your Personal User Manual or check out my upcoming Events to join a workshop that will guide you through the process with a supportive community of peers.