- Increase productivity by allowing team members to define how they want to be worked with.
- Avoid miscommunication and other communication problems.
- Decrease potential feeling of anxiousness in teams.
Most of us spend more time with our colleagues than with our significant others. It follows that we should ensure that our work relationships are as good as they can be. On top of that, it has been found that writing user manuals for team members can make teams less anxious and more productive. This exercise allows team members to define a manual for others who they work with.
- Decide where the instruction manuals should live (GitHub/Google Drive/...) and ensure this is accessible to the team.
- Create your own instruction manual.
- Notify team of this exercise beforehand so that they can prepare their manual in advance if they want to.
Each team member should take 30 minutes to create an instruction manual for themselves given the template in instruction-manual-template.md. This template is based on Abby Falik's.
After each person completes their manual, take a break (so that people can finish the manual and collect their thoughts). Now have people share their manuals in your team's Google Drive or GitHub repository. Give team members time to read through each other's user guides. If your team feels comfortable with it, you can have them present their manuals to each other.
- Take this seriously. You are asking people to open up about themselves and to reflect on their personalities. This can be difficult for people and make them feel vulnerable.
- Be honest. Lead by example: Have your own instruction manual prepared and ready to share. Seeing you open up will encourage others to do the same.
- Be careful with feedback. This is probably not the right setting to give others feedback about their user manual. If you have questions, feel free to voice them but save feedback for a separate occasion (you can see their user manual to see how the person would prefer to receive feedback!).