159: Help Me Help You: What If Your Coworkers Came with Instructions?

We’ve all been there: trying to suss out what a colleague’s crossed arms meant during a presentation; reading between the lines on a passive-aggressive message; or struggling to interpret a perplexing emoji reaction (what do pineapples have to do with the budget?). We're all just doing our best at understanding our coworkers with little to no real information. That’s where a “User Manual to Me” can come in handy. These personalized handbooks can provide a helpful framework for others to better understand our behaviors, quirks, needs, desires, and working styles—if we commit to getting real when writing our own.
In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans dive into how teams can make and use these manuals in a meaningful way, including:

Why it’s better to be “real” versus “aspirational” when filling one out

How you can dig deeper when you keep getting “polite” answers

Why user manuals are living documents that should be revisited over time

What we can learn about ourselves by making one

Additional “User Manual to Me” Inspiration:

Adam Bryant - New York Times

Brad Feld - Blog


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00:00 Check-in: What's the warning sign on the back of your box?
03:55 What is a user manual to me?
08:54 Benefits of making a user manual
11:07 Why people don't answer some questions honestly
13:13 Aspirational vs real agreements
20:12 Aaron & Rodney's manuals
22:03 Q1 - What do people misunderstand about you?
23:33 Q2 - How can people earn an extra gold star with you?
27:01 Varsity Q1 - What pulls you below the line?
29:34 Varsity Q2 - What are you worried about?
34:00 Facilitating user manuals with your own team