My User Manual
A personal user manual is a fun way to share your individual preferences for how you like to collaborate and communicate. It can also be a great tool for getting to know each of your teammates beyond the work stuff.
USE THIS PLAY TO...
If you're struggling with team cohesiveness or shared understanding on your Health Monitor, running this play might help.
People
1 - 10
Prep
30 - 60 min
Time
30 min
Difficulty
Easy
Running the play
Download the starter deck or copy the Confluence page template and review what questions you'd like to ask of yourself and of your team mates. Agree on which ones to focus on.
Materials
- Download the slide deck templet (Keynote or PowerPoint)
- Use the Confluence Blueprint
Step 1
Spend time before you meet answering each of the prompts (30 mins)
We've provided 10 prompts in the deck, but here's a sample of what you'll find:
- Conditions I like to work in
- Best ways to communicate with me
- The ways I like to receive feedback
- Things I love
- Favorite saying
Example
Here's what the "communicating" section of your user manual might look like.
Step 2
Share your user manuals with each other (5 - 60 mins)
(Number of Participants - 1) x 7 minutes.
Pair up into teams of 2 (with one team of 3 if you have an odd number of team members), and take turns sharing feedback on areas such as:
- How you partner’s description of themselves matches up with your experience working with them
- Areas where you need clarification
- Other habits, preferences, or details that you think your partner should consider adding to their user manual
- What surprised you about your partner’s user manual
Each pair should last ~7 minutes.
Continue to pair up for feedback round-robin style until each person has shared with each of their teammates.
Pro Tip
Keep these archived in your team's Confluence space so future teammates can get up to speed quickly.
Step 3
Rinse and repeat
Teams will grow and change so as new team members join your project or team, have them fill it out and share in your next team meeting!
Pro Tip
When new hires start, add this as a task in their 90-day plan.
Nailed it?
Be sure to run a full Health Monitor session or checkpoint with your team to see if you're improving.
Variations
Go Deeper
Consider adding more prompts to your user manuals:
- I feel that my purpose here is to
- I feel energized and engaged when
- I struggle to focus and stay motivated when…
- To make me feel like I matter, please…
- I’d really prefer if you would be willing to avoid avoid…
- Right now, I’m working on…
- When you have positive feedback for me, I’d prefer you…
- When you have something constructive for me, I’d like if you could…
Make it part of your standup
Incorporate these as quick get-to-know each other exercises in your standing meetings by spending 5 min at the beginning of each meeting on one topic/question and running through everyone's answer
Gamify it!
Try a gamification version of this play. Collect and anonymize the team's slides from one prompt and have the team try to guess whose slide is whose
Remote Teams
For remote or distributed teams, we recommend the Zoom Breakout Room feature.
Want even more Playbook?
Drop your email below to be notified when we add new Health Monitors and plays.
Got feedback?
Drop a question or comment on the Atlassian Community site.
