(Photo credit @hannaholinger)
Once you’ve been in the workforce for a little while, you’ll start to realize that you have certain quirks, habits, and approaches as part of your workstyle.
Maybe grammatical errors just drive your detail-oriented sensibilities nuts, and can sometimes cause you to overreact?
Maybe you are a “see the forest” 🌳🌲🌳 person working on a team of people who “only see this leaf 🍁 right in front of me”?
Maybe you need documents shared with you in advance so you can review them & be prepared with questions/comments, vs reviewing documents cold during an important meeting?
A great career strategy is to start morphing those quirks & habits into a “best practices for working with me” document, aka your 'Guide to Working with Me'
🅰️ Your 'best practices' doc can let your teammates and your manager know about your quirks and preferences, and also to understand them, which will also help you function better as a team.
🅱️ As you create this type of doc, you will continue to learn more about your own work style and preferences. As a job seeker, you can use this knowledge to help you find a better team or workplace culture fit. AND it will help you to come up with better answers to interview questions about manager preferences, greatest weakness, and other 'dreaded' interview questions.
For Managers
A 'best practices for working with me' guide can be an incredibly helpful tool for each member of your team to develop because it helps surface potential problems for team collaboration before you hit them. It can also identify areas for improvement for each team member that you can help coach them on, or help guide them to seek out additional training opportunities.
Sharing your blueprint with your team can also help them figure out how to best work with you and avoid pitfalls of communication.
HERE ARE A FEW EXAMPLES OF THESE ‘BLUEPRINTS’:
Luc Levesque, Shopify VP on why this is important and his blueprint
