Your Team Is Guessing. Stop Them.
The simple tool that stops the guesswork and forces real clarity. (I'm sharing mine.)
After time at Comcast, Dow Jones, little family-owned shops, and everywhere in between, please forgive me for feeling like I’d seen most everything. I’ve worked for public and private companies, huge legacy brands, and scrappy startups.
But even with all of that, when I landed at the American Press Institute, I encountered a tool that was new to me. And it’s one of the most effective I’ve ever used.
Meet the Personal User Manual
For the uninitiated, it’s what it sounds like: an owner’s manual for working with you. It’s a living document where you lay out your communication style, your guiding values, and conditions you need to do your best work.
Think of it as an FAQ for your coworkers.
As writer and strategist Sarah Lay describes it, it’s “one of the best tools… for fostering meaningful connection… and nurturing psychological safety.”
It’s not a new concept. It’s one of those good ideas that came along at exactly the right time. It borrows from the “README” files software engineers write for other coders, got a jumpstart from tech executives doing radical transparency, and became a must-have when the pandemic and remote work decimated our water cooler moments, and we lost informal opportunities to understand how our colleagues work.
But if the tech world provided the “README” framework for the personal manual, it was Brené Brown who gave it soul. She frames the manual as a vulnerability tool and leadership exercise.
It’s a reminder that clarity is kindness. Honesty about how you operate isn’t needy. It’s an opportunity to build trust and work more humanely.
Which is likely why it crossed over from startup culture into mission-driven worlds like journalism and nonprofits, where the work is intense, burnout runs high, and trust matters most.
So what’s in mine?
When it comes to personal user manuals, there’s no “right” manual. That’s the point.
Mine is not a 10-page dissertation. It’s a one-pager. Here’s the gist of what’s in mine, minus all the HR-speak:
My Core Values: Stewardship & Usefulness I distill my professional values down to two words: stewardship and usefulness.
Stewardship: I have a caretaker gene that won’t quit. Whether it’s the mission, the team, the organization, or the community trust we’ve built, I have a profound sense of responsibility for each of these things. The best work I do is the work that leaves our organization stronger than I found it.
Usefulness: The acid test for any tool, any strategy, and any product is how useful it is. I mean really, what’s the point of an idea if you don’t do anything with it? I’m always going to choose building a useful tool over a theoretical discussion any day.
How to Actually Work With Me
How to talk to me: For rapid-fire questions or random stuff, I use Slack or text best. I see it as the keyboard version of kicking your chair away from your desk to ask your office neighbor something. Email is fine for the non-fire stuff. A video chat for the things that are an actual conversation. If the office is literally on fire, just call me.
My environment: I worked for years in big newsrooms with TV news blaring and scanners going 24/7. Loud places don’t bother me. I can work with the radio on or completely quiet. Silence is fine, but it’s not my happy place.
The good and the bad: I’m great at connecting the dots between strategy and the mission. But that comes at the cost of missing or discounting the day-to-day pressures my teammates feel. I also get impatient at meetings that are too unstructured or theoretical, and don’t have a clear path to a useful outcome. It’s a flaw I have to actively work against.
A Little Backstory
I also include a line in my manual about my past work life because I’m not your typical executive track journey.
I didn’t start my career as a copywriter or consultant. I was running around NYC as a bike messenger, flipping burgers in an all-day diner kitchen, and helping people navigate library stacks and history books.
Every single day, those jobs taught me this one lesson I carry with me still:
You cannot design a tool for someone else without first understanding their lived reality.
Frameworks, Not Formats
My manual is really a hybrid. A personal user manual is less a fixed document, and more a framework to try different things. It’s a tool for different roles.
Here are the primary versions I’ve seen in practice:
The Leader Manual: This is the version written by a manager for their direct reports. It establishes expectations for how they give and receive feedback, their communication style, meeting cadence, and what they value most.
The Peer Manual: Peer-to-peer, written by colleagues for colleagues. It’s more personal and work rhythms: brainstorming, written vs. verbal, overcommunicating or under, how they handle conflict or feedback, respecting boundaries, and so on.
The Values Manual: This is the Brené Brown-inspired version. It’s less about operations and more about the why: core values, definitions of success and failure, areas for growth.
The “README” Manual: The OG tech version. Zero fluff. Pure operations: Tools, systems, processes, schedules. Tactical and efficient, no frills. Best for remote teams who need clarity on operations.
The key difference is the intent behind the manual. Some are informing (“here’s how I work”), others are inviting (“here’s how we can work well together”).
The best leader manuals do a little of both.
Sharing Your Manual (Ideally Without Feeling Obligatory)
Best of all, if you’re in an organization that hasn’t tried this yet, there’s no time like the present.
The ED or team lead should go first: When the executive director, managing editor, or team lead is first to share their manual, it sets the tone. It becomes a vulnerability exercise, not another HR initiative. One vulnerability begets another vulnerability.
Make it a group exercise: Create and/or share yours in a retreat or workshop setting. It keeps the process more collaborative, less performative.
Link it to a problem: If your organization has known issues around communication breakdowns, meeting overload, or overcollaboration, position the personal manual as a solution to that pain point.
Keep it simple: It doesn’t need to be more than a one-pager or short slide deck. The exercise isn’t about how comprehensive it is, it’s about whether it’s helpful.
Show, don’t tell: It’s impossible to mandate authenticity. But when one or two respected team members share theirs and a few productive conversations spring up, there’s an organic downstream effect of others wanting to do the same.
Potential Challenges to Anticipate
A mandate from on high, with no buy-in: HR-led efforts that end up on people’s desks as “requirements” are dead on arrival.
No follow-through: When a user manual collection becomes a project that’s completed, then abandoned in a Google Drive folder, it’s a colossal waste. Onboarding for new folks, regular 1:1s, and performance reviews are an obvious place to build this in.
Power dynamics: The flip side of the previous risk is when junior-level staff feel like they need to over-accommodate (“I’ll work whenever! I’m available!”). It’s up to the leadership to model healthy boundaries so others feel safe setting those same boundaries.
Where User Manuals Shine
User manuals are great for onboarding, for sure. But they’re even more powerful for existing teams.
They bring assumptions to the surface. You might learn that the colleague who never replies after 5PM isn’t intentionally blowing you off; they have boundaries you didn’t know about. Or that your coworker who cringes at open office hours is an introvert who needs to work on energy management, not less accountability.
They also become a release valve for people changing, and having the space to change. We all evolve. A user manual gives someone permission to say, “I used to be fine with meetings back-to-back, but I’m not anymore,” without it feeling like a gripe.
And in worlds like journalism and nonprofits where churn and turnover are high, and trust is stretched thin, exercises like this can help people relearn how to communicate and work together.
Why I Never Stop Updating Mine
For me, putting together a personal user manual was never about control. It was the opposite. It was about clarity.
It helped me realize that leadership is not just what we expect from others, it’s making it easier for others to understand you.
Whenever I revisit mine, there’s always something I didn’t notice the last time I did it. A bad habit, a new pressure point, a pattern I want to shift.
It’s less a document, and more a mirror.
And the clearer the mirror is, the easier it is for everyone around me to do their best work as well.
So, I’ve shown you mine. Now it’s your turn.
Have you ever used a personal user manual? Did it work? If you were to write one, what’s the one thing you’d need your colleagues to know about you?
Leave a comment and let’s discuss.
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This spreads the word and keeps me writing the types of content that you have enjoyed.