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Working With Me

Motivation

This page was inspired by a Medium post titled "Why you should write a 'how to work with me' user manual" by Mark Saric. In the post, Mark discusses Claire Hughes Johnson's 'Working with Claire' user manual showcased in the book High Growth Handbook.

What is this?

This page provides an overview of my typical working style, preferences, and general expectations to help kickstart conversation around how we can best work together.

Why? In my experience, it's much easier (and quicker!) to work effectively with someone when they share their preferred working style upfront, rather than trying to infer it based on casual conversations (which can lead to assumptions and potential issues later on). This document is my way of providing insight into how I typically operate to help us align quickly and get off to a productive start.

As you read, please remember that none of the points below are set in stone - they’re simply starting points for discussion. If anything here doesn’t quite resonate with you, let's chat about it! Your feedback is essential and I want to find solutions that work well for the both of us.

This document is a work in progress.

When You're My Supervisor​

Communication​

Asynchronous Updates​

  • As my supervisor, you probably have numerous communication channels, people, and projects to keep track of and I'd like to do what I can to lighten that load. To better assist you, feel free to let me know your preferences for receiving regular, asychronous updates from me (i.e. regarding project progress, issues that arise, etc):
    • Frequency: How often would you like to receive updates from me (e.g. daily, weekly, biweekly)? This may vary from project to project, but a general guideline is helpful.
    • Timing: Is there a particular day or time you'd like to receive updates by? I prefer hard deadlines as opposed to soft ones - it helps with planning my days.
    • Channel: What is your preferred method for receiving updates from me (e.g. A Slack DM, Slack channel, email, Google/Word doc, spreadsheet)? If you don't have a strong preference, let me know and I'm happy to suggest a solution.
    • Format: Is there a particular way you'd like me to structure my updates? I'll do my best to make the information easily digestible, but let's chat about what this ideally look like. For example, we might consider using a variation of SBAR for summarizing recently encountered issues.

One-on-Ones​

  • One-on-ones

  • I strive to demonstrate good reasoning transparency, which means sometimes I can be a bit more verbose than necessary. If you find that my answers are a bit too long than what you're looking for, please let me know and I'll happily use your feedback to improve in the future.

  • I prefer Slack as my primary asynchronous communication tool.

Feedback​

  • In large group (<5 person) settings, I am sometimes hesitant to share my perspective. This largely depends on the group I am with and the level of psychological safety I feel in the environment.
  • If you notice I'm note participating in a discussion as much as you'd like, feel free to ask for my feedback directly. It may be the case that I'm working on something else or am hesitant to share for the reasons indicated above.

When I'm Your Supervisor​

Management Style - Collaborative​

  • I value transparent collaboration. As a manager, I believe its by job to actively solicit perspectives from everyone on my team. I expect your to share your thoughts freely and honestly.
  • I am a fan of reasoning transparency. I want to know what you think and why (i.e. how you arrived to those conclusions).
  • I very much appreciate when people flag things (e.g. "this is something we might be undervaluing" or "have we considered this approach instead?" or "we have 15min left in this meeting - we might want to move to the next item in our agenda").

Documentation​

  • I'm big on documentation - tasks, meeting notes, decisions, you name it. If it isn't written down, it doesn't exist. If it is written down, I expect you to keep track of it. If anything isn't written down, let me know and let's agree on a good place to put it.

Standards​

  • I like coming to consensus about "how we do things" as a team. This means tools, apps, processes, frameworks, and standards are discussed freely and decided upon as a team.
  • If you come up with a good approach for accomplishing something or discover a great tool that could help us better deliver our best work, let the rest of the team know and let's work out together if that's the way we'd like to use and standardize on.
  • If we need to make variations/exceptions to "how we do things", let's also decide that collaboratively.
  • The last thing I want is for everyone to invent their own process/frameworks without sharing their ideas with the rest of the team. We're all stakeholders of each other's work - remember that.

1:1s​

  • Our one-on-one meetings is our time to talk about *your life*. I consider these meetings to be indispensable for developing rapport, understanding, and better communication with the people on my team.
  • During these meetings, let's talk about challenges you're facing (in life or at work), blockers that are preventing from you doing your best work, and how you, as an employee and a person, are making out. If we must talk about work things, we may, but I do not want 1:1 time to be synonymous with "updates and decision-making meeting with Quinn". If it becomes that, feel free to flag it.
  • I'm big of feedback, positive or negative. As a manager, I don't see everything, nor do I think of everything. I need your input to better understand my blindspots, biases, and how I can better support you in your work.

Communication​

Slack & Email​

  • In an ideal world, I would have email used only for external communication and important, department- or company-wide announcements and Slack for everything else.
  • If there's a thing we discuss regularly, let's make a new Slack channel, even if it's for a temporary. With channels, I find it easier to compartmentalize our conversations into different buckets and reference them later rather than navigate a sea of direct messages consisting of one or more people.
  • I appreciate when Slack channels are prefixed like "proj-" for projects. Let's agree on a standard for this and stick with it.