More and more individuals are looking to create a "How to work with me" document, which allows you to share how you do your best work with others. In a series of short articles, I'll share tips we've uncovered from working with hundreds of people to create their own personal user manuals.

The second step is to think about what you want to include in your document - the questions or entries in your Manual of Me.

2/ Selecting your questions

Depending on the reason for creating your Manual, the things you will include will vary. This is why thinking about the Purpose of your Manual is so valuable, which we covered in Part 1.

If you’ve decided that you want to introduce yourself to a new team, the questions you include are going to be focused on getting to know you.

If you’ve realised that there are communication issues in your team, and you want to tackle those, your questions are likely to be around boundary setting, communication preferences, and starting a conversation.

If you’re using a Manual of Me to show where you add the most value in a project, you’re going to be including questions which touch upon your capabilities, where you sit in a project process, perhaps feedback from others.

REMEMBER: there is no right or wrong set of questions, and your Manual of Me is a living document which can change over time. You can choose which questions you share with which people for different needs - so don’t worry about getting the question selection right the first time!

What types of questions could I include?

Most people’s Manual’s have a range of questions, some are more operational, for example, when and where you work, communication channels you use, your role within your team; some more more about your needs and motivations - for example, what you need on a project to do great work, things you’ve uncovered that prevent you from doing great work, what information you want to know you’ve done a good job, and some questions are more human - just about you as a person, not work, but the things which make you who you are.

In fact, that’s roughly how we split up our question categories:

Human - questions which give insight into who you are as a person, inside and outside of work

Workstyle/Operations - Questions which explain when, how and where you workNeeds - questions which help explain what you need to do your best work

Motivation/Needs - questions which help explain what drives you to do good work

Support/Feedback - questions which help you ask for and receive help

COVID/Remote - questions specifically around the new ways of working from home and tackling the challenges of lockdowns

But where do I even start?

The Manual of Me platform has a long list of suggestion questions tailored to both purpose and question categories, based upon what our members include in their manuals, as well as a weekly question with a prompt for a new question to include in your manual. If you’re completely stuck, you can grab a pack of questions which are popular, and start there, or subscribe to the Weekly Edition for a prompt each week.

But if you’re really struggling, think about this: What are the things I wish people knew about me, so I can work more effectively with them?

For example: Are you constantly having to tell people you don’t work on a Friday? Do you wish people emailed you rather than called you? Do you want people to stop inviting you to meetings in the mornings because that’s when you do your best deep focus work? Are you always having to explain how to pronounce your name? Do you want people to be more aware of challenges you face at work?

And because a Manual of Me isn’t one way, I always suggest thinking about: What are the thing I’d like to know about others, so I can work more effectively with them?

Do you want to know if people prefer written or verbal feedback? Do you wonder if people find working from home easy or challenging? Would you love to know what people are passionate about, so you can get to know them better? Do you want to know how to contact them outside of hours in case of problems?

Including the answers in your own Manual for things you are keen to know about others helps to start the conversation, i.e. “My preferences for receiving feedback are X, Y, Z - how about you?”

REMEMBER: Manual of Me is not a rule book telling people how to behave around you, but rather a prompt for a better conversation, so you can find common ground or explore the differences.

If you’re building a Manual of Me online, and there’s an entry you want to include, but we don’t have that specific question on our platform, Manual of Me Plus supports custom questions, so you can craft your entry to exactly how you want to word both the question and the answer, or you can of course use any way of sharing your questions - a word document, a blog post, a powerpoint, a poster on the wall.

Once you’ve got a handful of questions in mind, add the blank entries to your Manual of Me, so we can start working on exploring your answers, which we’ll cover in Part 3.