You have a new manager, mentor, or team, and want to share the info pertinent to working with you. What do they need to know? What should you share? What should you know about your manager?
- Favorite communication and learning style
- How you give and receive feedback
- How you give and receive praise and affirmations
- Unique challenges you face such as neuro-divergence, memory, disability, etc, and how to cater to those challenges
- Signs you are struggling, and how to support you
- How to handle emergencies, such as a mental or emotional health breakdown, that require an “act now, ask questions later” policy.
- Unusual things you do that aren’t a problem (ex. I knit during meetings so I can focus)
- What inspires you
- What demotivates you
- Pet peeves and frustrations
- Ice breakers, hobbies, random/unusual/interesting facts and interests
- Areas and skills in which you excel
- Areas and skills you need help growing
- How you believe you are being measured (rubric, company values, KPI’s, etc)
- What you prefer to work on
- What are their current priorities, problems and key initiatives?
- How stressed are they? How busy are they? Do they have time to grow in their role, or are they grinding?
- What is their manager’s priority for them?
- What is keeping them up at night?
- How can you best help them learn the product?
- What are they trying to improve on themselves, and what are their goals?
- Once you have shared these things, and gotten the corresponding answers from your cohort, start meeting in the middle.
- How best do we communicate with each other?
- How can you best support each other?
- Keywords or routines that have specific and important meanings (ex. “I declare a safe space”, or “first 5-minutes of a meeting are setting up notes”)
- How can I tell you that your advice isn’t working for me?