Unlocked Potential: The Self-Aware Leader's Guide to Maximizing Success

User-Centered Design

Read Time: 3 minutes 47 seconds

It's been the shortest 40 years in history.

When the Apple IIe dropped in 1983, I remember my mother demanding I read the Owner's Manual from front to back so that I didn't break anything. It was 192 pages.

Four decades later, it's considered bad design if you need any documentation. Even ChatGPT, which is completely rewriting how we interact with computers, handles its documentation in 9 single-sentence prompts.

So why do I believe writing your personal user manual is a worthy investment of your time in this era of intuitive design?

Because we are not nearly as open and intuitive as we think. And no matter how stable your team is, you'll have new people joining who'll be at a distinct disadvantage to the veterans unless you onboard them intentionally.

And if you're like most of the leaders I work with, this exercise is much more challenging in practice than in theory. A blinking cursor on an empty page is intimidating. How can I be reduced to a handful of sentences?

But self-awareness is a leadership superpower. And the value of pushing through to clarity is three-fold:

1. Self-reflection - as consistently as you believe you operate, forcing those ideas into words clarifies and sharpens your understanding.

2. Compound efficiency - you can repeatedly explain yourself piece by piece and person by person, or you can jumpstart the trust-building process with a single document.

3. Role modeling - when two self-aware people interact, they can resolve their differences productively. You're not just asking your team to be mindful of what they're like. You're showing them how to use it to make their work life more enjoyable.

After working with hundreds of leaders, I settled on 15 questions I found most helpful in highlighting our differences so that we can connect with more empathy and efficiency.