I wrote my user manual of me and then decided to get all my team to do theirs so we could better understand each other, help give us ideas for our personal development and see where we could learn from each other. As I was customising the template I saw that there were new questions that I hadn’t used in my original manual of me that will help the team in our current climate, so here are my answers to those new questions for like a user manual of me part two!
What motivates me to come into work each day is to…
Support people in my team to thrive — to help them drive and influence the work they’re doing in a way that makes the best use of their skills and personality — that can be asking questions to challenge them to think even more creatively, understand what’s getting in their way to see how we can overcome those barriers together or connect them to other people they can mobilise around their work.
What also motivates me to come into work is to connect people up who could take their projects to the next level through working together and to bounce off their ideas and energy to help challenge or improve what I’m working on. This is more difficult during the pandemic as we’re working from home, so I’ve got the team to come up with ways we can do this in interactive ways.
What also motivates me is to develop or lead projects which role model the behaviours I want to embody and tell a story about the world I want to create. An example of that is Think & Do, an initiative created between the council, partners and communities which worked out in the open on the high street mixing practical activities for people to drop in and start making or doing things in more sustainable ways, getting inspired by other people’s ideas and innovations and get together to hack solutions to issues they could deliver now, while plotting more long term projects. This modelled how I think strategy & change should work, where boundaries between sectors and roles are blurred and where you’re “making” strategy where people are.
You’ll convince me to get on board by…
Sharing what excites you about the issue or project, what you need to help the project thrive or unblock any barriers you’re facing and what role you think I can play (but equally I can help find that by getting to know more the project and its dynamics).
