EP. 41 Why Work Should Feel More Human

And as a matter of fact, I will call out that on our team at CAP, we've done the employee manual

activity.

Now it lives in our SharePoint.

So for those of you who don't know, Brie, do you want to just speak to that a little bit? I know it's something we've talked about before.

Sure.

Yeah.

It is one of my favorite exercises that immediately makes your working relationships better.

And here's how it goes.

You create a one pager for each person and some sort of shared document like a Google doc.

And on each person's page are a series of questions.

They tend to fall into a few categories.

So questions about like, who is this person? So the first question might be, who are the people or animals most central in your life? There's questions about what you value, what you value on a team, what you like about your work.

And there's also questions about how do others quote unquote use you.

So I call it a user manual, almost like you're a blender.

Not to be dehumanizing, but because I think it's funny.

But you know, you look at the blender user manual, like why guess at all the buttons? You just go to the quick start guide and be like, here's how I use this.

And so similarly, right? Yeah.

So for a human, it's just helpful to hear from someone.

When I'm stressed, here's how you can help.

Now, some people want you to come right up to them and say, oh, you look stressed.

I'm so sorry.

What can I do to help? Do you want to tell me about it? I can take something off your plate.

And for other people, they're like, please go.

Please go

away.

And as a matter of fact, I will call out that on our team at CAP, we've done the employee manual

activity.

Now it lives in our SharePoint.

So for those of you who don't know, Brie, do you want to just speak to that a little bit? I know it's something we've talked about before.

Sure.

Yeah.

It is one of my favorite exercises that immediately makes your working relationships better.

And here's how it goes.

You create a one pager for each person and some sort of shared document like a Google doc.

And on each person's page are a series of questions.

They tend to fall into a few categories.

So questions about like, who is this person? So the first question might be, who are the people or animals most central in your life? There's questions about what you value, what you value on a team, what you like about your work.

And there's also questions about how do others quote unquote use you.

So I call it a user manual, almost like you're a blender.

Not to be dehumanizing, but because I think it's funny.

But you know, you look at the blender user manual, like why guess at all the buttons? You just go to the quick start guide and be like, here's how I use this.

And so similarly, right? Yeah.

So for a human, it's just helpful to hear from someone.

When I'm stressed, here's how you can help.

Now, some people want you to come right up to them and say, oh, you look stressed.

I'm so sorry.

What can I do to help? Do you want to tell me about it? I can take something off your plate.

And for other people, they're like, please go.

Please go

away.