“What do you know about our new leader?” is a question your team will ask before you start working with them. What crucial leadership quality would help answer this? How can you help your team get to know you more quickly to create productive working relationships and positive team dynamics?
Think about the last time you got a new leader. What did you want to know about them? How did you learn that about them? What would have been helpful to you?
This article looks at how to apply the crucial leadership quality of transparency to answer “What do you know about our new leader?” by creating a personal readme. A personal readme provides transparency into your work and leadership style. Transparency will help you create productive working relationships and positive team dynamics.
The breakdown of what we’ll cover is:
- What a personal readme is
- Why writing a personal readme is beneficial to you and your team
- What a personal readme does not help with
- How to write a personal readme and what it covers
- When to share your readme, and with whom
- How to keep your information current
- Common pitfalls to avoid
- Examples of personal readmes
Let’s get started helping your team answer that question: “What do you know about our new leader?” by applying the crucial leadership quality of transparency before you even meet your team.
What is a Personal Readme?
Think about the last time you got a new electronic device or computer application, especially one that wasn’t familiar to you. What was one of the first things you did? Did you look for an instruction manual or getting started guide? If so, did that help you get a better understanding?
You Are a New “Gadget” to Your Team
As a leader, think about yourself as that new electronic device or computer application your team has received. And one they probably aren’t too familiar with. Chances are your team has a lot of questions about how you “work” and is looking for an instruction manual or getting started guide.
A personal readme serves as a getting started guide for your team to learn about your work and leadership style. The term readme comes from software technology. Many software applications have a “README” file containing information about the codebase such as general instructions, help guidelines, and updates.
If you’re not in software, you could call this document “How I Lead” or use jargon specific to your industry. However, the premise is the same. A personal readme should:
- Clarify initial boundaries and expectations – both for yourself and team members
- Utilize the crucial leadership quality of transparency to build trust with your team
Your readme should work to achieve both of these goals. It should help your team better understand how you “work”. Ideally, you should create your readme before meeting your new team. However, you can create it at any time and should work to keep it updated.
Why Write a Personal Readme?
How do you feel not knowing how to work a new device or application? Is it helpful to have an instruction manual or guide to refer to when getting familiar?
Similarly, what is it like not understanding your leader’s preferences and working style? What stories get made up? Are they true? Would it be helpful to have them tell you a bit about their work and leadership style?
You and your team ask the same kind of questions and experience the same emotions when getting a new leader. A personal readme helps answer some of your team’s questions and reduces some of their anxiety.
Your Team Wants to Know About You
Your team is curious about you. They want to get to know you better. However, not what your favorite sportsball team is or where you went on vacation last year. Your team wants to understand how your leadership style is going to affect them. How do you view feedback? What about 1:1s? Do you like TPS reports?
Benefits of Writing a Personal Readme to Your Team
Your team will benefit from your personal readme by gaining transparency into your work and leadership style. And, the crucial leadership quality of transparency is proven to drive significant increases in engagement, productivity, and team chemistry. Specifically, a personal readme will benefit your team by:
- Reducing their anxiety because they’ll have a better understanding of your work and leadership style
- Increasing trust in your leadership because you’re demonstrating the crucial leadership quality of transparency
- Creating a common reference to help facilitate conversation on values and expectations
Your personal readme demonstrates you care about working effectively with your team. And that will go a long way towards establishing a good working relationship with them.
Benefits of Writing a Personal Readme for You
What are your values? How do you prefer to lead? What are the expectations you have for yourself and your team members?
Creating a personal readme will help you articulate thoughts around your values and leadership style. This will help you lead your team with more clarity and purpose. Having clarity will help you in conversations about your work and leadership style.
A personal readme also fosters the crucial leadership quality of transparency. Having transparency will make it easier to discover mutual understanding of expectations and values with others.
Outstanding leadership starts with self-awareness. And, building a readme requires a measure of self-reflection. Creating a readme doesn’t just benefit your team, it benefits you.
What a Personal Readme is Not
A starting guide is great but doesn’t make you an expert or replace the need for experience. Similarly, a personal readme is just the start of building relationships with your team. Therefore, your personal readme is not…
A Substitute for Relationships
One-on-ones matter. Conversations matter. Spending time together matters. A personal readme is an excellent start to building a successful working relationship. However, relationships take a lot of care and feeding, which is an ongoing process.
Carved in Stone
What were you like last year? How about five years ago? Or, two months ago, especially if you’ve had any significant experiences?
Your readme should be a living document. Expect content to change as you learn and grow. You shouldn’t expect to be the same person a year from now because of experiences and ought to update your readme accordingly.
A Comprehensive View of You
Where were you born? Where did you go to school? How many kids do you have? Are you a dog person? Remember, your team doesn’t care about any of this stuff initially. Their main questions and concerns are going to be around your leadership style and how it impacts them. As such, your readme is not:
- A personal biography
- A description of your personality quirks
- A listing of your strengths and weaknesses
You are more complicated than a 1-2 page document (and so is your team). Eventually, as you build a relationship with your team, you’ll be able to go into more detail and cover personal matters. For now, that’s not their concern, so skip it.
How to Write a Personal Readme
Your readme should provide transparency on items your team wants to know about regarding your work and leadership style. Ultimately, your readme should:
- Clarify initial boundaries and expectations – both for yourself and team members
- Utilize the crucial leadership quality of transparency to build trust with your team
Creating your personal readme consists of these broad steps, which we outline below:
- Write the initial draft, considering content, tone, length, and format
- Iterate and edit
- Get feedback
- Revise based on feedback
Readme Content
An outline for writing effective readme content includes the following sections:
- Introduction (short)
- Setting expectations on what your readme is and is not
- What you see your role as
- Expectations of team members
- Your view on feedback
- How you handle 1:1s
- How you balance connecting with team members and your other responsibilities
- Core values you hold
- Conclusion (short)
You can see these in the “Readme Examples” below. Before you add additional content, refer to “Readme Pitfalls”.
Readme Tone
Your readme’s primary goals are reducing anxiety and building trust by demonstrating the crucial leadership quality of transparency. You want to avoid sounding hostile. You want to show openness. You want to demonstrate genuine care for your team, not this…
Readme Length
Keep your readme to 1-2 pages. As President Woodrow Wilson said, “If I am to speak for 10 minutes, I need a week for preparation; if 15 minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.” Keeping your readme brief will give it more focus and impact.
Readme Format
It would be best if you wrote out your readme. Some examples you see will use slides. The downside of this is two-fold:
- Team members will have an easier time referring back to a written document to get clarity
- You will more fully form your thoughts and values by writing your readme out
Amazon has utilized this principle with its 6-pagers, knowing that you get very little information with slide-shows. Instead, you get bullet points. Easy for the presenter but difficult for the audience. Apply that same principle by writing your readme out.
Iterate and Edit Your Personal Readme and Revise It Accordingly
Writing your readme is not a singular event. It should be an iterative process. After creating your initial draft:
- Let your personal readme sit, at least overnight.
- Come back to your readme and adjust for content, tone, and length.
- Iterate as needed. The only guidance here is to avoid analysis paralysis and perfection as the enemy of done.
Get Feedback on Your Personal Readme
After you’re satisfied with the initial draft, share your readme with others for advice on content, tone, and areas to clarify. Your list of reviewers should include:
- At least one peer who knows you
- A leader you’ve had or your current leader
- One or two people who have been on your teams
If your reviewers aren’t familiar with the concept of a personal readme you could share this article with them. Take your reviewers’ feedback, make revisions and share updated readme with them for any more input.
Getting feedback on your readme is critical. Don’t skip this step.
When to Share Your Readme
You’re ready to share your readme after you:
- Complete the iterative writing process
- Incorporate feedback from others
It would be best if you shared your readme at these times:
- Initial 1:1 with your leader – do this first
- Initial 1:1s with your team members
- Group discussion with your team (optional)
- When a new member joins your team
- When getting to know your peers (optional)
- When you update your readme
Sharing Your Readme With Your Leader
If you did not already share your readme with your leader during the editing process, send it to them before sharing the readme with your team. You want to make sure they are in sync with you on the readme’s contents before sharing it with your team members. If they are not familiar with a personal readme, you could share a link to this article 🙂
Before your initial 1:1, email them a message such as this:
I’ve attached a personal readme file to bootstrap some knowledge about me with the team. I am sending it to you for input if you expect anything different from the team or me before sharing this with them. I would intend to share it during the initial 1:1s and a team meeting. Not sure if leaders here typically do this, but I’ve found giving the team some initial context around my leadership and working style is helpful.
During the initial 1:1 with your leader, cover your readme’s contents, asking for any questions or concerns they have. If they have suggested edits, commit to making those and get an update back to your leader in the next couple of days. If they are good with your readme, you’re ready to share it with your team.
Sharing Your Readme During Initial 1:1s With Your Team
After you’ve confirmed you and your leader are in sync on the readme contents, you’re ready to share with your team during initial 1:1s. Send a copy of your readme to all team members at least a couple of days before your first 1:1. You can use a message such as:
I look forward to working with you and getting to know you better. I have attached a readme file to bootstrap your knowledge about my values, expectations, and things that are important to me. Please read through it in advance of our 1:1 this week. I’ll spend some time going over its contents and answering questions you have.
Glad to be here and have the opportunity to work with you. I’m interested in what you value, your goals, and getting to know you better. That takes time, and I look forward to the process.
During your 1:1, ask your team members if anything in the readme created confusion, caused concern, or piqued their interest. There is a decent chance your team members won’t read through your readme in detail before the 1:1. Because of this, take some time to walk through each section, discussing your intentions and answering any questions they have. Make sure to emphasize that your readme is not a replacement for relationships. It’s a tool to begin getting to know each other better. This time is a great way to start creating a shared understanding of your leadership style and engage them in their preferences and work style.
Group Conversation With Your Team to Discuss Your Readme
Depending on your team, a group conversation about your readme may be worthwhile. Get a sense of this from your team based on individual exchanges. If your team isn’t into this kind of discussion, they may disagree about its value, which won’t help your overall success.
The group conversation should not replace sharing your readme during 1:1s. However, you could use this time to clarify any common areas of confusion, concern, or interest team members raised during your 1:1s. You can also use this time as a team-building exercise to highlight and discuss shared values that came up during your 1:1s.
When New Members Join Your Team Make Sure to Share Your Readme
Share your readme when new members join the team during their initial 1:1s. Follow the same process used when sharing the readme with other team members during their initial 1:1s. Going over your readme will help your new team members onboard more quickly, both with you and the team.
When Getting to Know Your Peers Sharing Your Readme Can Be Helpful
You can benefit from sharing your readme with peers when getting to know them. Sharing your readme can help you discover similar values, learn from each other’s wisdom, and relate experiences.
Share Changes When You Update Your Readme
Your readme should be a living document. Its content should evolve as you learn and grow. When you update your readme, share those updates with your leader and team. You don’t have to go through your readme in detail as you did during the initial 1:1s. Instead, email them an update on the changes and go through those in your next 1:1s.
Keeping your Readme Current
You want to set time to keep your readme current, remembering it should be a living document. Use these as a minimum set of triggers to keep your readme updated:
- Annual reminder on your calendar to review and update your readme
- When you take a new position in your current company
- When you join a new company
- If your team changes significantly
- If you experience a significant event influencing your leadership
When you update your readme, share changes with your leader and team. You don’t have to go through your readme in as much detail as you did during the initial 1:1s. Instead, email them an update on the changes and go through those in your next 1:1s.
Readme Pitfalls
When putting together and using your readme, work to avoid these pitfalls:
- Using your readme as a replacement for relationships. Above all, remember that your readme is not a replacement for relationships. A personal readme is an excellent start to building a successful working relationship. However, relationships take a lot of care and feeding, which is an ongoing process.
- Expecting your readme to create a comprehensive view of you. You are more complex than a 1-2 page document. Remember, your team’s initial questions and concerns will be around your leadership style and how it impacts them. Focus on that.
- Sharing distracting content. This includes items such as your personal goals or flaws you’re trying to correct. You can discuss those kinds of things later as you develop a relationship with your leader and team members.
- Not getting feedback from peers, leaders, and others who have worked with you before sharing your readme. Getting advice from others on your readme contents and tone will make it much better and more effective.
- Writing your readme in one sitting. Expect to iterate on writing your readme. Be patient and accept that this is a process. Your readme will be much better for it.
- Not updating your readme. Your readme should be a living document. Expect its content to change as you learn and grow. Set a time to do this at least annually or when you take on a new role, team, or experience a significant change impacting your leadership.
Readme Examples
Use these examples if you need inspiration or guidance to get started or edit your readme:
- https://dankuyper.com/readme
- https://soapboxhq.com/blog/management-skills/49-manager-readmes
- https://hackernoon.com/12-manager-readmes-from-silicon-valleys-top-tech-companies-26588a660afe
Conclusion
When you start with your new team, they will naturally ask questions about who you are, what you value, and how you lead. They will want to understand the impact of your work and leadership style on them. A personal readme will help clarify initial boundaries and expectations for yourself and team members. It will also help build trust with your team by demonstrating the crucial leadership quality of transparency.
A readme does not replace relationships or create a comprehensive view of you. However, it will start building productive working relationships and positive team dynamics.
Ultimately, your readme will help your team members answer that question “What do you know about our new leader?” in way that is genuinely helpful for both you and the team.
Have you tried something like a personal readme with your new teams? How did that go? What else has worked to help your new team get to know you better?
