This is a handy doc to make working together as easy and transparent as possible. I’m excited to learn some of the same from you!
Personality
- ISTJ in Myers Briggs. The “I” can sometimes be surprising to people but I truly do jibe best when I’m by myself. The rest are pretty spot on.
- Type A. My resting personality is Type A, which can surface as micromanagement at its worst. I know I hated working under leaders and managers like this though so I actively keep this under wraps as much as I can. The best way I’ve found to do this is to build trust with my team that they’ve got everything under control so I don’t annoy them with constant progress updates.
- Strengths. I am a heavy systems thinker, meaning I am thoughtful about the levers and implications affected by something. This means I love being aware of all the moving pieces at once and am often the one to connect the dots for everyone.
- Weaknesses. I am working on being more direct and clear when communicating with others, especially if I perceive it as potentially confrontational. I am also working on time management and time-boxing more efficiently.
Values & Culture
- Psychological safety. Possibly my biggest goal as a leader is to encourage more people to be themselves. As long as you’re not hurting others or obstructing your work, I want to support you speaking up and showing up as you. Putting on a facade takes a toll, so I don’t want to add that burden on you.
- Transparency. I hate having to read between the lines and always prefer not subjecting anyone to that either. I believe that the more I know and understand about a situation, the better I’ll be able to help you. I’m happy to keep something confidential between us rather than being kept in the dark.
- Follow-through. I take assignments and deadlines seriously, in the sense that I want to know they’re still happening and not just fallen off the face of the earth. It’s okay if deadlines slip or priorities change but acknowledgement of it is important to me.
- High impact. This has more to do with my personal career goals but I’m especially motivated when I’m working on P0s and will definitely get shipped. I like to know that my work is meaningful and reaches many, rather than locked away in a windowless conference room.
Collaboration
- Gold Stars. I like people who are tactical, can explain something super complex in simple terms, and consistently keeps me in the loop on things that are relevant to me.
- Responsiveness. I always strive to clear my unreads in chat at the end of the day. I hate to be a bottleneck and keep people waiting. In the same vein, I don’t like it when someone consistently takes more than a day to respond. If you’re busy, just let me know when you might be available rather than ghost me.
- Quirks. I run late to meetings, a lot. It’s not personal and more to do with meetings running over or my own poor time management skills. Apologies in advance.
- Trust Gains. The best way to gain my trust is showing extreme ownership of your work. This can be done by going out of your way to fully understand the problem and looping in all the right people (including me!) early and often. Ultimately, you understand regardless of what the actual lines of ownership are, it’s your responsibility to find solutions, not just problems.
- Trust Gaps. The easiest way to lose my trust is not acting on feedback I give you, especially if I’ve repeated it several times and we’ve both aligned on it being clear and reasonable. Of course, nobody changes overnight so I don’t expect you to, but some form of acknowledgement (“I remember last time we spoke…”) or visible progress would be helpful.
Communication
- Medium. I don’t check my email or Figma notifications. DM me to give me a heads up about something I should look at.
- 1:1s. I like to keep 1:1s as much as possible. It’s okay if you move it around (I might too!) but if you need to cancel, I’d prefer a heads up.