Say Hello to the Human User Guide (HUG)

That’s where a Human User Guide (HUG) comes in. A HUG is not just a document; it’s a dynamic tool designed to facilitate better understanding and collaboration. Crafted from lessons learned through experience, a HUG distills your core values, work style, and expectations. It’s your user manual, offering teammates a glimpse into your world.

Why Create a HUG?

For You

Creating a HUG is an exercise in self-reflection. It forces you to articulate your values, preferences, and quirks, gaining a clearer understanding of yourself. This clarity helps you navigate your professional life and serves as a foundation for personal growth.

For Others

For those who read your HUG, it provides invaluable insights into how to best collaborate with you. It offers a glimpse into your thought processes, problem-solving approaches, and communication styles. This understanding can lead to more efficient interactions, reduced misunderstandings, and a more cohesive team environment.

How does a HUG help others?

After reading someone’s HUG, you should walk away with:

1. Context: An understanding of the person’s background, values, and the lessons they’ve learned over time.
2. Clarity: Clear guidelines on the person’s communication preferences, work style, and how they like to receive feedback.
3. Actionable Insights: Information that you can immediately apply to improve your working relationship with the person.

What to do with this new information?

1. Initiate a Conversation: Use the HUG as a starting point for a deeper conversation about work styles, expectations, and potential collaboration.
2. Adjust Your Approach: Tailor your interaction style to what you’ve learned from the HUG.
3. Provide Feedback: If you find discrepancies between the HUG and actual behavior, or if you think some information is missing, offer constructive feedback.

What Topics Should Be Included in a HUG

Your HUG is a unique reflection of you, and as such, it can be as individualized as you are. However, it’s crucial to remember the ultimate goal of this document: to offer valuable insights into who you are and how you work, thereby facilitating better collaboration and understanding among your team.

The information you include should resonate deeply with you; it should be something you’re willing to stand behind, even if you occasionally falter. This isn’t about crafting a polished marketing piece; it’s about authentic self-expression. It’s got to be genuine — no fluff or corporate jargon.

While the following sections — ‘Core Values,’ ‘Guiding Principles,’ ‘Goals,’ and ‘How to Best Work With Me’ — provide a comprehensive starting point, you want to make the HUG your own and include additional topics like personal background or interests, whatever you are comfortable with sharing. Remember to define each topic's meaning to you, why it is essential, and how it impacts your working style. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to a HUG; it’s all about what you’re comfortable sharing and what will provide the most value to those working with you.

Core Values

Core values are the bedrock of your character and decision-making. This is the real-deal stuff that makes you, you. It’s what you stand for, no compromises. Sharing these values helps others understand what fundamentally drives you and sets the stage for a trust-based relationship. These non-negotiable beliefs guide your behavior in both personal and professional settings. These are the things you are not willing to change.

Sample Core Values:

Integrity

Integrity involves being honest, transparent, and holding oneself to a high moral standard. Integrity is the cornerstone of trust, and trust is essential in any working relationship. Without integrity, collaboration and teamwork suffer. I strive to be transparent in my actions and decisions, ensuring that I am accountable for what I do. This means I’ll openly discuss my thought processes and am willing to admit when I’m wrong.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Empathy allows me to connect with team members and clients on a deeper level, which in turn makes for a more harmonious and productive work environment. I try to approach challenges and conflicts from multiple perspectives, always considering the feelings and viewpoints of others involved. This often helps in finding solutions that are beneficial for all parties.

Accountability

Accountability means taking responsibility for one’s actions and their outcomes. You mess up, you fess up. Being accountable not only helps in personal development but also builds a culture of responsibility and ownership in the team. I set clear goals and deadlines for myself and strive to meet them. If I make a mistake, I own up to it, learn from it, and move forward.

Collaboration

Collaboration involves working together toward a common goal, leveraging the strengths of each team member. No one can achieve great things alone. Collaboration allows for a pooling of skills and perspectives, making the end result richer and more well-rounded. I actively seek input from others and try to involve various team members in projects where their skills can shine. I believe in open communication and shared decision-making.

Innovation

Innovation involves thinking outside the box, being open to new ideas, and continuously seeking ways to improve. In a fast-paced industry, staying stagnant is not an option. Innovation keeps me engaged and excited about my work I’m always looking for ways to improve processes and am open to trying new approaches to problem-solving. I encourage brainstorming sessions and am not afraid to take calculated risks.

10 Questions To Ask Yourself to Help Define Your Core Values:

1. What are the top three values that guide your life decisions?
2. What values do you admire in others?
3. What values do you want to be known for?
4. What values help you feel fulfilled at work?
5. What values do you refuse to compromise on?
6. What values do you think are essential for teamwork?
7. What values do you believe contribute to a healthy work environment?
8. What values guide you when you’re under stress or pressure?
9. What values do you wish were more prevalent in your industry?
10. What values do you think are often overlooked but crucial?

Guiding Principles

While core values are your moral compass, guiding principles are your roadmap. These are your North Star. They provide context for how you approach tasks and challenges. These flexible guidelines may adapt depending on the situation or specific goals.

Sample Guiding Principles:

Lead with Curiosity

Leading with curiosity means approaching problems, challenges, and interactions with an open mind and a desire to understand. Curiosity drives learning and growth. It helps me to not only solve problems but also to understand them deeply, which often leads to more innovative solutions. I ask a lot of questions and encourage others to do the same. I’m not afraid to dive into unfamiliar territory, and I often seek out opportunities to learn and grow.

Take Ownership of Your Growth

This principle involves being proactive about your own development, both professionally and personally. Personal growth is a lifelong journey. Taking ownership of that growth ensures that I am always moving forward and improving. I actively seek out feedback, set personal goals, and take steps to achieve them. I also encourage a culture of continuous learning within my team.

Impact Over Image

This principle prioritizes the actual effect and value of work over how it might appear to others. Substance over style ensures that the work we’re doing is meaningful and impactful, rather than just looking good on the surface. I focus on key performance indicators and meaningful outcomes rather than vanity metrics or appearances. I encourage my team to do the same.

10 Questions To Ask Yourself to Document Your Guiding Principles:

1. What principles help you make difficult decisions?
2. What principles do you apply when resolving conflicts?
3. What principles guide your approach to leadership?
4. What principles do you follow when giving or receiving feedback?
5. What principles help you maintain work-life balance?
6. What principles do you apply when setting priorities?
7. What principles guide your approach to innovation and creativity?
8. What principles do you think are essential for effective communication?
9. What principles do you follow when you’re learning something new?
10. What principles guide you in your professional development?

Goals

Sharing your goals serves multiple purposes. It holds you accountable and provides context for your actions and decisions. This can inspire others and help them understand how to support you effectively. These could be career aspirations, short-term objectives, or role-specific achievements.

Writing your own Human User Guide might make you tempted to include your team or organizational goals. While those are undoubtedly important, this guide is YOUR playbook. It’s a space to outline your individual aspirations and objectives that contribute to your personal growth and job satisfaction. Remember, the goals you list here exist alongside, and often in harmony with, your team and organizational objectives. They’re not an either-or proposition but rather a more rounded view of you as an individual. By focusing on your personal goals in your HUG, you’re inviting others to understand your unique developmental journey, separate from but complementary to the collective goals of your team and organization.

Sample Personal Goals:

Enhance Professional Skill Set

1. Complete three online courses related to your field by the end of the year.
2. Achieve a certification in a specialized area within your field by Q4.
3. Attend at least two industry conferences or webinars each quarter.

Improve Work-Life Balance

1. Limit work to no more than 45 hours per week for 90% of the weeks in Q3 and Q4.
2. Take at least two vacations or staycations per year.
3. Engage in a physical activity or hobby at least twice a week.

Build a Strong Professional Network

1. Connect with at least five industry professionals each quarter.
2. Participate in one mentorship program by the end of the year.
3. Publish at least one article or blog post related to your field each quarter.

10 Questions To Ask Yourself to Document Your Guiding Principles:

1. What are your short-term career goals?
2. What are your long-term career aspirations?
3. What skills do you want to develop or improve?
4. What milestones do you want to achieve in the next year?
5. What impact do you want to have on your team or organization?
6. What kind of leader do you aspire to be?
7. What projects or initiatives are you passionate about pursuing?
8. What do you want to be known for in your industry?
9. What personal goals do you have that also affect your work?
10. What steps are you taking to achieve these goals?

How to Best Work With Me

This section is the tactical guide to collaborating with you effectively. It provides actionable insights into your communication style, problem-solving approach, and work preferences.

Sample Topics:

Communication Style
I prefer a mix of asynchronous and synchronous communication. Start with asynchronous communication like Slack or email for initial discussions. If a topic requires deeper discussion, let’s switch to a video call. This approach respects individual time and allows for thoughtful responses, while also providing a space for real-time clarification and decision-making.

Feedback Mechanism
I appreciate written feedback followed by time created for face-to-face discussion if I have questions or need clarification. This allows me time to understand and process the feedback, leading to a more constructive discussion.

Meeting Preferences
I like meetings to have agendas. Before any meeting, let’s make sure there’s an agenda shared in advance. Agendas help me prepare and contribute more effectively, making meetings more productive for everyone.

10 Questions To Ask Yourself to Document Guidelines for How People Can Best Work with You

1. What energizes you?
2. What depletes your energy?
3. When are you most productive?
4. How do you like to receive feedback?
5. What makes a meeting successful for you?
6. What are your pet peeves in a professional setting?
7. How do you handle stress or pressure?
8. What do you need from your team to feel supported?
9. How do you approach problem-solving?
10. What do you wish people knew about working with you?

How to Share and Introduce Your HUG to Others

Your HUG should be easily accessible to everyone you work with. Consider storing it in a shared workspace like Google Drive, Notion, or an internal wiki. Make sure to set the permissions so that everyone on your team can view it. Placing it in places folks regularly see, such as an email signature or in your bio on communication tools like Slack, can encourage people to check it regularly.

Initial Introduction

When you first share your HUG, consider doing so in a team meeting or a one-on-one with new team members. This provides an opportunity for immediate questions and clarifications. You can also send an introductory email to your team, explaining what a HUG is, why you’ve created one, and how you hope it will benefit team interactions.

Work in Progress

It’s important to communicate that your HUG is a living document. During the initial introduction, make it clear that the guide will evolve as you grow and learn. You might include a “Last Updated” date at the top of the document to indicate its currentness.

Whenever you make significant updates to your HUG, consider briefly updating your team to let them know what’s changed. This could be done via email, or as an announcement in your team’s communication platform like Slack. If the changes are substantial or impact others, you might schedule a quick meeting to discuss them.

Feedback Loop

Encourage your team to provide feedback on your HUG. This could be done anonymously through a feedback form or in one-on-one meetings. The goal is to make your HUG as helpful as possible, and feedback from those who use it is invaluable.

The HUG and Your Professional Goals: A Symbiotic Relationship

Your HUG and professional goals should not be seen as competing entities but as complementary tools guiding your career. While your goals outline what you aim to achieve, your HUG provides the framework for how you’ll go about it. They are two sides of the same coin, each providing context and depth to the other.

Aligning Workload and Style

Your HUG can be valuable when discussing workload and project assignments with your manager. By aligning your tasks with your stated core values and guiding principles, you ensure that your work is meaningful and approached in a manner that is true to who you are.

Reflection and Reevaluation

Regular performance reviews or one-on-ones with your manager are excellent opportunities to revisit your HUG. Use it as a basis for reflection: Are you living up to your core values and guiding principles? Do your current projects and responsibilities align with what makes you most effective and fulfilled? This can be a two-way street, where your manager also uses your HUG to understand better how to guide and support you.

Goal Setting with a Personal Touch

When setting new goals with your manager, refer back to your HUG. This ensures that the objectives you agree upon are not only aligned with business needs but also with your personal work style and values. It makes the goal-setting process more holistic and personally meaningful.

Accountability and Growth

Your HUG can serve as a touchstone for personal development, helping you identify areas where you may need to grow to achieve your goals. Sharing this with your manager can foster a more supportive and practical development plan.

Living Documents

Just as your goals may evolve, so too should your HUG. Whenever you achieve a goal or experience significant personal or professional growth, it’s an opportunity to update both. Keeping them in sync ensures you always present the most current and true version of yourself.

Encouraging Others to Write a HUG

Encouraging others to create their own Human User Guide can be a delicate endeavor, fraught with potential misunderstandings and power dynamics. While a HUG has numerous benefits, not everyone may initially see the value or feel comfortable sharing such personal insights professionally. The goal is to navigate these discussions with tact, empathy, and a genuine desire to enhance team collaboration and understanding.

Your Boss/Leadership

Approaching your boss to write a HUG can be intimidating. There’s the risk of overstepping boundaries or appearing to challenge their authority.

Strategies:

1. Tactful Timing: Choose a moment when both of you have time to talk, perhaps during a one-on-one meeting.
2. Share Your Experience: Share how creating your HUG has benefited you and the team.
3. Frame it as a Suggestion: Use language like, “I found this helpful for me, and I think it could benefit the whole team if leaders like you also had one.”

Your Peers

With peers, the challenge often lies in not making it seem like an obligation or an imposition.

Strategies:

1. Casual Conversation: Bring it up informally, perhaps during a coffee break or a team lunch.
2. Share the Benefits: Talk about how it has made collaboration more straightforward and effective.
3. Offer to Share: Offer to show them your HUG as an example, making it easier for them to envision their own.

People You Lead

When you’re in a position of authority, suggesting that your reports write a HUG could feel like a mandate, which might not be well-received.

Strategies:

1. Open Dialogue: Use a team meeting to introduce the concept, making it clear that it’s entirely optional.
2. Be the Example: Share your HUG first, making yourself vulnerable to encourage others.
3. Support and Resources: Offer to provide resources or time during work hours to help them create their HUGs.

While the journey of creating and sharing a HUG may have its challenges, the rewards — enhanced communication, reduced misunderstandings, and a more empathetic work environment — are well worth the effort. Craft your HUG, encourage others to do the same, and let’s make our workplaces a little more human.

HUGs in the Wild

• Rands in Repose
• Shopify employee handbook
• Hubspot employee handbook
• Steph Smith’s user manual

More Resources and Information

• Matthew J. McCullough Human Interaction Templates

We’ve all been there!

If this is a new experience for you, try and put aside all the panicked feelings and focus on what is really happening; you have a manager (let's call them “the skip”) who wants to gather feedback from you about what they can do to provide you clarity and how they can enable of your career.

The goal of this article is to put you in the best frame of mind to make the most out of your skip level conversation, give you some things to ruminate over to prepare, and share some advice about avoiding common pitfalls. I will go over the most common topics discussed in skip-level conversations, including sample questions that should get you in the right headspace to make the most of your time.

There are a ton of articles out there for leaders on the subject of skip levels; how to run them, what are the goals, what questions you should ask, etc. Hopefully, your skip included an agenda or topic guide for the points they would like to discuss. If so, look over the items, and spend time thinking about the points they bring up. Note down any significant items you want to address to make sure you stay focused and cover all your topics. A good skip level meeting usually has some prompting questions, but adapts to the needs of the employee, letting them set the direction of the conversation.

Not everyone is great about setting agendas or laying out the intent in meeting invites, and all you may have received is some generic message about “checking in” and “wanting to catch up”. Don’t fear! You can still prepare to get the most out of your conversation by thinking about some common themes found in all organizations.

Context Set to Get the Most Out of Your Time

Hopefully, the skip has done their research and is prepared with knowledge of your role, background, and experience in the organization. However, it never hurts to take a moment and set background context beforehand or in the first minutes of the meeting. This will help focus the conversation and correct any inaccurate information. You can do this by sharing a brief summary of your journey, including a timeline for what you have been doing throughout your career in the organization:

“I am currently a Senior Engineer working in the platform team helping build out our billing service where I am focused on scaling issues currently. I started with the company 6 years ago as an intern and was hired here right out of college. I previously worked on the mobile team and then moved on to the machine learning team where I was promoted to sr engineer 2 years ago.”

This short context-setting will help frame career progression conversations outlining what you have expertise in, identify any opportunities you may need to demonstrate abilities or gain new skills, and also sets a timeline for how long you have been in your current role. This seeds your career goal progression conversation with where you are at so you can focus on what's in store for you next.

It never hurts to send any topics you would like to cover including questions head of time. Links to reference material such as project plans, shared company goals, career ladders, or compensation policies you want to discuss, enable you to spend your time talking and not waste it tracking down materials or giving background information during your conversation.

Prepare Your Thoughts, Questions, and Answers

Goals, Company and Personal

Your company has business goals that they are trying to meet.

If you are lucky those goals are spelled out very clearly and frequently revisited, updated, and communicated out using a framework like OKRs or Smart Goals. If so, review the goals and measurement criteria, prepare any questions you might have about how your personal work and the work of your team relate to the goals what the priority of the goals is in your manager’s mind.

If you don’t know what the goals are, a skip level is a perfect time to ask:

• Does the company publish goals anywhere that I can see?
• How is progress towards our goals measured?
• What are the companies priorities?
• How did the company fail to meet its potential last year?
• What challenges will the company face this year?
• How will achieving these goals help the company?

You should also have personal career goals that outline the things you would like to achieve as a professional, the direction you would like your career to evolve towards, and a list of explicit skills you wish to gain and experience you need to gather. If you don’t have career goals, this is probably a conversation you need to first have with your direct manager. I suggest reading over Danielle Leong’s article Setting goals with your engineers that don’t completely suck as a good starting point.

Keep a lookout for opportunities where skills you need to demonstrate and experience you need to gain aligns with the needs of the company. Talk to your skip letting them know of any particular goals or work that interests you and ask to be considered when opportunities arise for participation.

Common Questions Skips Ask Employees About Goals

• What professional goals would you like to accomplish in the next six to 12 months, and what makes you say that?
• Are you happy in your role? What could make it better for you?
• What’s one thing we could do as a company that would impact your personal life?
• Who is one person in the company that you’d like to learn more from?

Communication

Different companies have varying levels of success with communication and alignment, and as the company grows, these problems only grow more challenging at scale. Review the latest companywide announcements, recent all-hands meetings, product demos, or company-wide emails, noting down any questions you have or points you want to bring up. Use your skip level discussion as an opportunity to gain clarity on confusing or unclear things. A side benefit of this is it will also aid your skip to know where they could improve communication if common topics show up as confusing and unclear.

Common Questions Skips Ask Employees About Communication

• What are you LEAST clear about — in terms of our strategy and goals?
• Do you have any questions that, if answered, would help you in your day-to-day?
• Is there anything that would be productive for me to re-explain to your team?

Feedback on the Company Direction and Skip Level Leadership

If your skip elicits feedback from you on the company performance, product direction, strategy, or areas they could personally improve on, you will be in the best situation to respond if you have spent a couple of minutes beforehand thinking through what you would like to say. It is easy to ramble when trying to think on the spot and you may miss some of the most important points. Get your ideas down in notes so you can articulate your thoughts clearly and succinctly

Common Company and Skip Level Leadership Related Questions

• If you were CEO, what’s the first thing you’d change?
• What’s one thing we should start, stop, and continue doing as a company?
• What’s one thing we can do to improve the performance of the team?
• What is one thing I could do to make your job easier?
• What is everyone around me neglecting to share with me?

Feedback on Your Manager and Your Peers

Feedback about others during a 1:1 can be a tricky topic. I would discourage you from using your meeting time to do critical feedback for your manager or teammates. Critical and negative feedback needs to be managed as a separate conversation so that you can keep the focus on the main topic of your current meeting which is YOU!

If you do have critical feedback that you would like to give about your manager or teammates, my advice is first, if possible, try and give the feedback directly to your direct manager as going directly to your skip may end up creating a lot of bad feelings that you then need to navigate. If you have gone to your manager and/or feel you still need to address these with your skip, set up a separate meeting outlining your concerns, steps you feel you have already done to try and resolve them and talk about the impact the negative behaviors have on you and ability to do work. Ask the skip for the next steps, guidance, or a resolution plan.

Keeping this as a separate event allows you to give the topic your full time and attention without feeling like you are compromising on time that should be focused on you.

Positive feedback and shout-outs are more appropriate in a skip level meeting as you are not asking for resolution or next steps, but simply raising awareness. If your skip has a lot of folks reporting to them, it is unlikely they will be able to keep eyes on every little thing and may miss good work done by good people. Note down any shout outs/praise for coworkers and take a couple of minutes at the end of your discussion to share the positive impact folks around the organization are making on you and your work.

Requesting a Skip Level

This all sounds great, but what if your skip never schedules a skip-level conversation and you would like answers to the above, seek clarity, and want to get some face time:

1. Reach out to your direct manager and ask if there is a pattern for requesting a skip-level meeting that you can follow. Some folks are open to you just dropping things on their calendar, some use request style systems like Calendly or ask you to schedule through their executive assistant. Working within the system will be the best way of getting your meeting as soon as possible.
2. Create an agenda of the topics you would like to talk about, including links to material you would like to discuss and send it over ahead of time so that everyone has an opportunity to prepare. If you are comfortable with it, share this agenda with your direct manager and solicit any advice they have on the points you are asking about.
3. Be patient. Calendars are hard and depending on the size of your organization it may take weeks in order to find available space on both your calendars. If something is urgent or time-sensitive, make sure to outline the urgency with a reason why you need your discussion to be scheduled sooner then later.

Take a Deep Breath

Like most things in life, you will get out of it what you put in. Do the work, spend the time and you will be in the best place to get a lot of value out of this and future skip-level conversations. Afterward take a moment to reflect your conversation, write down any notes of things you want to follow up on, think about what you would want to have achieved by your next skip discussion and send an email to the skip reminding them of anything they were going to follow up on for you.

You got this.

Other Reading

• Worried About an Upcoming Skip-Level Meeting? Elaine Varelas Weighs In