Personal User GuidePersonal User Guide
Your colleague wants a written plan, while you prefer to get started straight away. In a meeting, one person thinks aloud and another takes time to form an answer. These differences show up every working day. The Personal User Guide blog explores personality, communication and collaboration. The articles help you describe your own working style and recognise the preferences you see in others. That gives you a starting point for discussing what each of you needs to work well together.
The Big Five provide the basis for many of the articles. You will find explanations of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional sensitivity, with examples from everyday work. If you want to create a personal user manual, our guides explain how to describe your preferences around feedback, concentration, planning and workload. We also compare personality models such as the Big Five, MBTI and DISC. Our research articles examine patterns in personality profiles and differences within teams, explaining the data and what the findings mean.
Choose a topic that matters to your team. You might be welcoming a colleague, handing over a task or preparing for a difficult conversation. The collaboration articles offer examples of questions and working agreements suited to those situations. You can also browse personality comparisons, discussions of external publications and explanations of Personal User Guide features. Start with the basics or go straight to a familiar challenge at work. Bring an example to your next meeting and discuss which agreement you would like to try together.
How can compassionate and sensitive people work together after criticism? Offer support, assess what the work needs and make help specific without taking over responsibility.
Read articleHow can conventional and curious people work together? Make past experience useful for new questions without giving either familiarity or an alternative automatic priority.
Read articleTwo conventional people can both favour familiar methods and still disagree. How different routines, unwritten knowledge and shared working agreements become clear.
Read articleCompare 16Personalities and Personal User Guide on models, results, team features and costs, with graphics and data from 2,705 profiles and 24 teams.
Read articleA reasonable person sees several interests and looks for a workable outcome. Use that mediation without leaving boundaries, ownership, or decisions vague.
Read articleSlab treats a personal user manual as shared work knowledge. Here is how to make preferences concrete without turning the document into a rulebook.
Read articleHow do focused and merry people work together? Both perspectives on purposeful work, social connection and clear agreements, without assigning fixed roles.
Read articleShaun Arora presents personal user manuals as a low-cost way to improve onboarding. Here is how to turn that hypothesis into a safe, measurable practice.
Read articleWhat neuroticism measures, what 2,704 profiles reveal and how undisturbable, relaxed and sensitive people can collaborate better.
Read articleA progressive person sees possibilities beyond the existing frame. Give imagination room and still end with a strategy you can genuinely test.
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