How to run meetings with a quiet person: silence and influence
A quiet person is not less engaged, but often processes internally first. Give silence, speech, and writing real influence in meetings.
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Blog about personality and collaboration
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.
Presenting with a dominant person: energy and direction
A dominant person brings pace, connection, and enthusiasm to a presentation. Here’s how to harness that energy without losing sight of roles, nuance, or commitments.
Read articleHanding over work to a methodical person: clarity without locking it down
A methodical person likes to work prepared and with a recognizable sequence. Here’s how to transfer results, context, and dependencies without taking away ownership.
Read articleGap view: compare two personal user manuals
Gap view helps team leaders and coaches compare two personal user manuals and zoom in on collaboration. Try it with celebrities.
Read articleHow to plan projects with a flexible person: room and results
A flexible person does not work without a plan, but with room to move. Learn how to set goals, deadlines, and replanning moments that suit three different working styles.
Read articleWhat 24 teams reveal about team diversity
An analysis of 24 teams and 190 team members: where differences are greatest, where colleagues resemble each other, and which agreements help.
Read articleWhy Tom Haak sees the personal user guide as an HR trend
Tom Haak and Natal Dank explain why a personal user guide speeds up collaboration. Platform data shows why the idea is still relevant.
Read articleWhat 2,705 personality profiles reveal about collaboration
An analysis of 2,705 profiles: which recognisable preferences occur often, where differences are greatest, and what teams can do with those insights.
Read articleThe most common personality profiles and the rarest
Which combinations of recognisable anchor words occur most often in 2,705 profiles? A privacy-safe analysis that does not reduce people to fixed types.
Read articleHow to create a personal user manual, with examples
A practical guide to writing your personal user manual or manual of me, including questions, examples, and common mistakes.
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