I’m following the recent trend of creating a personal user manual to help my coworkers, open source collaborators, and managers understand how to best work with me.

The goal of this document is to help people understand how I approach my work and how I work with others.

⚡ Basic facts

• Role: Staff Technical Writer, Cribl
• Location: Salt Lake City Metro Area, Utah, United States
• Time zone: Mountain U.S. (UTC-6)
• Meeting time preferences: Early morning meetings are fine (as early as 7am with advance notice), but late night meetings (after 6pm) are not preferred and should be somewhat rare, unless it is for my volunteer work.

😁 Strengths

• Excels at strategic, big-picture thinking, and planning.
• Loves making everyone feel valued and listened to; I notice when people haven’t been speaking and help draw them into the circle.
• Good communicator, especially in writing.
• Highly agreeable and very willing to be flexible, adaptable, and accommodating.
• Gritty: follows through on all commitments or gives advance notification if I can’t keep a promise.

😅 Weaknesses

• Good at keeping commitments to others, but less good at keeping commitments I make to myself.
• People pleaser who has a tough time saying no, often leading me to run at full capacity (and sometimes even over capacity).
• Not very spontaneous and might react grumpily to sudden surprises that come with no advance warning.

✨ Values and motivations

• Loves opportunities to learn and develop new skills, including those outside my official job description.
• Needs to contribute to products that I can be proud of or causes that I care about.
• Wants to see tangible progress; wants to know that our product is getting better day-by-day.
• Money, bonuses, or perks are not strong motivators, especially when my baseline needs are already met.

🙌 Teams I thrive on

• Enjoys working more with teams of peers and collaborators rather than being a lone wolf.
• Prefers teams of 2-6 people ideally; too many and I start to feel like I have to compete to speak or get drowned out.
• Can also enjoy larger groups when I know mostly everyone and feel that they trust, respect, and accept me.

📬 Communication style

• Thrives at written communication in all its forms, including Slack or email.
• Enjoys being given time to think of a well-crafted argument or presentation in advance; tends to disappear or feel uncomfortable speaking spontaneously in large group meetings (unless I am the meeting leader).
• Loves 1:1 and small group communication the most.

💕 How I like to be thanked

• NOT publicly in front of large groups unless it’s a formal nomination for recognition that is part of a standard rotating recognition procedure (like employee of the month).
• Prefers private expressions of gratitude (a written note or private meeting) that I can save in my “feel good” file.
• Speak well of me to others in my absence when you feel genuinely motivated to do so.
• When borrowing my words or ideas, please give credit; I probably won’t yell at you or anything if you don’t, but I will be disappointed in your lack of ethics.

🌱 Leaders I jive with

• I often like my leaders as people before I fully trust their strategy.
• Once I trust a leader’s vision and judgment, I am very loyal; help me to see your rationale and I’ll be one of your biggest defenders.
• Leaders that seek feedback, buy-in, and alignment often win me over in a big way.
• If I’m not doing something right or I’m failing to meet unspoken expectations, it’s best to tell me directly and I’ll fix it.
• Micro-management is not my favorite.

🌳 My own leadership and mentorship style

• Builds teams with high trust and psychological safety, where everyone can feel free to speak the truth balanced against the need for kindness and empathy.
• Seeks consensus whenever possible to get full buy-in and alignment from everyone on the team; if not possible, I work to find a compromise that everyone can live with.
• Makes sure the team’s efforts are tied to measurable results and that they hold each other accountable for commitments they make to each other through periodic status check-ins.
• I’m continuously learning how to avoid over-helping and giving too much advice; I’m getting better at trusting my team, giving them room to grow (and also fail so that they can learn), while coaching from the sidelines. If I slip up in this respect, call me out so that I can apologize and do better.

😾 Pet peeves

• Passive aggressive conflict styles.
• Motivated reasoning, cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and the Dunning-Kruger effect.
• Overly bureaucratic systems with too many layers of middle management.
• Meetings without an agenda, meetings for the sake of meetings, and blocks of meetings that last all day long.
• Being asked to drop everything right now and work on some random task, such as assigning an issue to me without also asking me whether I have enough context or sufficient bandwidth. All will be forgiven if you reach out to me privately to follow up.

📜 Words I live by

• If not me, then who?
• People like what they like, and that’s okay.
• The world is a messy place and I can’t clean it all up, but I can do the dishes.
• Be mindful of the work you create for others.

💎 Hobbies and interests

• Loves to volunteer, especially in open source.
• Big fan of reading and writing. (Huge shock, I know.)
• Music is a strong theme in my life; I’m a pure music omnivore who loves music of all genres.
• Has a few bonus college degrees in Film Studies, which means I enjoy watching and talking about movies of all genres, countries, and time periods.
• Enjoys puzzles and games (board games, roleplaying games, video games).

😎 Personality

🌊 Big five personality (OCEAN)

• Openness to experience: 92 out of 100
• Conscientiousness: 83 out of 100
• Extroversion: 50 out of 100
• Agreeableness: 92 out of 100
• Negative emotionality: 58 out of 100

🎲 Alignment

• Lawful good (the Paladin!)

🌟 The four tendencies

• Obliger

🔮 Myers-Briggs

• INTJ

“The argument against Myers-Briggs is that it’s not scientific. The argument for Myers-Briggs is that I’m also the kind of person who did some looking into it and realizes that MBTI is neither scientific nor consistently applied, and I also test consistently as INTJ, so clearly something is going on here. And every time I read a description of INTJ, I have to facepalm because I so consistently recognize myself in it.”

– Scott Alexander

💪 Top 5 Gallup Clifton strengths

1. Analytical - I search for reasons and causes. I have the ability to think about all of the factors that might affect a situation. My natural ability to investigate, diagnose, and identify patterns results in valuable insights that are logical and well-thought-out. My critical thinking helps clarify reality and provides objectivity.
2. Learner - I have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. The process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites me. I am attracted to activities that allow me to acquire knowledge or gain new skills. My natural ability to pick up and absorb information quickly and to challenge myself to continually learn more keeps me on the cutting edge.
3. Communication - I am good at capturing people’s attention by what I say and how I say it. My ability to find words for my own and others' thoughts and feeling highlights important messages and helps me make meaningful connections.
4. Input - I have a need to collect and archive, accumulating information, ideas, artifacts, or even relationships. I love to read and I refrain accepting information at its face value. Instead, I examine some ideas, suggestions, or facts from a variety of angles. These qualities empower me to make credible and well-informed decisions.
5. Achiever - I work hard and possess a great deal of stamina. I take immense satisfaction in being busy and productive. My work ethic is as much a matter of conscience as it is a matter of completing tasks. I love to complete tasks and I have a strong inner drive, an innate source of intensity, energy, and power that motivates me to work hard and get things done.

Acknowledgments

Let’s give credit where credit is due! I was very inspired by Megan Sullivan’s personal user manual in writing this blog entry.