In 2018, I wrote a blog post that was really for my new student workers. It was entitled "Building a Team." Honestly, putting something in writing to guide my new team in how to work with me was one of the smartest things I've done. And it is something that all teams should do, in some fashion.
Recently, Anthony Brooks-Williams wrote a post on Medium entitled "Want People to Understand How to Work With You? Write Them a Manual." If the idea of writing tips or a manual to help people understand how to best work with you is something you want to pursue, then the questions Brooks-Williams has in his article will help to guide you. Really, this could be the best thing you do, especially as your work transitions this year to whatever the "new normal" is.
Oh...let me say that in 2018 I gave that post to my student workers and it really did help guide us. It also had us think about how to keep some conversations out of email. We adopted Slack for most of our communications and it worked really well. Besides in-between meeting communications, Slack was a great way of sending meeting reminders or sending a quick update when someone was running late. Slack may not be the best tool for everyone, but it worked for us.
Finally, I've asked a few people some version of "how do you work" and it is a foreign question. However, if we really want to work together - and work together well - we need to be able to tell each other how we each work. Again, the questions Brooks-Williams asks can help all of us answer that.
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