How using a Manual of Me can support project kickoff meetings

Manual of Me® is a powerful framework to help individuals and teams explore and communicate how they work better together. They’re useful at many moments in a organisation’s life cycles and project processes, including project kickoffs.

Whether you’ve asked your team members to create a Manual of Me or not, you can even use the framework to create more effective project kickoffs and initiation sessions, to find a smoother running project.

1. Reading Manuals before the session

If you’ve already asked you team to complete a Manual of Me, do a quick review of your teams manuals before your kickoff session to identify or highlight any potential issues you might see, concerns you’d like to address, or opportunities to highlight.

This might include operational challenges like timezones or working hours, it could be differences in ways of working such as face to face vs remote, it could be communication or engagement styles.

Use your teams Manuals as insight as to how the project might run, and tailor your kickoff agenda accordingly.

If you haven’t already asked your team to create a Manual of Me, consider doing this ahead of the project kickoff - it’s free for individuals or £6/month for a small team or project cohort.

2. Use your Manual of Me in the kickoff session by sharing key entries.

It’s possible that your existing Manual of Me will have useful entries that can help smooth the process of a new project.

For instance, information on things like working hours, timezones, preferences around communication channels, what sort of information individuals find useful.

Pick a handful of questions to share in the kick-off session, and start a discussion in the group around what issues or opportunities the team might see in working together.

It’s possible that people might want time to review or update their answers in their Manuals based upon learning from a previous project, so don’t forget to factor this time in, ahead of a kickoff.

If you don’t already have manuals as a group, consider picking some questions ahead of the session and asking people to complete them before the kickoff. Collate these into a document which you can use in the kickoff, and people can add their responses to a Manual of Me at a later date.

3. Adding new questions

If your existing questions don’t feel helpful to the kickoff - get everyone to spend a little time adding or updating their Manual of Me before the kickoff session with specific questions which might help the project start well. Consider questions like:

• What information do you need to know about a project to help you feel engaged?
• What information is important for you to share at the start of a project?
• What frustrations have you had with previous kickoffs?
• What makes for the best possible way to start a new project?

Review the responses before the kickoff meeting, so you can tailor your approach and agenda to fit people’s needs and preferences.

4. Introducing new people

If you’re working with a team of people who haven’t worked together before, use the Manual of Me to properly introduce each other.

Rather than asking everyone to read each others manuals, hold a short ‘getting to know me’ session where each person shares a few key points about themselves, based upon questions from the Manuals.

This is an essential part of any good kickoff agenda, even if your team know each other relatively well.

Allow a good amount of time for this, don’t squeeze this into the five minutes of ‘introductions around the table’.

Consider a dedicated session purely for your people to meet, connect and start to build better working relationships with each other.

5. Capturing key changes in how you’ll work together

Once you’ve had your kickoff session, discuss takeaways as a group, and take actions based upon what you’ve learned.

What commonalities or differences do you notice? How can you use this knowledge to communicate and collaborate better?

Remember that Manual of Me isn’t just about hearing the differences or similarities, but building upon those insights to make decisions to be more inclusive and supportive of people’s working needs.

You’ll not be able to accomodate every single individuals’ needs and preferences in to a project, that’s not the goal here - but taking the time to surface those insights will help you to prioritise the biggest opportunities or tackle challenges before they arise.

Manual of Me may seem simple, but can have profound impacts on team cohesion and performance. It lays the groundwork for quality communication and collaboration right from the start. When people feel understood by their peers, it sparks the element of trust that marks all highly effective teams.

Create your own Manual of Me for free, or create a team to allow you and your team members to share their Manuals with each other at my.manualof.me