Abby Falik, founder of Global Citizen Year, describes a leadership practice where you write a short personal user manual answering four questions: what energizes and drains you, how you prefer to communicate, your pet peeves, and common misunderstandings about you. Share it with colleagues and trusted people for feedback. It cuts workplace friction and builds self-awareness.
Hi everyone. Welcome to another PinkCast. I am joined today by Abby Falik. Abby is the founder and CEO of Global Citizen Year, which is this really cool, remarkable program that is reimagining the path from high school to college. And she is here with a tip on how we can understand ourselves and our colleagues a little bit better at work. Abby.
Hi, Daniel.
What's the tip?
The tip is that leaders need user manuals.
User manuals? Like the kind of thing that would come with a computer or a microwave oven?
Exactly. We also have operating systems. We need to learn them and communicate them clearly with the people around us.
So you literally want me to write a user manual for Dan?
Exactly.
For reals?
Yep.
Okay, so how do I go about doing that?
Well, you take some time, some quiet time ideally, for some real self-reflection.
Okay.
And you ask yourself 4 questions.
Okay.
So you start by thinking about the things in your life that give you energy and the things that deplete you.
Okay, so I write that down in a couple paragraphs or something? Write those things down.
Yep, yep, yep. Then you think about how is it that other people around you can communicate with you in the best way.
Okay, so whether I like to be called, whether I like to be texted, whether I like to be corresponded with by email. Exactly.
And just to be explicit is giving a gift to the people who are trying to communicate with you.
Absolutely. Great point.
Great point. Okay.
The third one?
The third is what are your pet peeves? Just let people know in advance. That always helps.
That would be a longer list for me.
Yeah, I understand. And then the fourth is, what do people misunderstand about me?
Interesting. So what do people misunderstand about you? When you wrote your user manual, what do people misunderstand?
That I'm a closet introvert posing as an extrovert.
Interesting. So I should be chill and like leave you alone and give you your quiet time?
You don't need to. I'm actually okay in a context like this, but after this I'll need some time to, you know, Everybody who's on the Pinkcast needs time to recover afterwards.
Okay, so this is actually such an interesting idea. And so you write it and you share it with other people?
Yeah, and it's best to start with people who know you well. So you go to your senior team or you go to your spouse and you ask them to read what you've written and reflect back to you where you might have missed the mark and where you hit it.
Could you do this with, with younger people, people who aren't even in the workplace yet?
Absolutely. And I think it's critically important that we're encouraging young people to learn themselves sooner. School in so many ways is normalizing a set of behaviors that are about external performance.
Exactly.
And very rarely about really understanding your own internal wiring.
Right. So it's partly about self-knowledge. It's also about just making things operate more efficiently, which is fantastic because that's ultimately what we want. We want to get more work done, but we want workplaces that are more authentic and real and human. Folks, seriously, write a user manual. Share it with other people. You'll thank Abby as we thank you for joining us. Thanks for watching the PinkCast. Thanks for watching the PinkCast.
