TL:DR
- Yarno’s “Get to Know our Flow” Onboarding exercise was designed to define my Team Lead, Nette’s, and my individual preferences, likes/dislikes & how we can best work together.
- Initially felt like a daunting and somewhat trivial task.
- Discovered it was easier than I thought to provide responses.
- Reviewed and discussed our responses to identify similarities and differences in our approaches and preferences.
- Identified that to be effective it should be done after the new starter has some experience in the role.
- On reflection I found the process to be enlightening and beneficial.
- The exercise could be defined as an intentional and proactive method of acknowledging individual and team needs to define cohesive working styles.
- Nette once again tries to defeat me with an unruly task.
My First Rodeo
Part of my onboarding at Yarno is completing the “Get to Know our Flow” exercise with the objective of getting to know my personal preferences around communication styles, environment, motivators, and de-motivators. My Team Lead and primary onboarding angel, Nette completed the same exercise and we talked through our responses and discussed how we can best work together, based off the outcomes.
When I was first tasked with completing the exercise, it felt exactly like that, a task.
It was a link to a Box note of a blank page with some headings. To me, someone who loves process, systems, and boundaries that blank page felt like the wild west, boundless and daunting. I guess I was expecting a more typical personality-identifying, multiple choice type quiz like a DISC Profile assessment that I could blitz through. Then, happy days my future at Yarno would be pure bliss. Nette would be armed with a run sheet of how to curate my ideal working environment and apply all of my communication style preferences from now to eternity.
..and they all lived happily ever after. THE END.
But that’s not what happened.
It meant that I had to not only type a bunch of stuff, but I had to look inward and describe things about myself. Self-awareness..ewww!
Buckle Up
Staring at the abyss of white, blank space I winced and braced for the difficulty ahead. Seething, I thought, how could she do this to me?! Nette, my ally and up until now such a supporter and enabler of my success. Why is she throwing me to the wolves?
Hadn’t she read my Cover Letter when I applied for the job? Wasn’t that enough self-declaration for a lifetime?
- MOTIVATIONS & PREFERENCES
undefinedundefinedundefined - DEMOTIVATIONS & DISLIKES
undefinedundefined - WORKING TOGETHER
undefinedundefinedundefined
Aren’t the responses to these questions self-explanatory and obvious? What motivates me…well doing the job i’ve been employed to do, right?!
Well, maybe if I elaborate a bit. In addition to that, feeling like I’m contributing to something that has a meaningful outcome. So, having a sense of purpose.
..and feeling aligned with a team of like-minded and enthusiastic people.
And.. and.. and..
Ah oh, out it all poured. Details and information and self awareness!
What kind of leadership wizardry had Nette used on me? Where had all these details been hiding? Regardless, my responses were filling up that blank page now.
Showdown
We talked through our responses together and discovered a few similarities but interestingly we discovered a lot of differences.
- I work in blocks of time Vs Nette does lots of things simultaneously as they pop up
- I like upfront training V’s Nette likes to learn as she goes
- I like detail Vs Nette likes a high level summary
So what will this mean for our working relationship and ability to collaborate.
Having this insight allows us to understanding each others’ perspectives and adapt out methods of communicating and collaborating accordingly.
Bullseye
I think the timing was important too. I’m glad that I did it a month or so into the new job. I think doing in the first week would have delivered very different responses. I would have been drawing on memories and experiences from my previous work places and jobs. And working at Yarno is different, very different from those experiences.
Yarno is fully remote which is really different from all of the companies I’ve worked for previously. Yarno puts a huge emphasis on defining and practicing (living) its values and a really positive company culture.
Yarno invest a ton of effort, time and resources into setting their employees up for success and are constantly adapting and evolving to ensure that their employees happiness and success is maintained.
After working the job for a solid four weeks I was getting to know the key functions, the volume and frequency of tasks, getting to know my work mates and experiencing their approaches and personalities. Resulting in my responses being influenced by my current needs and the relevant variables within this job.
Victorious
What I realised is that I do know what I like and what I don’t, but I’ve never been asked before in a professional setting. I’ve never asked myself, for that matter.
Throughout this blogpost i’ve subconsciously left little cookie crumbs / easter eggs about my preferences and working styles and I guess I do that all the time at work. In conversations, messages, meetings and emotional reactions ;-)
So to have it summarised and unpacked intentionally and upfront with my Team Lead, seems like a really healthy and proactive way to speed up the process of Getting to know my flow.
Hmmm maybe Nette knew that this would be the outcome after all and wasn’t just throwing another cliche management task my way for good measure.
We’ll likely never find out. She won’t get the chance to comment because she will never read this lengthly, long winded, detail dense account of the event. Not unless I summarise it at the top of the page in a few succinct bullet points.
Round Two
So here we are pondering over another one of Nette’s attempts to defeat me. This time assigning me the task to write a blog post for the Yarno website. Blog post?! I’m not in marketing, I’m not a copywriter or content creator, and I’m new here, I don’t know enough to share publicly to the world wide web on behalf of the entire company! We have specific teams of trained experts in those fields..why me?! Yet again, she’s sending me into the uncomfortable land of the blank white page.
After considering a Google search for “Chat GPT write a blog post about..” I paused and thought. What do I have to say? Once again finding myself faced with the daunting task of reflecting and sharing, but this time it’s even harder, zero specifics, no boundaries not even a couple of headings to start me off, sigh..after all, I have NOTHING to write about…!
