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BACKGROUND

THANKS

Read up on the Medium Article of the same title that inspired this toolkit.

This toolkit was largely inspired and thanks to many leaders I worked with who help evolve it over the years: Ryan Koziel, Zack Gottlieb, Zhen Zeng, Sonya Ives, Amritha Prasad, Jeanette Mellinger, Michael Stumpo, Rachel Posman, and Andy Szybalski.

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My Map

Autobiography

Use this to understand the past patterns and motivators. Use this as inspiration to identify potential passion projects.

Career Journey

Hidden feelings

Use this to understand how they feel about where they are in their career. What were the common patterns in the highs and lows of the past year?

Hard Skills

Soft Skills

Part 1: Skills Assessment

Use this to understand how you and they see and their role.

Hard Skills

Soft Skills

Part 2: Goal setting

Use this to understand what they are best at, good at, and opportunities. Turn these into tangible goals.

TOOLKIT

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Autobiography

My Map

Use this to understand the past patterns and motivators. Use this as inspiration to identify potential passion projects.

1 hour

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01 Draw

Use a whiteboard and draw your reports name in the center of a circle. Then draw 8category spokes radiating from the center circle. Write each category in a bubble: Values, Goals, Work, Education, Home, Hobbies, Family, Friends.

02 Write

Have your report write out the top 3 most important things in each of these categories. They can go in any order they want but have them talk out loud why it’s important and how they were influenced by this person or thing.

03 Take notes, ask questions

As your report talks through each category, take notes in a separate doc that you will share with them. HIghlight/Bold the stories that stand out to you as you take notes. Ask follow up questions with each category. Some sample questions are in the next few slides.

My Map

Activity

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Values

What are examples of these values showing up in your life?
Which ones of these are hardest to live by at work?

Goals

What’s stopping you from achieving the hardest goal?
What could you do now that’s a ‘hair-inch’ improvement towards your goal?

Work

What did you learn about yourself at each of these jobs?
Who was most influential at work to who you want to be tomorrow?

Education

When did you realize you wanted to pursue your passions?
What class, professor, or internship changed the way you saw the world?

Home

How do you define ‘home?’
What characteristics in your home make you feel safe and allow you to express your authentic self?

Hobbies

How do you feel when you get to do your hobbies?
How does that feeling similar/different from the way you practice your craft at work?
How would you draw inspiration from your hobbies to bring into your job?

Family

What did each of these people teach you?
What influence have they had in how you see yourself, your life, or career?

Friends

Who is your biggest source of inspiration?
What do your friends push you to do that you may be afraid to do on your own?

Question Prompts

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Need to add image

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My Map

Discussion

Manager - Explain to your report why you highlighted certain aspects of their life story? What patterns do you see in their life and how they work?
Report - What did you learn about yourself? Anything surprising that you didn’t realize as you shared your life story?
What is the most important part of your origin story? What’s the biggest obstacle?

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Hidden Feelings

Career Journey

Use this to understand how they feel about where they are in their career. What were the common patterns in the highs and lows of the past year?

45 mins

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01 Draw a timeline

Use a whiteboard and draw a timeline for the past 6-12 months. The beginning date can often be the date they started in their new role or at the company. Draw a happy, neutral, and sad face on the Y axis and annotate time increments on the X axis. (See example on next page)

02 Draw a line

Have your report draw a line with peaks and valleys across the timeline to depict how they felt during their time on the job. Have them do this silently for a minute or two. Don’t overthink it and go with your gut! Don’t discuss the events or explain why yet.

03 Define feelings

Go back to the beginning of the timeline and have your report define each of the happy, neutral and sad faces. What does the highest of high feel like and represent? What does the lowest of lows feel like and what do they do/not do? Define these for each expression.

Career Journey

Activity

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Reflect on the past 8 months.

Draw a line that shows how you felt about your work/role to date.

2020

Jul

Aug.

Sep.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

Jan.

Feb.

Jun

2019

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04 Annotate

Start annotating from the beginning with notes on what happened at the peaks and valleys. What were the events that led to the steep climb/ascension during this period. Your report can adjust the line based on the definitions they described if they feel it’s incorrect. (See example on next page).

05 Discuss

After you’ve reached the end of the timeline and annotated all the events. Discuss what patterns are similar in the highs and low lights. Read up on discussion questions in this section. Don’t forget to take a photo and capture in your notes doc.

Career Journey

Activity

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2020

Jul

Aug.

Sep.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

Jan.

Feb.

Jun

2019

Feels energizing.

Helping people find their highest potential.

Seeing impact in the world.

Don’t want to get out of bed.

Feel stressed and worried.

Not leveraging any of my strengths and not growing.

Feels routine and predictable

Can do the work without thinking.

Launched a new product!

Uncertainty with manager changes

Presented new pitch to the CEO

Re-orged and lost some team members

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Career Journey

Discussion

Managers/Reports - What patterns do you see in your peaks? In your valleys?
When you reached your lows, how did you pick yourself up to get back to your joyful state? What lessons can you draw from that experience when you feel things get emotionally hard at work?
Reflecting on this career journey exercise, what’s an important takeaway you want to bring into the next 6 months?

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Part 1:

Skills

Assessment

Hard Skills &

Soft Skills

Use this to understand how you and they see and their role.

1 hour

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01 The Graph

Draw a graph grid with 2 axis (as depicted in red on the right) on a whiteboard or using this template.

Each square (X) represents a Unit of development, this is not a time, but development of skills.

Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 1

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Associate Product Designer (L2)

Product Designer (L3)

Product Designer II (L4)

Senior Product Designer II (L5b)

Senior Product Designer (L5a)

Staff Product Designer II (L6)

02 Levels

As designers grow, the area they need to cover becomes larger to represent the circle of influence and skill they acquire as they advance in their careers. The more experienced and senior they are, the larger their circle of experience and abilities.

Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 1

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03 Hard Skills

UX/Strategic: A designer, who thrives developing Information Architecture and can think through systems design end-to-end. They maybe someone with strong wireframes (not visual), frameworks and structure, that help accelerate the design process.

UI/Technical: A designer, who creates high quality, well crafted high fidelity work, especially in visual design, They pay attention to technical details is most inspired by motion, typography, etc.

Standards

New & Novel

Technical

Strategic

Core work

Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 1

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04 Hard Skills

Standards: You are someone who prefers to follow existing structures and guidelines and putting together existing building blocks to create the bigger whole.

New & Novel: You someone who breaks the rules and/or seeks to invent new paradigms of interaction patterns, visual design, and new/novel concepts.

Standards

New & Novel

Technical

Strategic

Level of invention

Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 1

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How it works

Structured

Organic

Extrovert

Introvert

05 Soft Skills

Introvert: You like to communicate visually or in written form. You like to draw energy internally and recharge alone.

Extrovert: You like to communicate verbally and think out loud. You draw energy from others.

How you communicate

Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 1

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How it works

Structured

Organic

Extrovert

Introvert

06 Soft Skills

Structured: You like to be organized, plan and think through things in a linear fashion.

Organic: You like to go with the flow, get hands on and plan as you go.

How you get things done

Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 1

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How it works

Standards

New & Novel

Technical

Strategic

07 Plot & Aspire

Plot a circle or a post-it on your graph that define what you think your current skills are. Then plot a larger circle or a post-it where you want aspire to grow. Think about the project you’re on, what skills do those often require you to perform?

Repeat this for your soft skills graph.

Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 1

Follows existing

UX Frameworks

Visionary

Systems Thinker

Follows existing

Platform UI

Visionary

Visual/Motion Designer

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Level Senior Product Designer 5a

Hard Skills

Soft Skills

Designer

Manager

Standards

New & Novel

Technical

Strategic

Structured

Organic

Extrovert

Introvert

Designer Name

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Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 1

Discussion

Discuss where they are now and where they aspire to be. What goals/projects can you think of to help them get there?
Managers: You can separately plot out your reports skills and combine together in 1 graph. Discuss the differences in how you assess their skills vs their self-assessment. Where do you expect them to be in the next 6 months?
Bonus: You can have your team plot out together their skill sets and see what the distribution look like. Do you have a diverse set of skills or a concentration of one type of designer?

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Part 2:

Goal Setting

Hard Skills &

Soft Skills

Use this to understand what they are best at, good at, and opportunities. Turn these into tangible goals.

Email evelynk@uber.com for the figma file template for this exercise.

1 hour

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01 Plot

Have your report do this ahead of time - review the list of hard skills and soft skill circles. Plot skill into the circle graph and evaluate them according to the criteria:

02 Super powers

Your report should star the top 5 skills that they think is their super power. It should be a strength of theirs they naturally exercise on a regular basis or demonstrates a level of expertise that makes them the go-to person for that skill on the team.

03 Discuss & Set Goals

Have them explain each skill they have starting from the center “best at” section and moving out. Use the discussion guide to talk about their skills. Manager should highlight the 5 areas in a different color that they should focus on improving and turn these into their goals for the next 3-6 months.

Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 2

Activity

Best at - I can teach it

Good at - I can do it and it’s effective

Good at - I can do it and demonstrate it

Opportunity - I know it and can verbalize it

Not now - I don’t know it

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Best at

I can teach it

Good At

I can do it and it’s effective

Good At

I can do it and demonstrate it

Opportunity

I know it and can verbalize it

Not now

I don’t know it

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Designer’s assessment

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Goals for next 6 months

Manager’s assessment

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Hard Skills & Soft Skills Part 2

Discussion

As they explain each skill and how they scored on their graph, ask them for examples in their work and highlight to them what you have observed.
Highlight in a different color areas you would like them to focus on and turn those into 6-month goals. Discuss what your expectations are of them. What are the expectations they have of themselves?
What are the perceived vs actual skills between yours and their assessments?

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