Welcome to The Quiet Rich, your weekly guide to a quiet mind and rich life. Today you’re getting the #1 exercise I think everyone should do at work.
CONTEXT
Hot take: Most workplace drama isn't about big personality clashes or major disagreements. It's about tiny, quiet, mismatched expectations that compound over time.
Someone prefers quick calls over long email chains. Someone else thinks better out loud and needs meetings to process.
The problem? Nobody talks about their work preferences or sets boundaries until someone gets frustrated.
That's why I'm obsessed with this simple exercise from a brilliant leader named Claire Hughes Johnson when she joined Stripe.
It’s a "Work With Me” Manual.
These 6 simple questions eliminate 90% of workplace friction before it starts.
METHOD
In your next team meeting, go around the table and have each person answer these.
(Managers? You go first. The courage to share your own work preferences first creates psychological safety for everyone else to be honest about theirs.)
1. What's the best way to reach you?
Example: "I don’t like meetings that could have been an email. For anything urgent, text me. For quick questions, ping me. For complex discussions, I’d rather do a 15-minute phone call than back-and-forth emails."
2. How do you like to get feedback?
Example: "I like getting direct, specific feedback in real time with examples. For bigger issues, I prefer processing it in writing first, then meeting to discuss."
3. What are your best working hours?
Example: "I'm most focused from 9-11 AM, so I try to protect that time for deep work. I prefer meetings after 12 PM when possible."
4. What's your preferred meeting style?
Example: "I'm introverted, so I love when agendas and pre-reads are sent ahead of time. I also like having an AI notetaker in calls to document action items."
5. What drains your energy fastest?
Example: "I struggle with context switching. I'm happy to be interrupted for truly urgent things, but otherwise a ping works better than tapping my shoulder."
6. What skills are you working on?
Example: "I'm working on being more concise in meetings. I also want to get better at giving feedback in the moment rather than saving it up."
Pro tip: Have everyone write down their answers. Then compile them into a shared document that the whole team can reference in the future.
WHY IT WORKS
The magic isn't in the questions themselves. You’re making the invisible visible.
The best way to avoid team burnout is to help people work in alignment with their natural rhythms. Those boundaries will prevent exhaustion before it starts.
The 15 minutes you spend on this exercise will save you hours of miscommunication, frustration, and awkward conversations.
Try it in your next team meeting. (You might thank me later.)
Enjoyed this? Forward it to a manager who should do this with their team. ❤️ And read the other newsletters from The Quiet Rich here.
Until next week,
Jade
P.S. Congratulations to everyone who joined the July Archimedes Cohort! 🎉 Happy Day One! You just received your full membership access from me via email. And I can’t wait to meet you all in our Welcome Call tomorrow with Ben and Colby.
Cheers to writing this next chapter of your story. I can already tell it’s going to be a very good one, because you’re the author.
Missed your chance to join? If you already applied and got accepted, I’m happy to hold your spot for the next cohort. Just keep an eye out for an email from me when we launch it. If you haven’t applied yet, visit JoinArchimedes.com
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