The Principal's User Manual
Why Every Ruckus Maker Writes the Document That Tells Their Team Who They Are
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The average principal tenure is four years. The people who work for you spend half of that guessing who you are … and guessing wrong.
There’s one document that fixes it in an afternoon. Most principals never write it.
Before we get into it, here's the five-minute clip from my mentor Eddie Yoon interviewing Clint Carnell. This conversation created this mini-book for you.
Watch it first. Then keep reading.
Everybody Is Lying to You (And They Don’t Even Know It)
Clint Carnell is a CEO who has run several companies.
Recently he said something in a conversation that I haven’t stopped thinking about.
He said: “Everybody is lying to you unintentionally.”
He wasn’t talking about principals. He was talking about being a CEO.
But the second I heard it, I thought about every principal I’ve ever coached.
Because it’s the same job.
Your teachers are kissing up a little 😘 whether they mean to or not.
Your APs are telling you what they think you want to hear.
Your office manager is softening the truth about the parent who called three times this week.
Your secretary is guessing at your mood before she knocks on your door.
Nobody is doing any of this on purpose.
They’re doing it because you’re the boss.
And when you’re the boss, people bend themselves around you (your moods, your tells, your preferences) and they do it from the first day you walked into the building.
Clint said the fix is a document.
A User Manual.
He requires every one of his executives to read his.
And he requires them to write one of their own.
Because the people who work for you cannot do their best work if they have to guess who you are for the first 18 months.
Principals have been told for decades that leadership is about modeling, listening, and being present.
Nobody ever told us the most generous thing we can hand a new teacher is a document that says this is how I actually work.
This mini-book is about that document.
The Cost of Being Unreadable
Principals are the most-watched, least-read leaders in their buildings.
Your staff is running an interpretation of you every single day.
They’re reading your face in the hallway.
They’re reading the length of your emails.
They’re reading how long it took you to respond to a text.
They’re reading whether you said hi back in the parking lot.
They’re reading the way you sat in the last faculty meeting.
And most of them are guessing wrong.
Because you’re not being unreadable on purpose.
You’re being unreadable because you’re a human being with a hard job and a limited amount of time, and you cannot narrate yourself every minute of every day.
But the cost of that compounds.
It shows up as a veteran teacher who hasn’t brought you a real problem in two years because the last time she did, she couldn’t tell if you were mad.
It shows up as an AP who started CCing you on every email because he can’t tell which decisions are his to make.
It shows up as a first-year teacher who won’t ask for help because she thinks asking for help looks weak to you.
It shows up as a staff that holds its breath when you walk in.
Not because you’re scary.
Because they haven’t figured you out yet.
And they never will, unless you tell them.
Clint said something else in that same conversation that I want you to sit with:
“Usually, whether it’s counseling or a therapist, or you go through one of those group sessions — everybody already knew. But nobody talked about it. So it created the dysfunctionality.”
Your team already knows your worst habits. Your team already knows your tells. Your team already knows what lights you up and what shuts you down.
They just don’t talk about it.
That’s the dysfunction.
A User Manual takes the dysfunction out from under the rug and puts it on the table.
Where it can actually get better.
The User Manual: A Selfmentor Artifact
Here’s the move that matters.
A Ruckus Maker writes a User Manual. A Play-It-Safe Principal lets their team guess.
That’s the fork in the road.
Writing a User Manual is Selfmentorship.
It’s not an HR exercise.
It’s not a personality test.
It’s not an onboarding packet your district handed you.
Credit where it's due — I learned to think this way from my business mentors at Category Pirates. Their work on category design is the lens I use to see the difference between a Ruckus Maker and a Play-It-Safe Principal. The Clint quotes I've been sharing? They come from this episode of theirs. Listen if you want the deeper version. It will change how you think about leadership and category in the same afternoon.
Back to your User Manual — and the work only you can do.
It’s you doing the hard work of naming who you are:
your scoreboard
your tells
your non-negotiables
your worst characteristics
And handing it to your team before they have to guess.
A Selfmentor can write one.
A Play-It-Safe Principal can’t.
Because a Play-It-Safe Principal is waiting.
Waiting for the district to define the role. Waiting for the superintendent to tell them what a win looks like. Waiting for someone else to do the work of naming them.
A Selfmentor does that work themselves.
And here’s the part that takes the most guts:
“You think I’m giving you this because I’m proud of it? There’s things in there that are super embarrassing. When I read through it, I kind of cringe.”
—Clint Carnell
That’s the Ruckus Maker move.
Not false humility.
Not a résumé in disguise.
Real stuff.
The things the people who know you best would say are your worst characteristics — written down, on paper, handed to your team.
Because when you name your own dysfunction before anyone else has to, you take its power away.
It stops being a whisper in the staff lounge.
It starts being a conversation you can actually have.
That is what Selfmentorship looks like in the wild.
Why Most Principals Won’t Do This
I want to be honest with you.
Most principals who read this mini-book will nod their heads, agree with everything, and never write the document.
So let’s talk about why.
Reason 1: It feels arrogant.
Who am I to hand my team a document about me? Isn’t leadership supposed to be about them?
Here’s the reframe: the User Manual isn’t for you. It’s for them.
Clint tells his executives this directly: “It’s not for me. It’s for you. And it’s for us.”
Every minute your team spends guessing at you is a minute they’re not teaching, not leading, not building. The User Manual is the most generous thing you can hand them. It gives them their time back.
Reason 2: It feels too vulnerable.
Naming your worst characteristics on paper? In writing? Where people can go back and read it?
That fear is real.
And that fear is exactly why you have to do it.
Because if you won’t name your dysfunction, your team will (just not to your face).
Writing it down doesn’t create the vulnerability. The vulnerability already exists. You’re just the only one pretending it doesn’t.
Reason 3: I’ll be held to what I write.
Good. That’s the point.
If you write “I want you to bring me the problem with a proposed solution” and then you shut someone down the next time they do it — your team can hold you to your own words.
That’s not a threat. That’s accountability. And accountability is how leaders get better.
Reason 4: I don’t know myself well enough to write one.
This is the most honest reason. And it’s the one that actually proves you need to.
If you can’t articulate your tells, your scoreboard, and your non-negotiables on paper, your team is trying to articulate them for you every day. They’re just doing it worse than you could.
The User Manual is a mirror.
If the mirror is blank, that’s the problem.
Not the exercise.
The Eight Parts of Your User Manual
Here are the eight sections. Write them in your own voice. Keep it short! A User Manual longer than three pages won’t get read. Aim for one page if you can.
1. Who I Am, In One Line.
Not your title. Not your résumé. One sentence that tells a new teacher what kind of leader they’re walking into. Clint’s version: “I’m a full-contact CEO.” Yours might be: “I’m a builder, not a manager.” Or: “I lead from the field, not the office.” One line. Do the work to find yours.
2. What I’m Actually Responsible For.
Name your real job. Not the job description. The strategic job. Clint says his is strategy — everything else gets pushed back on his team. What’s yours? For most principals it’s some version of: “I’m responsible for the direction of this campus and the development of our people. Everything else we delegate, automate, or kill.” Put it in writing. Your team will stop bringing you things that aren’t yours.
3. How I Measure Success.
The scoreboard. What are the three to five things that tell you the year went well? Not the state report card — the real scoreboard. Student engagement. Teacher retention. Families who would send their other kids here. The things that actually matter to you. When your team knows the scoreboard, they stop playing the wrong game.
4. How I Give Feedback (And How I Want It Back).
On-the-field coach, or once-a-year review? Real time, or scheduled? In the meeting, or in private? Can someone push back? Can they get to a NO? Can they get to a HELL NO? This section is where most User Manuals get soft. Don’t let yours. If you’re a kind-conflict leader, say it. If you expect your APs to disagree with you in the room, say it. If you go to the mat on things you believe in, say it.
5. What My Tells Mean (And What They Don’t).
This is the gold section.
If I get quiet in a meeting, I’m thinking, not angry.
If I start asking a lot of questions, that’s when I’m concerned.
If I’m short in email, it’s because I’m short on time — not short on respect.
If my door is closed, I’m writing, not avoiding.
Every leader has tells their team misreads. Name yours. Name what they mean. Name what they don’t mean. This one section alone will save your culture.
6. My Worst Characteristics.
The people who know you best already know these.
Impatient. Interrupts. Plays favorites early. Says yes too fast. Hates small talk. Takes forever to respond to texts. Gets quiet when I’m frustrated instead of saying it. Whatever yours are.
Write three to five. Honestly. The ones that would make you cringe if your team read them out loud.
That’s the point.
Clint said it: “If you don’t do it, if you’re not honest, people already know it.”
Put it on the page. Take the power out of it.
7. My Non-Negotiables.
The HELL NO line.
What doesn’t get re-debated on your campus.
What will always have your protection.
What ends a working relationship.
These aren’t Sticky Core Values for the school — those are the rules of the campus.
These are your personal rules. The things you won’t bend on. “I won’t speak poorly about a colleague in front of a student.” “I will always protect a teacher in a parent meeting before I hear the other side in private.” “I don’t negotiate on our core values, even when it costs us.”
Three to five. Clear. Direct.
8. What I Need From You.
Flip it.
The User Manual isn’t just “how to survive me.”
It’s: here’s what I actually need from you if we’re going to build something great together.
Bring me the problem with a proposed solution.
Don’t surprise me with board-level news.
Disagree with me in the room, not in the parking lot.
Tell me the truth, even when it costs you something.
Whatever yours are. Three to five.
Your team will build the version of you they can see.
Write the one you want them to read.
Your Next Move
Most of this mini-book is describing something you already knew was true.
Your team is guessing at you. You knew that.
They’re getting it wrong half the time. You knew that too.
The fix is a document. You probably knew that.
What you haven’t done yet is sit down and write it.
Here’s what I’d do this weekend.
Block 90 minutes. Somewhere quiet. Coffee shop, back porch, kitchen table after the kids are asleep.
Draft all eight sections. One page. Imperfect on purpose.
Hand the draft to one person you trust — an AP, a coach, a mentor, a spouse — and ask them: what’s missing? what’s wrong? what’s true but embarrassing?
Revise.
Then share it with your full team at the next staff meeting.
The meeting itself will shift the culture. Because you’ve done something no principal they’ve ever worked for has done.
You’ve told them who you are.
If writing eight sections from a blank page feels like a lot — that’s fair. That’s why I built Digital Danny.
Digital Danny can interview you through every section. He’ll ask the questions. Push back when you’re giving a PR-approved answer. Hold up the mirror on the worst-characteristics section when you’re softening.
Forty-five minutes with Digital Danny and you have a draft.
Then you edit it like a human and hand it to your team.
That’s it. That’s the work.
One document.
One afternoon.
A team that finally knows who they’re working for.
I riffed on this today, and the first draft feels a little bit like running down the street naked, but in a good way. I'll put some shorts on before I share it.