Team Check-ins That Actually Improve Morale
Properly listening to people can be a real catalyst for change and prevent the need to throw pens across the office.
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So, how are you doing?
I’m going to be honest with you it’s a tough world out there at the moment.
In the run-up to the election here in the UK (as with the rest of the world to be honest) uncertainty has been rife. We have a succession of world leaders that seem hell-bent on shooting themselves in the foot. First, it was our PM here who called an election when he was 20% points behind in the polls, then it was Macron who thought he could do the same even though he had just got a trouncing in the European elections, and then there was Biden. (Enough said on that one.)
This chaos takes its toll on the best of us! Everyone reacts differently. Some people lash out and throw pens across the office (not pretty), and some people lose sleep and start to have a kind of glazed look. Some deny anything is happening at all - the good old head-in-the-sand approach.
But as leaders, we can’t throw pens, we must be well rested and we should be calling it out when things get tough.
We must look after our teams during these tricky times. Here’s something you can try this week.
Try this with your team this week
So in the last week, we undertook an exercise in our team meeting that sought to tease out how we are all feeling. My team are analysts so we think in numbers and facts and so I wonder if sometimes the feelings get bottled up or discussed behind closed doors.
Instead of asking the question “How are you?” which always either gets a collective shrug or a “Yeah fine” I asked the team to rate how they are on a scale of 1 to 10.
I know this might sound like a really small change but the impact on the responses and the conversation that followed was incredible.
No shugs. No “Yeah, fine”. Focus on the number and then watch the conversation flow.
But did it work?
We all took it in turns. I went first.
I was a 7. I explained that I was enjoying working within the team and was excited about some of the work we are about to deliver but the uncertainty around the election and what it means for our jobs was a little unsettling. So yes, a 7 felt about right for me.
Another person was an 8. They explained they were having a great week having delivered a new report that had gone down very well with the bosses.
Someone else was a 5. Ouch. Conversation flowed as to why. We explored how we could help as a team and we agreed on a couple of actions to ensure that person got more support in the coming couple of weeks.
Another was a 10. They hadn’t slept all night, looked glazed over, and had just thrown a box of pens across the office. We suggested they were in denial. They disagreed.
After about 15 mins we had gone around the whole team.
Putting a number on our feelings then spurred conversation about why they chose that number
The focus on the number seemed to do a few things:
It forced them to balance the good and the bad in their minds to come up with that number.
It allowed a team member to make a point with a low score and for a conversation to flow.
It gave the team a balanced view of how a person is in that moment so that support can be given.
And, get this, we managed to do it without anyone getting punched in the face. Result!
It set the meeting up in a nice way and allowed everyone to feel involved in the conversation. We flushed a few issues out and the team rallied around to help.
Let’s be clear here. This only works if there is a calm and supportive environment where people feel they can share without judgment. But by doing these exercises you help build that environment by joining in and showing vulnerability yourself.
Over to you
Have you tried anything similar? Have you had any disasters doing this? Any punch-ups?
Has the number approach worked for you?
Can you share any techniques you use to check in on how your team is doing?
Note: Make sure you do this exercise in person. If people want to have a punch-up, you can’t do that over Teams. Might sound obvious but you’d be surprised as to what people attempt. Laptops are expensive.
This week on Notes
For those who haven’t dived head-first into Substack Notes yet, Notes is a sort of version of Twitter without the weirdos. It’s an amazing place to discuss issues and find new Substack articles to read. It’s a great place to connect.
Here are a few of the conversations I’ve been having this week. I encourage you to click on these and dive into the conversation. Let me know what you think with a like or comment over there.
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“It allowed a team member to make a point with a low score and for a conversation to flow.”
In my experience this one is key. Participation is stimulated—the hiders can’t hide.
Good one Martin.
I have used two variations of this.
One, we used weather analogies. Instead of rating on a scale of 1-10, you'd choose from things like Sunny, Cloudy, Stormy, etc. We'd use emojis to record these in the team meeting notes. ☀️
In my experience, this one was fun, allowed for creativity, but it was also confusing. One person insisted we translate this into a numerical scale so she could measure it over time (so that sapped all creativity, and ultimately turned it into a numerical rating that sometimes was described by a weather analogy).
At another company, when I tried this with my team, one person got really stuck on telling us the literal weather where they were (we were globally distributed, so they thought I was asking for a weather report).
Due to the confusion, I switched to Red/Yellow/Green. It's not as fun, but it still gives people the option for some latitude (for example, “mostly green, but my allergies are acting up so slightly yellow because of that”).
I have noticed people often have decision fatigue and don't want to commit to a single number or option. This seemed to happen more when using straight numbers, people would frequently spend significant amounts of time contemplating if they were a 7, 7.25 or a 7.5. With red/yellow/green, I would allow some verbal commentary, but forced people to select a single representative color.