Five Minutes to Revitalize Your Team
By regularly asking one question
Contents
How’s Everyone Doing: five minutes to revitalize your team
How’s Everyone Doing?
How are your colleagues doing? (And even solitary freelancers have teams.) How sure are you that you know? I like to think that, to my colleagues, I’m approachable and safe. And I try to take an interest in what’s going on in people’s lives, especially for anyone not seeming themself. But, important though all that is, it’s not enough. We’re not as good at reading people as we think we are. We all miss stuff that matters. And that means there’s a simple, regular habit you can adopt that’ll noticeably improve your team’s spirit.
At appropriate meetings, my colleague and friend Christina gives everyone the opportunity, at the start, to say how they’re doing, should they choose to.
There’s no pressure to say anything. But people reveal all sorts of things you and the rest of the team wouldn’t otherwise have known: stuff going on at home, work challenges, things on people’s minds, achievements, worries, or Vorfreude—a wonderful German word meaning the pleasure of anticipating something.
Doing it together means news, worries, and personal weather-patterns are shared. It turns everyone’s well-being into something that matters to the team. It becomes obvious why Esmerelda’s been a bit prickly this week, why Frodo’s so full of beans, and why Morticia has recently seemed out to lunch. You get to unburden, too. Everyone’s reminded that you care about each other, perhaps more than you’d appreciated. You all recalibrate how you’re working together. Things get better.
I’m a convert: I now see this as an essential, regular habit for any healthy team.
A few months ago, our little medical team seemed ground down. We gathered at the end of a working day and did a “How are you doing?” round. These people are my friends as well as my colleagues, and yet even in this close team, I discovered all sorts of things that were going on that I wasn’t aware of—some carrying burdens none of us knew about, others enjoying work more than I’d appreciated. And there was such an outpouring of kindness between everyone, a manifestation of how much we value each other as colleagues, that our hearts lifted. The whole spirit of the team changed, and it lingered.
The solutions I’m collecting to the problems people and teams often have in tough working lives are almost all habits. This is one of those. Regularly, at the start of appropriate meetings, take five minutes to go around your team, supportively, giving everyone who’s up for it the opportunity to say how they’re doing. It’s astonishing how much difference it makes.
The next time there’s a suitable opportunity, try it.
Your Work Experiences
Thanks so much to those who responded to my call in my last email to share how being an introvert or an extrovert affects your working life. I’ll be writing more about this. If you haven’t yet replied, I’d still love to hear from you.
Calling all teachers: I’m doing some work on how the imposter phenomenon (imposter syndrome) specifically affects teachers. Has it affected your relationships with students, with parents, with colleagues, or how you feel about those relationships? If you’re willing to let me know your experience of this (in confidence), I would love to hear from you. Just reply to this email—replies go straight to me. Or comment:
Fiction Recommendation
This one’s pure science-fiction fun: Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. Our geeky hero wakes with no memory on a vessel hurtling through space and, as his memories return, he realizes he’s there to save Earth. It’s a truly imaginative, thought-provoking story that delights in science: not literary fiction, but every page is a pleasure. I’ve been mulling over some of its ideas ever since I read it. The audiobook’s done well, too.
It’s being made into a film, due out next year. But can it be as smart as the book?
Speaking
Could I help your team with serenity and success doing work that matters? I do speaking engagements, team-building, seminars, media and podcast interviews, and conference talks, in person and—anywhere in the world—by webinar. It’s something I love doing, and (can I say this?) I get great feedback.
My blurb about this email list says “Not selling anything,” and that’s true. It’s nice when people want to pay me for this stuff, but it’s not the most important thing. I do it because I care about it—and, each time, I learn something.
Interested? Reply to this email or contact me via my website. No commitment on your part: I’m happy to see if there’s a way I can help your team or conference.
Changes Afoot at Great Work Towers
Since not long after I began Great Work (which was only August last year, and already around 1,500 readers!), I’ve been publishing these emails every two weeks.
If you’re going to do me the honor of allowing me into your inbox, I’m determined that each one of these emails should give you something that you can use to make a meaningful difference to your working life and the good you can do with it.
And I’m needing more time to work on the book I’m writing about the same topic.
For both of those reasons, I’m changing the publishing plan. The rigid schedule’s out. Future emails may be irregular and better. I’ll be pressing ‘Send’ when I have something for you that I’m pretty sure you’re going to find truly useful.
Comments welcome!
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