How can you check the Mood of your team?
“hey Martin, can you please add this action item to your list as we agreed before?” “NO, I CAN’T. My desk is full and this list is anyhow a complete waste of time!”.
30 seconds later I am in a meeting room, telling Martin that I don’t want him to speak to me like that.
have you ever encountered such a situation? Have you ever wondered, why this person reacts like that?
continue reading to understand why this is happening!
The World around Us
a year back in time:
it’s Tuesday morning. I have this very important meeting scheduled about a new product launch. The 8.00 o‘clock morning spot was the only one available.
I make it out of the house in time. „Awesome“ I am thinking.
well, half the distance traveled, a big thing appears in front of me: A 400 hp car driving just 90 km/h (in Germany it‘s 100 km/h outside of cities).
this drives me crazy! Why such a powered car, when you don‘t even keep the normal limit?
I am in the office, too late. I get a comment from my colleague and my boss. I am angry. I am heading to the online meeting. I still have this anger in me.
one of the members of the team forgot to prepare the timeline. I am still angry. So, I take it out on him. I talk for 5 minutes straight to make him understand that this is not how it goes.
my reaction was way too much. I know this today, but I didn’t realize this back than.
most people are not aware that they are lashing out at other colleague’s because they have taken something with them to the office.
as a leader you never know those little things which happen outside of the office.
that’s the reason why empathy is so important. That’s why you should continue reading if you care about your people:
How do you find out the Mood of your Team?
empathy is one thing. Having a system is assuring you use your empathy on everyone regularly.
here is how I do it:
every Monday morning I schedule a meeting with the whole team.
before I start with the business stuff, everyone has 1 minute to tell everyone how they feel.
every Friday morning I schedule individual meetings with every team member.
we talk about business stuff. We talk about their career.
Warning!
this works only if you are really interested in your colleagues.
if you just pretend to be interested it will fail. People are recognizing this very fast.
What I gain from those 2 Meetings?
every Monday I know, how everyone from the team is doing. If someone had a rough weekend I know that they are probably somewhere else with their mind.
every Friday I have a deep talk with them. This gives me the opportunity to really check how they are feeling.
it takes time until they open up, of course. In the beginning everyone said basically the same thing: „I am happy today“. But when I started to open up, they did too.
after this initial phase I really knew where to allocate the work. I also knew who needed my support more than others.
What does your team gain?
it will signal your team that you care about them. In addition, they feel safe, because they begin to trust you.
some of them aren‘t living in their community anymore where they grew up. They feel alone.
this „method“ will give them a space where they can share their thoughts and feelings.
a leader doesn’t always have to care about all the things people say. Most of the time they just have to listen.
this approach was really eye opening for me and I hope you give it a try!
let me know if it worked for you by sending an eMail or connect with me over LinkedIn.
thank you for your time,
daniel
Resources
my former coach Markus Mertins showed me this method:
awesome interview with Marshall Goldsmith about leadership by Shane Parrish: