Every Monday, one of our Catalyz team rituals is to have a 30 minute team check-in to start off the week. Because we are a distributed team and rarely in the same place, these check-ins give us the chance to sync up, learn what each person is focusing on for the week, and establish a human connection to each other. Though brief, they also provide an opportunity to reinforce some of the team norms required for psychological safety, which a Google research project highlighted as one of the foundational elements for effective teams. (to be fair, psychological safety as a concept was researched and developed years earlier by Amy Edmondson).
In the spirit of sharing, I thought I would share our recipe for weekly check-ins- feel free to use, borrow or modify, and share your own team recipes in the comments!
1. Check-in
We start every meeting with a “check-in”, in which each person shares how they are showing up, using the chart to the right. By sharing the energy state and emotional state we are in, we bring transparency into how we are showing up, and create an easy and safe ritual that helps us build empathy for each other. For example, if someone checks in as a “3”, perhaps sharing that their car broke down that morning and they’re in a poor mood with low energy, not only can the team rally around to ask how we can help, but if we see that person frowning or looking distracted in the meeting, we have context, and won’t assume their frown is a reflection of how they feel about whatever we’re discussing at the moment. This ritual is also foundational to establishing a human-centered team culture that emphasizes empathy for and curiosity about our colleagues.
2. Priorities for the week
This is a chance for everyone to share their top 3 priorities for each week. Not only does it help us as individuals to prioritize and focus each week, it also brings transparency into what each person is working on across the team, and gives us visibility into how each person is working to achieve our overall goals.
3. Help items
One of the key norms needed to establish psychological safety is for it to feel safe for team members to ask for help, without fear of judgement or reprisal. We have created a weekly ritual in which everyone is asked and expected to share any help they need from the rest of the team. This can be as simple as asking someone for help editing a sales proposal, to asking if someone can pair on design work, to admitting that you’ve hit a creative roadblock on a task you were assigned and need someone else to help get it moving. By creating an expectation that everyone will need help on a regular basis, we make it safe and expected to ask for help, as opposed to feeling intimidating and potentially harmful to your reputation.
4. Weekly Schedule
This is a chance to share our schedule for the week, which provides visibility into any large meetings, travel, or work schedules we might have each week. This helps us plan our time together, and anticipate when we might need to schedule collaboration time, or share documents for review.
5. Gratitude
Finally, we end each check-in with a sharing of gratitude. Some weeks we share gratitude for each other, some weeks for family, and some weeks the gratitude can be for something as simple as high speed internet. This helps us reinforce a culture of gratitude, and recognition that our best work is often due to the support of others!
As a bonus, we occasionally will mix things up and also include a “Question of the day”, which is a quick and simple way of establishing a more human connection to each other. The question of the day invites everyone to respond to a question such as “What are the top 3 apps that you use?” or “If you could only listen to one band or musical artist, who would it be?”
Why does this matter? Taking those few moments to share a few personal facts can increase “likeability”, which is one of the 6 influencing tactics articulated by Robert Cialdini, a psychology professor who studies influence and persuasion.
We find that each person is usually able to share all 5 things in around 5 minutes, giving us plenty of time to get through our entire team in 30 minutes!
What recipes or rituals does your team use to reinforce culture?