How to Quickly Check In On Your Team’s Mood

How to Quickly Check In On Your Team’s Mood

Feelings are powerful drivers of behavior, but people often try to hide them in the workplace. This can lead to unnecessary conflicts and misunderstandings.

We all need an outlet, but what if there’s another way than taking it out on our teammates?

It may sound strange but it’s actually beneficial to talk about our feelings at work, and as a leader, it’s up to you to show your team how. Here’s a tool you can use...

The Daily Traffic Light 🚦

Jossie Haines, Head of Software Engineering at Tile, uses the daily traffic light to check in on her team's mood.

During a daily standup or at the start of a team meeting, ask each person to describe how they’re feeling by picking a traffic light color (green, yellow, red). You can also do this asynchronously through an automated message on Slack or Microsoft Teams at the same time each day.

Here are examples of situations where you might pick green, yellow, or red.

Feeling Green 🟢

• You’ve slept well and feel healthy both emotionally and physically. • You’re not distracted by anything that’s happening in or outside of work • You feel energized and ready to fully engage with the day and the tasks ahead.

Feeling Yellow 🟡

• You feel a little off today. • You didn’t get enough sleep. As a result, you’re struggling to stay focused and maybe a little irritable. • You’ve got something going on in your personal life and it’s distracting you from your work.

Feeling Red 🔴

• You’re having a tough day. • There’s a major conflict or concern at work that you can’t seem to ignore. • You can’t seem to work at all because of something stressful and overwhelming in your personal life.

What to do with the results

Once you get everyone in your team comfortable with sharing their daily traffic light, start focusing on the reds and yellows.

For team members feeling yellow, be gentle and lenient, and reach out to see if there’s anything you can do to help.

For team members feeling consistently red, speak to them one-on-one, to find out more and offer support. You can ask if it will help to take some work off their hands and give it to someone else in the team with capacity, or if they need some time off to deal with the situation and recover.

Empathy for the long term

Empathy doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to get comfortable with sharing feelings and concerns. A simple exercise like the Daily Traffic Light Check-in can be all it takes to get the ball rolling and signal to your team members that they can bring more of themselves to work.