Team Emotional Flow
The morning begins with everyone arriving at the office and gathering in the kitchen. The whole team is works together, there are no remote workers. As folks grab coffee and maybe toast a bagel, there is casual banter about the game the night before, the kids performance at a school play, and plans for an upcoming barbecue.
When the last member of the team arrives, they all gather round into a circle looking at one another. There are a few mumbled “good mornings” and one member starts off with, “I’m feeling excited, we are going to get to integration test the system for the first time today. I think the plan is to start around 10:00.”
There are a few raised eyebrows and then a question or two as folks sync up. The next person in the circle says, “I’m feeling frustrated this morning. The work on the UI hit a stumbling block last night, and I hate leaving work with an unresolved problem.” Someone else chimes in with, “Me too! Let’s pull the mob together and see if more brains can help us nail this problem this morning.” There are general mumbles of assent from the group and the process continues with the next person, “I’m feeling glad that we’re making progress. I think I know what is causing that problem, so I’m looking forward to sharing a potential solution.”
And so it goes, each after the other. The format is relatively loose: You always start with sharing a feeling, then follow up with any resistance you may be encountering. The emphasis is on keeping the interaction casual and not forcing anything. There is no pre-defined leader. Everyone has agreed that this kind of sharing is important and they support it as needed. At the end of the meeting, everyone updates their feeling status on a whiteboard. They track their feelings on a daily basis so that they can see trends in their overall team mood. They work together as closely as possible. They use mob programming to do their work together whenever possible. The focus is on sharing their experience together.
One tool they use to keep themselves aware of the emotional flow of the team is frequent use of the “check in”. The check in is taken from Jim McCarthy’s core protocols. The idea is to declare your emotional state at the beginning of significant meetings and interactions. This helps to make emotion visible to everyone and gives important needed context for others who you work with. You simply state your current emotion: I feel Mad, Sad, Glad, etc. It lets everyone know where you are at and helps the group to synchronize emotionally. It doesn’t have to be rigid and highly formalized. I think that depends on the character of the team. I personally prefer a casual but disciplined approach (always do it, but let the language be natural and informal rather than highly structured and rigid).
I offer this as an alternative to the traditional standup. We don’t track work, we track feeling. We focus on achieving emotional flow. We don’t use a rigid system of pre-defined questions that must be answered. We flow.