How to run a Team Mood Check?

What are Team Mood Checks?

Team Mood Check's are a quick way to check how your team is feeling and bring a more human aspect to their work.

To run a Team mood check you ask everyone in the team how they are feeling and record their answer using one or more emoji.

You then ask all the team members about the mood they selected and check if there's anything the team can do to help?

MoodFirst lets you capture people's moods using multiple emoji 🙄 🙂 😃 and also tracks the overall team's sentiment over time .

If you prefer a low-tech approach you can also create a simple Mood Board using a white board and just ask people to draw their mood on a post-it note and stick it against their name.

What are the benefits of running Team Mood Checks?

• Expressing emotions more openly in the workplace helps to create strong, self-supporting teams that are more creative and better at problem solving.
• With remote and hybrid working becoming the norm, it's easier for it to go unnoticed when people are unhappy or struggling at work. Running a mood check is a great way to make sure remote workers are coping.
• Moods are  a great leading indicator for team performance. If you know people are not feeling great then this might be a sign of an underlying project or operational issue.

How to run a Team Mood Check?

In your Meeting

➕ Create a Mood Board for your team and add your team members.

📺 Share your screen on Teams or Zoom so everyone can see the board.

😃 Ask everyone how they're doing and to choose one ore more emoji that best represent their mood.

💬 Talk to people about why they feel that way and if there's anything the team can do to help?

Off-line Mood Checks

If you want people to update the mood board in their own time then you can follow the same process but share the link to your Mood Board and send people a reminder every day or once a week.

➕ Create a  Mood Board and add your team members.

🔗 Share the link to the board with your team

📧 Remind everyone in the team to update the mood board using their phone or their browser and select the emoji that best represents how they feel.

✋🏼 Remember to follow up with people later if they're unhappy or they need support.

Using a Whiteboard

If you're looking for.a simple, low-tech way to keep track of peoples moods then you can also just create a simple grid on a whiteboard with your team members names on the left and they days or weeks along the top. This is a great solution if you all work in the same location and you want to make it clearly visible for everyone in the team.

How to talk about the results? 🤔

Listen to Everyone and Encourage Everyone to Speak 🎤

Let people know that that it's ok to express yourself openly. The board remains within the team.

Make sure it's fun as well and don't take it too seriously! 🤪

Celebrate Good Moods as well! 🌈 🎉

Don't just focus on people's frustrations.  It's important to discuss what makes people happy as well so you can try and do more of this.

Track Sentiment over Time 📈

As you start to capture people's moods on a daily or weekly basis you will start to build up a picture of the team's mood over time.  This can be a useful trigger for conversations about the underlying factors that can affect the team's mood.

As you get more data you can start to ask questions about what the external and internal influences that may cause this and how you can address them:

• Are people's moods better at the beginning of a sprint or project?  If so what steps can you take to try and sustain that feeling?
• Have certain events such as a reorganisations negatively affected people's moods? How could the team handle this type of situation differently in future?
• Are people happier or unhappier on certain days of the week? Do you need to reschedule meetings to make sure people are not overloaded on certain days?

Next Steps

If your company is starting to return to the office then take a look at out blog on Hybrid Working, the challenges it creates, and how to get teams back together successfully.

You can can also read our Mood Manifesto which sets out vision of how organisations should put emotional autneticity and employee wellbeing ahead of everything else!

Keep checking back for more updates! 🙂 🌈 👍

If you want to try a Team Mood Check-In with your team then just click the button below:

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