Checking in and feeling …
It begins with a simple statement: “I’m checking in.” With this statement I acknowledge that I am ready to contribute to the team’s collective goals. I commit to doing my best to uphold the team’s values, embrace a positive bias, and orient myself toward action. What follows is a statement of my emotional status: “I’m feeling … glad, mad, sad, or afraid,” or any combination of those words. These universal terms allow me to communicate my feelings without the pressure of finding my own descriptive words. I am tapping into what are common, basic emotional states and allowing myself to express them simply in a way that fosters team trust, happiness, and productivity.
My mother died on the first day of our quarantine. It was the kind of gut punch that shakes your routine — forces you to behave differently, change your schedule, step away from the daily grind. This time, however, the world was already shifting under foot. There was nothing to break from — there was no normal to modify — there was just grief. Individual grief in the face of collective grief, immediate grief in light of anticipatory grief. Grief is a complex and isolating emotion that is difficult to name — it is an uncomfortable state to identify and one that creates distance.
Although my grief is personal, it is common to us all. We grieve the loss of more than 370,000 people who have died of COVID-19 around the world to date — we grieve the loss of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the 1,099 people in the United States who died at the hands of police last year. The grief associated with death, however, is only one part of this collective ache. This moment feels like an open wound, with nerves exposed and senses heightened. We are raw — forced into a new type of transparency where we share our homes, our lives, our fears with one another without the filter of work versus home, public versus private. For many, this is a radical and unwelcome shift, but for those promoting psychological safety in the workplace and building holistic work environments, this is the test we have been studying for — the mathematical proof that completes the argument.
Our tools in facing this moment are rooted in empowerment and connection. To fight the fear that comes with this new transparency, we must understand our own freedom. To fight the isolation that comes with mandated distance, we must embrace opportunities to connect. Although these challenges are substantial and involve complex emotional states, we can meet them with small actions, repeated over time—with a simple protocol we can name our emotional states, reinforce our freedom to check out, and take the opportunity to check in.
While scrum framework sets a daily ceremony to report on what members of the team have accomplished, what they plan to do in the day ahead, and identify any blockers, the check out and check in protocols are rooted in bringing our whole selves to the team — understanding our own emotional states as we set out to accomplish our goals and clearly communicating them to the team. Being able to share that I am sad because I am missing my mother, mad because black and brown people are being murdered in the streets, and afraid that this pandemic will continue to grow, allows me to reflect all that I am feeling and bringing to my team. I am allowed to feel all of those things and also express that I am glad I can connect with my colleagues and accomplish my work from my back porch today.
Once I have established what I am feeling and how I am approaching my work with the team today, I can supplement with the standard “daily scrum” information — to share recent accomplishments and update the team about next steps. There is an explicit interplay between my emotional state and the tasks at hand that allows this transition to occur smoothly. We can respond to the temporary feelings that team members may be experiencing and the impact that may have on work the way we check a weather forecast. If it is cloudy with a chance of rain, I might grab an umbrella — if I am checking in feeling mad, this might not be the best day for me to engage in a difficult conversation with a stakeholder, perhaps I should reschedule. At the same time, we can distinguish that weather from the larger climate patterns that influence our emotional states over long periods of time. Working during a pandemic is not a new normal — it is an extraordinary circumstance that persists for an uncomfortable period of time, and these daily rituals, in their repetition, allow us to respond at both the micro and macro levels.
The bridge from self-awareness to team connection built by the check in protocol allows us to maximize productivity in a way that is enhanced by our emotional state, not hindered by it. The completion of check in comes in the form of a response from the team: “welcome.” That welcome brings a sense of comfort — an acceptance from the team that my transparency has helped them to feel more connected to me — that they are experiencing me as a member of the team, not in spite of any challenges, but more completely because I was able to share.
Since my team has transitioned to a fully remote work environment, we have transitioned our stand ups to Zoom. We have had to make certain adjustments like explicitly passing to another team member after each check in to ensure continued conversation, but we have also experienced a new intimacy with one another. I cannot say for sure whether it is part of that collective ache we are feeling that makes check in feel more personal, or whether seeing people in their home spaces breaks down additional walls, but I also cannot separate the circumstances from the moment. I am seeing my team members at home, dealing with complex emotions like grief, and allowing them to bring it to work each day.
Before I can truly check in and make a commitment to the team, however, I must know at the deepest level that I am always free to check out if it is important to engage elsewhere. One of my primary challenges, as a manager, is to hold myself to that standard. When my mother died, I checked out for several days. It is critical to check out when it is more important that we engage elsewhere, and in checking out we may actually be doing the best we can to further the team’s goals. In checking out, I am demonstrating trust in my team — in their ability to add value without me.
For managers looking to center their teams during this disorienting period, for teams facing fear and uncertainty, this simple protocol can reinforce value and enhance productivity. For me, the ritual of checking in is so comforting and centering, that I am genuinely excited to return to work even as I continue to grieve my mother and ache for the world and its challenges. I love my team. I am incredibly proud of what we have been able to accomplish in these extraordinary circumstances, but even more I am proud that we were transparent before we were forced to be, raw and emotional before it burst through, and capable of both checking out and checking in.
As always thank you to Richard Kasperowski for introducing me to the Core Protocols and to my team for their continued support and feedback.
