Make your team smile
In our culture we have been taught that if we work hard enough, we will achieve our goals, therefore, we will be happy. Nonetheless, it is not true, stress increases as responsibility increases, affecting productivity and effectiveness.
A study made by Professor Yannis Georgellis from the Kent School of Business shows us that happy employees are really more productive.
This means that they are more helpful, safer, more motivated, less sick, and more trustworthy. If you want to know more about this study, you may see here.
As a Project Manager, I noticed that some members of the work team sent emails late at night, others missed their commitments or delivered their commitments on time but low quality.
Talking with them, I identified that some of them had difficulties due to the pandemic, such as having time to cook their food during the workday, felt loneliness from living alone at home or stressed by having children who study from home demanding attention from who are their parents. Others felt uncomfortable because the internet connection failed or felt burn out because of long hours at work.
The work team allocated is made up of 4 people who work for a company in the Financial sector, whose approach is oriented to building software.
When I know the situation, I checked in my toolbox, finding that the Niko-Niko Calendar practice made me “smile” various times in a workshop that I took, generating awareness of my mood, of other classmates and the importance that I am responsible for the change of my mood.
If you want to know about this practice, I invite you to visit the following link.
The goal of the practice is to track the team’s mood in a fun and responsible way. By the way, the word Niko-Niko means “smile”, and that’s what you do with yourself and your team: “smile”
I know you like to “smile”, I am going to tell you the steps I took with this practice:
Step 1. Preparation. I prepared the environment for the practice in the Collaboration Miro tool with the names of each team member and working days. Besides, I put faces with gestures representing “good day”, “neither good nor bad” and “bad day” so that everyone can select the face.
Step 2. Hand to work. Each member at the end of the day chooses the face according to how they felt during the day and explains the reason why they chose the face during the daily meeting. Some examples: I finished uploading the data to the database, I was sad because my dog went to the vet, I had a problem with remote access.
I take this opportunity to tell what we learned from experimentation.
As a facilitator, I learned that some members did not have an easy time expressing their feelings during the first days. After I shared my “regular day” feeling one day, the other team members began to express their feelings with transparency and respect.
I also learned that I am like a gardener who identifies the emotions of each team member to help him to be aware of his mood, and teach him that together we are more for solving a problem.
The work team placed the following lessons in their backpack:
o The team learned to overcome their fears and express their feelings daily.
o The team learned to understand that we have common unexpected situations.
o The team learned to listen to each other, recognize their emotions, and identify what caused that emotion.
o The team learned to share problems and collaborate in the search for solutions showing a genuine interest in the partner.
o The team learned to carry out a natural accompaniment to the problems shared among them in order to collaborate in the definition of additional actions.
I love to experiment, here is what I will do:
o My next experiment with this practice will be to add a rating to each face to know the mood of the team automatically.
o Another experiment with this practice will be to invite the Leaders of the Area to get closeness relationship and increase productivity.
As different actions:
o I would invite other work teams to do the practice to find out the mood of each project and the organization.
Reflecting on the results, this is what we got as a team:
o The team increased the openness to seek solutions as a work team to a problem.
o The team broke the limits of the role assigned in the project and strengthened relationships.
o The team learned to give feedback to each other as a work team.
o The team improved customer engagement and increased productivity.
Dear Reader, if this is the first time you read about these practices, I encourage you to delve into them to generate a close relationship and “smile” with your team.
If you know about Management 3.0 practices, I encourage you to learn about the mood of your team and the organization to define actions that change to a culture of collaboration and empathy.
If you have used this practice before, I encourage you dear Reader to experiment with other areas or teams of the organization. It will surely strengthen your relationships with each of them in a genuine way.
Lastly, I want to invite you to use the Niko-Niko Calendar to build happy teams with strong and trustworthy relationships that achieve their goals as a “smiling” team.
