What's your attitude?
Introduction
With this ice-breaker, your team can express their level of emotion. Differing levels of emotions are always present in any team, and often changing daily depending on the circumstances. We use a ‘mood’ barometer, which is a scale where your team can articulate their present state of mind, and chose to alter their attitude if desired.
How to use
You can use our School of Babel Barometer, as shown below, periodically, at your team meeting or in one-to-ones, and you should encourage your team members to have one visibly displayed where they work so that they can refer to it when required.
At your next team meeting, why not open it by saying, “where are we all on the ‘mood barometer’ today?” This can create a discussion but also help you identify any stressors or issues within the team. The more the team is on the right of the scale, the higher their mood, the higher the quality of thinking will be. However, you should be concerned if there is a significantly wide variance between your team members’ scores, which could illustrate a tension within the team itself.
The majority of software platforms allow ‘chat windows’ to run alongside video conferencing and perhaps you want ‘instant’ attitude barometers to be shared on these.
Whatever your approach, we find our mood barometer a quick ‘ice-breaker’ that can really help to gauge the team environment.
