A ritual around reflection and recognition can help your team members connect and build confidence.

To take stock of all that your team has accomplished, set aside time at the end of each month or quarter to discuss the following:

• What have we learned over the past few weeks or months?
• What was difficult? How would we approach it differently?
• What important progress did we make?

Leave one-on-ones for personal conversations, not for status updates.

Ask:

• What one thing can I do to better support you this week?
• What kind of flexibility do you need right now?
• How does your workload feel right now?
• What was a win for you over the past week? What was challenging?

Ensure to communicate the action you will take. “You mentioned last week that you could use more heads-down time. Let’s work together to see if some meetings could be handled asynchronously or pushed to next week."

Don't push your employees to open up to you in detail. Instead, let your reports know that you’re there to support them.

It’s useful to be aware of where on the emotional spectrum your reports are so you can adjust your behaviour.

• Over-emoters are people who are highly emotionally expressive and are always ready to share how they feel.
• On the other end are under-emoters who are less emotionally expressive. Under-emoters can calmly figure out a way forward when they have a problem.
• Even-emoters sit in the middle and can swing either way.

Establishing a shared language can make it easier for employees to feel safe opening up and trusting one another.

For example:

• Teams use a red, yellow, and green system to check in at the beginning of meetings. Red means someone is struggling, yellow means feeling stressed but manageable, and green means feeling good.
• Create an OK list. For example, "It's OK to say you don't understand", "have quiet days", "ask why and why not."