Ask HN: How do you pay attention to emotions in your remote teams?

[altras]

Hello remote workers!

If you're in a remote team you know how difficult is to "connect" with other colleagues. Everybody is always in a hurry so there's no deeper synchronization.

In my team, we're doing a "check-in/out" inside each meeting where we take turns by answering "With what emotion you're entering/exiting this meeting?". From time to time we change the question with something different in order to build awareness. This helps with establishing mindfulness and understanding what is the emotional climate in the team. For a team of 5-10 people, it takes 5-10 minutes to do it. It makes space to slow down before jumping to the agenda. We also do retreats every 3rd month but a lot of stuff can happen in 3 months...

What are your habits for increasing your team's emotional intelligence?

Disclaimer: I'm doing product research in this field by implementing a tool[1] which helps teams to harmonize their emotional states.

[1] here's a sneak peek https://imgur.com/a/dDkfRVg but I won't go into details as I fear it may derail the topic. Part of it is inspired by research from Yale and Geneva universities and their departments for EQ.

[kian]

To be honest, I'd find it pretty creepy to both have this asked every meeting, and also to have it tracked by any tool. I would likely seek work elsewhere. One on one conversations about emotions can be appropriate, but a group setting like that reeks of 'emotional harmonization' equating to control.

[mattchew]

I second this. If I have rapport with a supervisor, I'm pleased if they take a sincere interest in my well being, but this needs to be done one on one.

If there is no rapport, I don't trust a supervisor trying to poke at my feelings. Demanding I talk about my feelings as part of my job duties? No thank you. Gross overstepping of boundaries. If I thought it was a temporary dumb idea that would blow over I might wait it out. Otherwise I'm looking for the exit.

[dragonsky67]

I'm with you. My emotions are my business and unless they are impacting my work, then everybody else can mind their own business.

At one point I had to attend another non technical teams team meeting to present some information that was important to them and was quite taken aback that the first 15 - 20 minuets of the meeting consisted of an around the table with each individual telling what they did on the weekend and how they were feeling. It was an extremely bizarre experience. Needless to say I refused to share my private time with what were essentially strangers. They were very surprised that I didn't want to participate and could not understand why I would find the whole process somewhat offensive.

I suppose that there are certain cultures where sharing everything is considered polite, but personally I don't get it.

[wikibob]

Absolutely. This is wildly inappropriate.

People have things come up in their personal life. These emotions still exist while working. Part of the job is being able to keep a lid on them and put on a good face when you have to.

I would quit anywhere that tried to do this.

[altras]

This is rather interesting, thanks for the feedback!

I suppose you never participated in support groups, mastermind groups or others where there's psychologically[1] safe space for "opening up"?

I agree that if not done properly it will become creepy and insignificant and will burden the meeting making it toxic :(

So I suppose in your teams you rely on 1:1 conversations but aren't you afraid of guarding[2] too much information this way?

[1] https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_silo

[Waterluvian]

This solution is incredibly bizarre and uncomfortable just to imagine. Just interact organically like humans. Like my wife says, "stop trying to make everything an engineering problem."

You already answered your question: "Everybody is always in a hurry.. ." If you care about the quality of human interaction you'll fix that problem instead of trying to engineer a quick fix. Find more time to be social. Play video games. Hack on stuff. Cause mischief. Figure out whatever it is people want. And never make any of it mandatory (whether explicit or implicit). Meet in person more.

[davidw]

> Just interact organically like humans.

That's the issue though - remote teams are not how humans normally interact.

I think it's a pretty good question. It's easy to communicate about code or something specific, remotely, less so to just get a general idea of how a colleague is doing and the nuance of their feelings about things.

[mitchty]

> In my team, we're doing a "check-in/out" inside each meeting where we take turns by answering "With what emotion you're entering/exiting this meeting?".

That sounds horrible and almost cult like by my view. I would be looking for the proverbial door if I were in a team that wanted me to contribute this way in front of everyone.

Just talk to people, if they're quiet talk to them. Pick up on context, treat them like humans not machines that can just have their handle pulled to reveal their internal state.

[dkoston]

Do you not have frequent one-on-ones and regular conversations with your remote employees? How do you learn about their motivations, goals, current situation, or changes?

If you’re trying to replace human interactions and relationships with your employees with single question surveys, you’re going to miss out on all the important context.

Getting good output isn’t about rushing as fast to a goal as possible and not taking time to make sure things are going well. It’s about setting goals that are measurable, coming up with hypothesis about how to get there, and checking in regularly with an objective lens to see if you’re on track or if there’s a better approach.

[threeseed]

This is insane.

No one is ever going to be honest since continually being seen as negative or passive can result in your colleagues/boss thinking you're a drag on the team. Or that you are being seen as weak and so not given important or interesting tasks.

Also a workplace is supposed to be a professional environment. I want to be discussing issues affecting my work. Not how we can fix my relationship breakdown which is the cause of my negative emotions. For many people who are dealing with significant issues e.g. death of a loved one a workplace can be a sanctuary for them.

[tunesmith]

I think a prerequisite for doing this would be an absence of power dynamic - like everyone with the same authority, pay, and upside - but I'm not sure even that is sufficient.

As a manager, to protect your team's emotional health your job is often to do the opposite of what the company would have you do. Rather than aiming for peak utilization, introduce slack time (the concept, not the app). Rather than prescribing duties, trust your team. Rather than encouraging them to go above and beyond, mandate they go home at the end of the day. Etc, etc. But I don't think the answer is to demand intimacy from them - instead, it's about giving them space to feel safe on their own terms.

[callmeed]

Background: engineering manager of a team of 6 at a large tech company. 3 are located in one of our offices, 4 (myself included) are remote.

> If you're in a remote team you know how difficult is to "connect" with other colleagues. Everybody is always in a hurry so there's no deeper synchronization.

I'm not sure I agree with this premise. I don't think it's difficult as much as it just requires some explicit effort and habits. For example:

- We have video standups over Zoom and ask people to turn on video as often as possible. This helps a ton IMO. It's tempting to just do async Slack standups (and we do on occasion) but it shouldn't be the norm.

- Our broader group uses Tinypulse to send out weekly questions. Answers are anonymous. If the questions are good (ours are), you'll gain a lot of insight into how your team is feeling. I might learn, for example, that I'm not spending enough time with ICs discussing their career path or that people overall are pretty happy.

- Weekly one-on-one's with my team. Again, over Zoom with video on. This is the best way I connect with my team and get at their emotional state.

- Code reviews. We do them traditionally in GitHub (every PR requires 2 approvals) but we also have synchronous code review sessions 3x/week in Zoom. These are just 90min blocks on the calendar and attendance is optional. During these sessions, anyone can present a PR, walk us through the code and demonstrate the feature. We don't do pair programming but I think this approach is even more valuable. It has increased our velocity, reduced bus factor, and provided another form of "connection" for our team.

- Every quarter we either do a team visit to the office or an offsite for our broader group.

> In my team, we're doing a "check-in/out" inside each meeting where we take turns by answering "With what emotion you're entering/exiting this meeting?".

To echo what others have said, this feels like a weird thing to do in a meeting. People already don't like being in meetings, so making them longer with this won't help. That's my 2¢.

Again, maybe I'm just spoiled with a great team, but I would start with some of the basic things I've outlined above. YMMV.

[ivanhoe]

To me this sounds horrible, on the level of mandatory yoga classes or whatever is now popular HR move which eventually drives away all introverts in your company...

Why not just slow the things down a bit?

That's what I like to do with my teams. Before dailies we chit-chat for a few minutes while waiting for everyone to connect. No rush, no agenda or HR/psychological playbooks, just friendly conversation for those interested. Who doesn't feel like it can stay muted. Also giffy and witty remarks are highly appreciated on internal Slack channel to make it feel more laid back. As a lead I feel it as a part of my job to make people feel good about working with us, but you can't push people into it by applying more rules. Less rules are way more helpful.

[busterarm]

I worked remote full time for 5 years in a job where I never met any of my coworkers.

I think this fails the normal sniff test I have where if you wouldn't do it in an office environment, you shouldn't do it in a remote environment. It's not really all that different other than communication being harder because folks don't talk as much.

Remote work has many of the same problems as office work. People can be just as abusive. I had a remote coworker halfway across the country say openly and in anger in a team meeting that he was going to drive to my house, knock on my door and shoot me in the face. Because we were remote, HR didn't treat it as a real threat.

[sharadov]

Work is where I go to offer a service and expect a fee in return. I want a workplace that is civil. It's not somewhere where I expect to share my emotions and not expect that to be somehow used against me ( am not saying every place I worked was like that, but I've seen and heard of enough to be careful with what I share).

[tlear]

If I started a remote job and walked into that.. :o

Of course I would not be truthful. Most likely would be looking for a new place unless $$ was amazing and work itself great.

Quote from a book on corporate HR I read years ago stands out. Only suckers tell truth to HR, it(HR) is there to protect company not for your benefit. Exactly same applies here

[mnm1]

One of the huge advantages about working remotely is that no one else can see my emotions. That way, when I'm angry or upset, it won't upset or anger anyone else unless I express it in chat or another medium. It's much easier to not express the frustration, anger, hopelessness, and other emotions that the job inevitably leads to. If work still insisted, I would in most cases lie. I don't see any reason they should insist. Or any reason that they wouldn't be aware of how they are treating their employees. In my case, I stopped giving a fuck years ago, when I realized that no matter how well or poorly I preform, I will not be rewarded in any tangible manner for it. Now I do the bare minimum. I bet a majority of workers are in this boat and likewise don't want someone pestering them about their emotions. I'm making less, inflation adjusted, than I was when I started six years ago and motherfucking management knows it. Why bother to ask when they know I feel unvalued, unappreciated, and frankly like I don't give a fuck about them, their projects, or their fucking deadlines. As you can see, there's a reason to not ask for this information.

Another reason is because it's none of their fucking business. I'm here to work, not to get therapy. I have a therapist with whom I can share things. With work, I will lie unless I see an advantage to not doing so and I'm sure most everyone else will too.

[stedman]

To all the negative replies: yikes!

To me, this seems like a good faith effort to improve work life for your teammates, and build a company where people feel well-cared for.

Remote teams inherently have more communication friction than co-located teams, and - if we want to bridge some of the resulting emotional gap - we'll need new practices to do so.

Incidentally, what OP suggests isn't anything new. Just Google "red yellow green check in"[1].

I've found three ways of building emotional honesty and openness: 1/ regular 1:1s to listen to your direct reports and build trust 2/ lead by example 3/ every week we have a team meeting. During that meeting, everyone on the team answers a question. The question gives them the opportunity to open up about some aspect of their life -- to be better known and understood by their teammates.

[1] https://blog.travis-ci.com/2016-06-09-start-meetings-with-pe...

[hvass]

I have been remote for four years and this solution sounds quite creepy/off-putting. You are unlikely to get any true answers in a group setting.

From my experience, this is best accomplished by connecting in-person on a semi-regular bases.

[woodpanel]

Hi there, worked multiple times on fulltime remote projects over the years. I can echo your concerns.

I think the best way to achieve team spirit and to reduce emotional frictions is actually to break up the remoteness here and then.

Currently I see my colleagues once every week or two and I love it. On fulltime remote projects I try to convince colleagues to meetup once every X months or so and work together for a week.

The amazing thing is, once all of your mates realize that you could do this meeting anywhere in the world, you can turn this week into a great experience. Even more so if one of your colleagues lives in that place.

[gwbas1c]

As an architect, I hold bi-weekly office hours where there is no agenda, anyone can ask anything.

Although my goal is mostly onboarding, knowledge transfer, and general help, it also keeps me in tune with other team members emotions.

But, I should add that I'm rarely honest about my feelings and goals until I've built a lot of trust with someone. I usually treat a job as something I don't get emotionally involved in, and thus I'm reluctant to share feelings with a manager I don't have a lot of history with.

[jadams3]

I make a point of asking people how are they doing at the start of one on one meetings. 9/10 people say 'good', and we go to other topics. 1/10 has something to say, and that's ok too. It's a small thing, but sometimes people just need someone to listen and be heard ... odd to me that it's at work, but ok, I'm glad to help if it helps.

That said, fishing for 'emotions' seems uncomfortable to me, and maybe asking for trouble with HR down the road.

[tenebrisalietum]

> How do you pay attention to emotions in your remote teams?

Video chat.

[floatrock]

This above all else.

I've seen an entire remote office fall apart because of an over-reliance on slack.

- Text doesn't convey emotion, so one person's joke often gets misinterpreted as another's jab

- Text is low-bandwidth and asynchronous. When those two pair together, you get people writing novels back and forth over the entire day when it could have been a 15 min chat

- Text makes it hard to empathize, which means it's really easy to soapbox and grandstand, which makes conversations very unpleasant and brings out the worst in people.

What works is limiting text communication and actively encouraging video chat. A peer review can have a comment, response, and rebuttal, but anything further should be done over video. Encourage "office hours" for knowledge transfer or "why is this done like this" type questions. Find ways of minimizing friction for video chat -- if it can be done casually it will be used more frequently.

[Baeocystin]

I talk to them, one on one, then listen to what they have to say and respond in turn.

This is the only option if you want an honest connection. There are no shortcuts.

[dragonsky67]

this.

[codingdave]

> Everybody is always in a hurry so there's no deeper synchronization.

I'm sorely tempted to just say, "Well, there's your problem.", and leave it at that.

But there is definitely more to it. If you are not getting to know each other well enough when you meet in person to be able tell when someone is upset remotely, then you aren't spending enough time truly getting to know each other. Because the truth is if someone is truly ticked off and disengaged, they will just lie when asked questions about their emotions, and probably get more disengaged in the process.

Truth between team members comes from trust and experience together, not from tools and intrusive questions. You need 1:1s between individual and managers, you need group gatherings where you talk as a team about how the work is going and what you need from the group. And the leaders need to listen to concerns that comes from those discussions and act on them to improve the working environment. Do that, and you will have trust, which will lead to open communication, and you won't need to ask questions at every meeting.