
Ask HN: How do you pay attention to emotions in your remote teams? - altras
Hello remote workers!<p>If you&#x27;re in a remote team you know how difficult is to &quot;connect&quot; with other colleagues. Everybody is always in a hurry so there&#x27;s no deeper synchronization.<p>In my team, we&#x27;re doing a &quot;check-in&#x2F;out&quot; inside each meeting where we take turns by answering &quot;With what emotion you&#x27;re entering&#x2F;exiting this meeting?&quot;. 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...<p>What are your habits for increasing your team&#x27;s emotional intelligence?<p>Disclaimer: I&#x27;m doing product research in this field by implementing a tool[1] which helps teams to harmonize their emotional states.<p>[1] here&#x27;s a sneak peek <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;dDkfRVg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;dDkfRVg</a> but I won&#x27;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.
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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.

~~~
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...](https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-
google-team/) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_silo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_silo)

~~~
kradeelav
not the OP, but a second opinion from someone with the same reaction -

1) "safe spaces" for emotions is inherently at odds with corporate culture,
point blank. They exist to use you. They pay you, you provide them a service
and/or your time as written in the contract. It is in your best interest to
not be the nail that sticks out from the wood if you wish to keep the money
coming because ultimately the power exchange lies heavily with them.

2) I don't do support groups, though this is more of a personal decision.
Keeping vulnerable facets of my life completely air-gapped from cash flow and
from other untrusted and un-vetted individuals has never failed me.

Now - water cooler-ish 1:1's a la "hey, you hanging in there?" can be done
with tact and sincerity by select individuals if there's a previous rapport.
But there is an art to sniffing out whether it's meant with a sincere no-
bullshit-humanity-centric angle, versus "can we optimize this individual's
output" angle. It's demeaning to think one can be the other.

~~~
kian
You nailed my feelings on the matter - I love the concept of 'air-gapping' as
applied to personal truths here.

------
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.

~~~
GauntletWizard
How do humans normally interact? I normally interact with some of my best
friends over text chat. At one point, I almost exclusively knew my best group
of friends through IRC. I've hung out with people in person without speaking
any words at all, because that group was deaf (okay, I lie - I probably
flubbed and said things a few times)

"Normal" communication is pretty varied - Think of for how many people
Snapchat is the primary way they communicate with their friends. You can
probably say that the median conversation looks like two people about a foot
apart flapping their lips, but it veers in many directions from there.

My idea of effective group communication, and mine alone, is that I'm
frequently bullshitting in one space where chitchat and cat pictures are being
posted, and talking about serious matters in another space where threads are
long but infrequent. Simultaneously and privately, I will intersperse chitchat
and serious conversations with team members 1:1 in private chats - I expect
most planning to be done in public and "work" to be done in private. I will
frequently, say 4 times a day for 15 minutes, open up a video call with one or
more other members of the team. I will also spend about 30-60 minutes on
planning meeting videochats per day.

~~~
davidw
> IRC

You may have been doing this for long enough that you're pretty good at it.
Most haven't.

Also: one thing are friends online, another is a random assortment of
coworkers, who you may not have had the time to get to know that well, or have
somewhat different personalities, that are all under pressure to get stuff
done together, and quickly iron out any disagreements.

~~~
Waterluvian
I think the age old solution to getting stuff done with coworkers under
pressure and ironing out disagreements is to act professionally.

~~~
davidw
I'd take that as a given. As someone who worked remotely for several years, it
is more difficult to communicate as well when you are not in the same room.

When you know someone better because you talk in person every day about work,
but also life in general, and maybe have lunch every now and then... it's
easier to have frank (yet still professional) discussions about difficult
decisions.

------
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...](https://blog.travis-ci.com/2016-06-09-start-meetings-with-personal-
checkins)

------
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.

------
jharger
We used to do a "feely score" of 1-5. It sort of worked to gauge how the team
felt (positive or negatively), but it eventually devolved into everyone
arguing over whether 3 or 4 was the baseline for an unremarkable day.

~~~
karatestomp
We did something like that one place, but a longer survey and on a friggin'
1-10 scale, which tells me whoever set it up didn't know how to measure things
or didn't care enough to do it right.

Predictably, 7 ended up equalling "pretty shitty".

[EDIT] in case anyone's wondering what's wrong with that, it's the same thing
that can make a top-50% score in IMDB still very bad, plus everyone using
different standards for what the numbers mean—with that many available it'll
happen even if you try to label them. Scale compression plus no common
understanding of what the scores mean. That particular case probably needed no
more than four options, maybe even just three.

------
proc0
Why do you need emotions for solving logical problems? There's a basic level
of communication of course, but focusing on this as something to improve has
the risk of displacing technical skill as a culture value. I've been in
multiple teams were being logical was somehow frowned upon (I SOLVE LOGIC
PROBLEMS FFS) and everyone got butthurt when I tried to critique solutions.
Once again it is important to show respect but having to focus on "soft
skills", imho is just a distraction for those who don't really understand the
value and the difficulty of writing good code.

------
romanows
I'm suspicious that it's difficult to know someone's work-related emotional
state if you're in a position to affect it. And are you in a position to do
anything about it if you find that they are stressed? Just ask in a more-
frequent one-on-one if you have an employee who is hard to read but be
prepared to follow through on supporting them. And (assuming you are their
manager) tell them your frustrations and stresses proactively to model what
they are allowed to tell you.

------
6nomads
Communication is a big deal in remote teams, we've been discussing it on
Remote-first Conference in January. I'd recommend you listening to our
recorded sessions, especially Vivek Nair (Founder at Pragli) and Oksana
Zavoyko (Founder of Elin): [https://6nomads.com/remote-
conf](https://6nomads.com/remote-conf)

------
JustSomeNobody
I have worked remote for over 6 years continuously. If someone asked this
every meeting, I would tell them to get stuffed. That being said, people know
what I’m feeling because having worked remote so long I know how to tell them.
Examples: “I’m pleased we finally got approval to move on.” “I’m frustrated
this keeps getting blocked.”

------
TheFiend7
My last company did stuff like this all the time, and it always felt hollow
and very kumbaya. I think there is a less cheesy and even demeaning way to
handle people's emotions and disagreements.

This is probably a pretty personal opinion of mine though. I do agree with the
mindset, just not the execution.

------
pmuse
Why not just start the meeting by asking people what they did that weekend?
Take an honest interest in their life rather than having them... fill out an
emotional intelligence wheel?

~~~
dragonsky67
Nope, meetings are for business, if you want to know what I did on the weekend
approach me in the lunch room or at the water cooler.

------
thebiglebrewski
We used to do an opening question at every meeting! It got axed eventually
because people found it annoying. I'm sad we didn't just change the frequency
it was really fun.

------
mrlala
Wow, you sure know how to creep people out. Good luck with that.

------
vidanay
The only answer you would ever receive from me is "I'm great! This job is
fantastic!" While I had the biggest Cheshire Cat smile on face.

Until I find a new job.

------
feocco
I'd agree with the oddness of sharing your emotions in a team meeting. I
likely wouldn't express my "true" feelings.

I gauge my teammates emotional states based on personal interactions and
available context. Nor is it something I would want tracked. But perhaps kept
in mind when adding tasks to their plate.

If you want honest feedback, I'd say use the power of anonymity. Engagement
surveys with the right questions can pull this data. Keep in mind that the
emotional statements can be hyperbolized one way or the other.

TL;DR - talk to your people "face to face." And reach out to those they're
close with if concerned. Or directly and up front. Which avoids complicating
with subversion.

------
sharadov
Are you guys working in a 1960s commune? While I applaud your idealistic idea,
it will be a disaster in a modern workplace.

------
byoung2
We use 15five and it has these kinds of questions in a weekly report to each
team member's manager, and can be addressed in a weekly on on one meeting. It
is more comfortable to share things directly with a manager than to share it
in the group. How awkward would it be to say "I'm worried about our company's
future" at the start of scrum

