Check-ins worth having
A practical guide to keeping teams connected and moving.
If you’ve got ten minutes and a cup of tea, it holds together best when read from top to bottom at least once — but if your meeting starts in five minutes and you’re just after a good question, then click to skip to the end.
Understanding
What I mean by a check-in
A check-in is a short round at the start of a meeting where everyone says, in a sentence or two, how they're arriving: what's on their mind, how they're feeling, and what might be pulling their attention somewhere else.
Nobody needs to perform or explain themselves, and nobody needs to fix anything they hear in that moment. The point is that each person says something true about where they are, and the rest of the group hears it.
Some teams call it an opening round, a temperature check, or something which makes sense in the context of the work, and some don't call it anything at all. It ultimately matters less what you call it, and more that it's conducted in a way that it fulfils its intended purpose.
What a check-in isn’t
If your team already has stand-ups, a Monday forward plan or any other standing meeting with a round of updates, it's tempting to assume you've got check-ins covered, but you almost certainly haven't. Those can undoubtedly be valuable meetings when done well, but they're all about the work: what you're doing, what's blocked, what's coming up. A check-in is about the people doing it: how they're arriving, what's weighing on them, and what they might need from each other.
Of course, the two can happen in the same meeting, and a few minutes of check-in at the top of the Monday forward plan works nicely, but keep them separate and distinct. By folding them together (perhaps in the name of efficiency), you'll end up with a request for a status update badly masquerading as a clumsy wellbeing check, where "how are you?" quickly becomes "where are you up to?".
Done well, a ten-minute check-in on a Monday can save an awful lot of misreading and second-guessing by Wednesday.
Why check-ins work
Whenever a group of people meet at work, they're doing two jobs at once. On the one hand, there's the work on the agenda: the problem to solve, the logistics to wrangle, the milestones to be reviewed, the decision to be made. And then there's the quieter work of handling how everyone feels about that work: the worry about a deadline, the irritation left over from last week, the ripple effect of a decision somebody else has taken, the thing nobody has quite found a way to say yet.
Most of what a check-in does rests on something easy to miss, which is that the second job carries on whether or not anyone mentions it. How people and teams feel about their work shapes who speaks and who holds back, how they frame a discussion, how direct or circuitous a conversation might be, and how much of the real conversation makes it into the room in the first place. A check-in gives it somewhere conscious to go before it starts running the meeting from behind-the-scenes.
This is why the small act of naming carries tremendous value in building strong relationships. When someone says they were up at four with a poorly child, or have just come out of a difficult conversation with their director, or are distracted by a HR matter, the rest of the group stops projecting their own interpretation of that person's behaviour - and subsequently their response to that - and instead understand it for what it truly is. The person naming the thing also finds it easier to set the thing down themselves. Even "I'm distracted" does useful work, because a distraction someone has named has less grip than one they haven't.
There's a longer-term effect too, and I think it's the most important one. A check-in establishes, early and at low stakes, that this is a group where people say true things. Someone who has said "I'm knackered and worried about the budget" in the first five minutes will find it much easier to say "I don't think this plan works" forty minutes later, and so will the people who heard them. Giving everyone a turn matters for the same reason: in my experience, the person who has already spoken once is far more likely to speak again. Over weeks and months, that's how a team builds the kind of trust that lets it do difficult work without anyone pretending it's easy.
I think people do their best work, including their hardest work, when they can bring their full attention to it, when they feel known by the people around them, and when difficult things can be said out loud and received in the spirit it's intended without everything falling apart. A few minutes at the start of a meeting won't deliver all of that on its own, but it's one of the simplest (and cheapest) places I know to start.
When to use check-ins
Use them at the start of team meetings, retrospectives, learning sessions and workshops, or any time people need to connect before getting into the work. They're especially useful when the stakes are high, when a group is new or has recently changed, or when something difficult has just happened, which is, annoyingly, exactly when people are most tempted to skip them.
You don't need one in every meeting, and I'd gently discourage it, because a check-in before every half-hour catch-up quickly turns into a motion to go through rather than a ritual to build meaningful connection. Pick the forums where they matter most and, once you have, make them a fixed part of those meetings rather than something that happens when someone remembers.
In a 1:1, a check-in is really just asking how someone is and then waiting long enough to hear the real answer before you dive into the list.
Whichever meetings you choose, check-ins only really work as a habit. Think of them as physio exercises that keep your dodgy knee from aching, not the trip to A&E when it gives out mid-jog — though a team that’s been doing its exercises copes far better when something does go pop.
How to run a check-in
None of this is complicated, which is exactly why it's so easy to do badly, and I say that having sat through (and, much to my shame, run) more than a number of limp check-ins.
Mean it
If you're treating the check-in as something to get through before the real meeting, it's best not to bother: people can always tell when you're waiting for the round to finish, and a check-in nobody's interested in is worse than none at all, because it teaches everyone that honesty is for show, it adds yet another performative layer to discussions, and it risks making it a competition to share the 'best' thing. If you truly can't give it your attention today, say so and skip it.
Pick the question for the group
The prompt itself does a lot of the work, so go lighter for a new group or a quick meeting and more reflective for a team that already trusts each other. There's a bank of questions at the bottom of this page to suit different purposes, contexts, or goals.
Go first, and go honestly…
If you're leading, you set the depth. If you say "fine”, “busy", “OK”, everyone will follow you there, and within a month you've got a ritual nobody believes in. Say something real, even something small, and you've given everyone else permission to do the same. Real doesn't mean raw, mind: "I'm a bit flat after a long week" gives people room, whereas ten minutes on your week leaves them feeling they owe you a matching confession.
Let people pass
Being asked how you feel in front of your boss, or in a group you don't trust yet, can feel a lot like being asked to pass some sort of secret test. So make it clear that "pass", "nothing much to report", or similar are perfectly good check-ins. Over time you'd want to create a vibe in which this isn't the norm, but ultimately the check-in is a fixed part of the meeting and what anyone says in it is up to them. In my experience the people who are allowed to say very little or sit with their quiet end up saying more over time when they realise the group is one which can be trusted and they feel that what they say will be truly listened to.
Listen, but don’t fix
However tempting it is, don't reassure or advise during the check-in; a nod or a heartfelt "thanks for sharing" will do. If you're facilitating the check-in, by all means ask a follow-up question to check for understanding or role model a compassionate response if you think the group would benefit from it. But if something sounds like it needs attention, pick it up one to one as soon after the check-in as you and the other(s) can manage, and actually do it, because a concern that gets raised and then quietly ignored teaches people not to bother next time or leaves them feeling like they've done something wrong.
Agree the norms together
What works for one group can grate on another, so it's worth agreeing a few norms together rather than assuming yours are everyone's. In a hybrid check-in, some people find a running commentary in the chat distracting, or a sign that nobody's really listening, while others like seeing colleagues chip in with a bit of support. Putting the question in the calendar invite will get you answers people have actually thought about, but some will see it as prep work for something that's meant to be light. Neither has a right answer, so ask the group, try something, and be prepared to change it.
Keep it short
Unless you've specifically allowed for more time, a sentence or two each is plenty; with six to eight people that easily gets to five or ten minutes at the start of a meeting. If you're even tighter for time or the group is especially big, ask for one word or score out of 10 instead, but be mindful of following up afterwards if somebody indicates they're feeling in need of support or a friendly ear.
… Or go last to make space
But going first isn't always the right move. If you're the most senior person in the room, or you’re privy to the thing making half of the attendees feel anxious (for instance, a restructure, an audit), whatever you say first becomes the weather everyone else will report on. Going last can allow people to say what's actually true for them before you've laid down your own tone and colour, and it gives you a cleaner read of the room. It works best once the group already knows what a real check-in feels like, otherwise you're giving up the chance to model a good one. When your turn comes, keep it short and honest rather than summing up everyone else's, because your role isn't to give a judge's score.
Allow a natural order
It can be tempting to go round the table or call names in turn, which is a habit often used by stand-ups or other team updates. However, you want people to focus more on listening and less on waiting to speak and mentally rehearsing what they're going to say when it gets to their turn. If you're the one leading the meeting or facilitating the check-in, keep an eye on who's already spoken and kindly name those who haven't so they feel the group is willing to hold time and space for them. Otherwise the quickest and loudest set the tone. And, in the short-term, which members of the group dominate the check-in and who withdraws is useful data for follow-on conversations and 1:1s.
Use what you hear
If half the room says they're exhausted, believe them, and have a proper think about whether the agenda for the meeting post-check-in still makes sense. A check-in that never changes anything about the meeting or the environment you're working in is just psychological ornamentation, and people will quickly notice the disingenuousness and it will undermine any efforts to build trust among the group.
Ask how it’s going
After a few weeks, ask the group what they make of the check-ins and what they'd change. People will stick with things they've had a hand in shaping, and some might want to take turns picking the question or facilitating, which has the added bonus of it not always being you.
Adapting check-ins
Remote + hybrid check-ins
Check-ins matter at least as much when people are spread out, because it's much easier to feel unseen when you're a slightly pixelated face in a grid or you've missed our in the corridor chat about the weekend.
A few tweaks that help:
A natural order works in a room because people can pick up on the small cues which signal who's about to speak. On a call it tends to produce a long silence followed by three people jumping in at once, so be a little more directive: ask each person to hand over to someone who hasn't spoken yet, or gently name the next person yourself.
In hybrid meetings, start with the people joining remotely, so they don't end up as an afterthought to the conversation in the room.
Using the chat for a one-word answer or a score out of ten is a gentle way in, especially for people who'd rather not speak first. That's quite different from the chat turning into an animated back-channel while someone's talking, which some people love and others find distracting or read as a sign nobody's listening (so use of group chat might be something to agree as a group).
Mix up the format every so often: speaking one week, the chat or a shared whiteboard the next. Basically, anything to help keep it dynamic when constantly working from home might feel fairly static.
Be mindful of screen fatigue. On a day of back-to-back calls, a one-word round is kinder than a deep question, and the deeper prompts are best saved for groups that already trust each other.
Invite quieter people, and anyone with their camera off, by name and kindly, and be genuinely fine with a pass.
On the subject of cameras on video calls — whether cameras are on or off is up to each person, and I'd resist making a thing of it. Yes, it's usually much more enjoyable to see people's faces and expressions, but there area a million legitimate reasons why somebody might have their camera off so just trust that they have one.
Check-outs
A check-out is the same idea at the end of a meeting. Everyone says, briefly, how they're leaving, what they're taking away, or anything they didn't get round to saying. It catches the meeting after the meeting, the stuff that would otherwise come out in the corridor or a private message five minutes later, and it gives whoever ran the session an honest read on how it actually went. It can be even shorter than a check-in, and there are a few questions for it at the end of the list below.
Standalone* check-ins and check-outs
*I cannot stress enough that ‘standalone’ does not mean ‘one-off’.
Some teams go a step further and give check-ins and check-outs their own slot in the diary: a short meeting at the start of the week that's nothing but a check-in, and another at the end that's nothing but a check-out, with no agenda, no updates and no actions. It may sound indulgent until you consider how many busy leadership teams either meet about absolutely everything except how they're actually doing or spread their leadership across the organisation in such a way they rarely spend unstructured time together in which this could surface.
Taking the check-in out of the business meeting means it isn't competing with the agenda, so nobody's glancing at the clock or saving themselves for AOB. It gives people a regular, protected place to say how they're really doing, which matters most for leadership teams, whose members rarely get anywhere at work to say it without it being read as a signal about the whole organisation. And because it happens every week, it builds a running picture of the team: you start to notice who's been "fine" three weeks running or whose energy has quietly dropped.
It works best for a group that genuinely needs to work as a team, rather than a collection of people who happen to share a manager. A few things help:
Keep it short and fixed, somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes in the same slot each week. Monday morning for the check-in and Friday afternoon for the check-out suits most teams.
Keep it small. Much beyond eight people and the round eats the whole slot, so split into smaller groups or ask for less from each person.
Use a second round. With no agenda waiting, there's time, once everyone's spoken, for people to respond to what they've heard, offer help or ask for it. It's the one place where you can relax the rule about not responding.
No need for minutes and actions. The only things that should come out of it are people knowing each other a bit better and any offers of help, which get picked up afterwards, amongst those who need to.
Protect the slot. The fastest way to kill the habit is for the most senior person to cancel the moment things get busy, which tells everyone exactly how much it matters. If you can't make it, say so and let it go ahead without you.
Guard the border. At some point, somebody will certainly try to sneak in a "while we're all here, quick one about…", and the moment it becomes a status meeting or a firefighting forum you've got one more stand-up and one fewer check-in.
The check-out works the same way, just looking back rather than forward: how the week has been, what you're glad to put down, and anything you're carrying that someone here should know about. It's offers a decent defence against taking the week home with you, because whatever you've been stewing on has at least been said aloud at least once.
Questions to try
Use these as a starting point, and steal, adapt, hack, or ignore them as your group needs. Most work as spoken rounds, and the short ones work nicely in the chat.
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One word for how you're arriving today.
On a scale of one to ten, how's your energy?
What's one thing on your mind that you need to set aside to focus on this?
What's one small win you've had recently?
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What's one thing you want to walk away from this meeting with?
What's the most important thing for us to get to today?
What's one thing you're hoping to get clearer on?
What do you need from this group today?
What's one concern you're bringing in that we should address?
How will you know if this meeting has gone well?
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These questions are useful for groups coming together for the first time, or who don't know each other well yet. Some are inspired by the psychologist Arthur Aron's research on how strangers build closeness through gradually more personal questions, though I've stuck to the ones that won't make it seem like anyone is trying to come onto a colleague.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
What are you reading, listening to or watching at the moment, and what do you think of it?
Where's your favourite place to be on a quiet weekend?
What's something you think is underrated, or overrated?
What do you do with five minutes between meetings to reset?
What was the first book, film, or music album you bought?
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For teams in transition, after a wobble in trust or collaboration, or when you want to talk about what's going on between people rather than only in the work.
What's one thing you've appreciated about this team recently?
What's a strength you see in this group right now?
What are you noticing about how we're working together at the moment?
What's one thing we could do differently as a team this week?
What helps you feel able to speak up in this group?
When do you feel most listened to here, and what makes that possible?
What do you value about how we challenge or disagree with each other?
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These connect people's own experience to what the work is actually for. The best ones come from the subject of the meeting itself, and they can be as simple as asking a transport team how everyone got to work this morning.
What's one thing we've done recently that made a difference to someone who uses our services?
What's one barrier the people we serve might be facing today that we often overlook?
What's something people outside this team might not see about our work, but would struggle without?
What assumptions are we holding that might need challenging?
Where do you feel momentum at the moment, and where do you feel resistance?
What's a bold idea you're carrying that hasn't had airtime yet?
What gives you hope about where this work is going?
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How are you leaving?
What's one thing you're taking with you?
Is there anything you didn't get to say?
What's one thing you'll do differently after this?
What a group can handle depends on how well they know and trust each other, and on what's going on for them right now, so it's worth reading the room before you pick a question.
A new group needs low-stakes ways to get to know each other, so start with life outside work or what people want from the session, because nobody wants to bare their soul to people whose names they're still learning. A group that's still working out how to work together will get more from questions about what helps people speak up and what they appreciate in each other. A team with real trust in the bank can handle reflection and challenge, like what they've learned from each other recently or where they could stretch next.
A team under strain needs something simpler than you might expect: a chance to say how they're arriving and what might make it hard to focus, without being asked to dig. Strain can turn up at any point in a team's life, so read the room you've got today rather than the one you assume you have based on the fantastic away day you had last month.
Questions to approach with caution
No question works for everyone, but some can prove less accessible than than others. None of these are absolutely forbidden, but it's worth knowing how they might work against you so you can use them with the appropriate consideration of the group.
Metaphors and abstract hypotheticals, like "if your week were weather, what would it be?" or "which animal are you today?". You have to translate a feeling into the metaphor and then second-guess what everyone else will read into it, which is extra work for a lot of neurodivergent people and for anyone working in a second language. If you're fond of this style of question, offer a literal option alongside it.
Questions that assume a particular kind of life, like what people got up to at the weekend, where they went on holiday, or what they were like as a teenager. Not everyone has weekends off, money for holidays, or a childhood they want to revisit in front of colleagues, and a question that's light for most of the room can quietly sting for one person in it — inadvertently othering somebody from the group which you were trying to bring closer together.
Questions that invite a performance, like "tell us something nobody here knows about you" or "what's your proudest achievement?". They tend to turn the round into a competition for the best answer, which can induce anxiety or a feeling of judgment.
Status updates in disguise, like "what did you get done yesterday?". Hopefully it's plain to see that question's nothing but business.
Questions people can't answer honestly in front of their boss, like "how do you feel about the restructure?" or "what would make this team work better?" asked by the person who leads it. They're good questions, but they belong in a 1:1 or an anonymous survey, not a round where everyone's watching everyone else's face.
When check-ins don’t land
Some people, and some whole teams, will resist check-ins, especially if they can't see the point or the group doesn't feel safe yet. It's worth meeting that with curiosity rather than force, because what people say about check-ins is often about something else entirely.
“This is a waste of time.”
They've never seen check-ins used well, or connected to anything that matters.
“This is all a bit touchy-feely for me.”
It helps to say out loud that this might feel new or a bit awkward at first, and that the aim is to be present and open, not personal and mawkish. Then explain what the check-in is actually for: understanding how everyone's arriving, so you can work better together.
“Can’t we just get on with the meeting?”
Quiet disengagement
Discomfort with vulnerability, or worry about being exposed in front of colleagues.
Pressure to deliver, or a fear of being judged for what they share.
Unclear expectations, or not much trust in the group yet.
It helps to say out loud that this might feel new or a bit awkward at first, and that the aim is to be present and open, not personal and mawkish. Then explain what the check-in is actually for: understanding how everyone's arriving, so you can work better together.
What it might sound like
What might be underneath
If everyone gives the same answer every time…
When every check-in comes back "fine, busy", either the question's gone stale or your own answer has set the bar a floor level. Change the question, try something more open, or share it in advance if your group likes a bit of thinking time, and go first with something real.
If one or two people regularly take over…
Set a gentle limit (a sentence or two, a single word, a minute) and if you're facilitating, keep an eye on who hasn't spoken yet and kindly bring them in. If the same people dominate week after week, that's useful information in itself, and probably worth a quiet word one to one rather than a public correction.
If it feels like wasted time…
Keep it short and tie it to the meeting, for example by asking what people need from the session. And be choosy about where you use them, because a check-in before every single meeting will only result eye-rolling and sighing.
If people are uncomfortable sharing anything personal…
Start with light or work-related questions and bring in more personal ones only as the group gets comfortable. Remind people that a pass is always on the table.
If someone shares something big…
Occasionally a check-in surfaces something heavy, like a bereavement, a health worry, or someone who's clearly struggling. Thank them, don't try to work through it in the room, and check in with them afterwards about whether they want to carry on with the meeting and whether there's anything they need. If you lead a team, know where to point people for support beyond you, because being a supportive leader doesn't mean becoming everyone's therapist.
Further reading
If you want to go further, the following resources are ones I can genuinely recommend (as in, most of them live on my own bookshelf).
On psychological safety and team culture:
Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization. The book that brought psychological safety into everyday use, and the clearest account of why it matters for teams doing difficult work. Her TEDx talk covers the essentials.
Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code. Very readable on the small signals that tell people they belong, including why a leader going first with something honest can do lots of the initial heavy lifting.
Google re:Work, Understand team effectiveness. The write-up of Google's Project Aristotle research, which found that how a team worked together mattered more than who was on it, with psychological safety top of the list.
On rounds, openings and facilitating a room:
Nancy Kline, Time to Think. The book on rounds, where everyone gets a turn and nobody interrupts, and on what happens to people's thinking when they're properly listened to. There’s also more on her Time to Think.
Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering. Written about gatherings of all kinds rather than meetings specifically, but brilliant on why the first few minutes set the tone for everything that follows.
Liberating Structures. A free menu of simple formats for getting everyone in a group involved, rather than the usual suspects.
On what's going on underneath:
Robert de Board, The Psychoanalysis of Organizations. A short, readable introduction to the idea that groups are always doing two jobs at once, drawing heavily on Wilfred Bion's work on groups.
Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts (eds.), The Unconscious at Work. The Tavistock classic on how anxiety shapes organisational life, particularly in health, care and other public services. Wonderfully rich so one to take time over.
Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, The Whole-Brain Child. A parenting book, but the "name it to tame it" idea is the simplest explanation of why saying a feeling out loud loosens its grip, and the psychology beneath it is just as applicable to directors as it is to toddlers.