Check-ins worth having
A practical guide to keeping teams connected and moving.
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. The point is that each person says something true about where they are, and the rest of the group hears it.
What check-ins do
When used consistently, check-ins can achieve change across two timeframes
Set the tone
The tone of a meeting is influenced by its start and a thoughtful check-in can deliberately signal …
Encourage presence and focus
Helping attendees transition from what they were doing before into by parking or clearing mental clutter and making it easier to focus on the present discussion and task.
Encourage equity of voice
Helping attendees transition from what they were doing before into by parking or clearing mental clutter and making it easier to focus on the present discussion and task.
Build connection and trust
The tone of a meeting is influenced by its start and a thoughtful check-in can deliberately signal …
Promote self-awareness and reflection
Helping attendees transition from what they were doing before into by parking or clearing mental clutter and making it easier to focus on the present discussion and task.
Understand group dynamics
Check-ins can reveal the mood of a group and help the group to adjust the agenda or approach accordingly.
Why check-ins work
Most of what a check-in does rests on something that's easy to miss, which is that whenever a team meets, it's doing two jobs at once. There's the work on the agenda, and 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 thing nobody has quite found a way to say yet. That second job carries on whether or not anyone mentions it. It shapes who speaks and who holds back, and how much of the real conversation makes it into the room. A check-in gives it somewhere to go before it starts running the meeting from the back row.
This is why the small act of naming matters. When someone says they were up at four with a poorly child, or have just come out of a difficult conversation with their director, the rest of the group stops reading their quietness as disagreement or disengagement. They also find 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.
If you're the one leading, your check-in sets the depth for everyone else's. Say "fine, busy" and the whole round will follow you there, until it becomes a ritual nobody believes in. Say something real, even something small, and you give everyone else permission to do the same.
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 without anything 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
At the start of team meetings, retrospectives, learning sessions, 1:1s, or any time people need to connect before getting into the work.
Different check-in formats to suit different situations
-
Prompts to keep focus on the subject matter of the meeting:
Goal-setting: What’s one thing you want to accomplish in today’s meeting?
Offering support: What one thing do you need from this group to feel more confident today?
Appreciation: What’s one thing you appreciate about someone on the team this week?
Priority highlight: What’s the single, top priority for you today?
Challenge highlight: What’s one challenge you’re currently facing and would like to overcome?
Quick win: What’s one small win you’ve had recently that you’d like to share with us?
-
Description text goes here
-
Description text goes here
-
Item description
-
Item description
-
Item description
-
Prompts relating to the subject matter of a meeting or project to help people engage in the domain connect their human experience to the purpose of their work.
Housing
Psychological safety & team culture
The Fearless Organization, Amy Edmondson: the clearest account of why people hold back at work, and what it costs.
What goes on beneath the surface
Experiences in Groups, Wilfred Bion: the source of the "two jobs" idea. It's dense, but it's the original.
The Unconscious at Work, Anton Obholzer and Vega Zagier Roberts (eds): the friendlier route in. Start with Jon Stokes's chapter on Bion's work with groups.
Containing Anxiety in Institutions, Isabel Menzies Lyth: on how organisations build routines to protect people from anxiety, and what that costs them. This one is optional and a step further from check-ins.
Meetings people can think in
Time to Think, Nancy Kline: rounds where everyone speaks without interruption are central to her approach, which makes it the closest cousin to a check-in on the list.
The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker: especially good on openings, and on why the first few minutes set the terms for everything after.