What do you think the number one thing succesful companies do? You're right... They ensure their teams talk about the results. 👏

Why is this so important? Many managers feel the well-being results are a measurement that they need to own independently, but that's not true - the team as a whole should co-own themes like social, recognition, development and support.

We often talk about 4 levels of accountability:

To ensure people reflect individually as well as a team, the leader is responsible for facilitating a conversation about the results. You can rush through it in 30 minutes, but we'd recommend you find a full hour for the best results.

How often should you do this? Ambitious teams that believe these kind of talks are critical should do them monthly, but every team should do it at least quarterly.

There are four steps to a great team talk.

Below is thorough guidance on how to run a team talk according to our framework.

If you're new to facilitation or leadership we advice you to follow it quite strictly as it's been validated and proven to produce great results. If you have more experience, then feel free to freestyle wherever your prefer! 👏

Introduce the purpose: "Hey everyone, I'm super happy we found the time to have another one of these talks about our teams well-being and engagement... We all know how it's directly linked to our performance both individually and as a team, and I think it's important that we enjoy work.. so I'm happy that we're prioritizing this."

Introduce the goal: "The goal of this workshop is to look at our results. Then we'll select a topic (a driver) and have a conversation about what it means to us and figure out ways to improve both individually but also as a team..."

You continue: "In an hour, the goal is that every one of us has been inspired to change one thing... that will improve our own or our colleagues experience at work, and we have identified one thing that we'll try collectively as a team."

Our recommendation is simply to present the driver scores. There are many heatmaps, charts and graphs that you could show your team, but this one chart of the 8 drivers provides plenty of information. As importantly, it explains the central insights the team need to discuss the results.

Explain the scores: "These are our scores across the 8 drivers we measure. As you can see, we do really well on social and life harmony but have a few challenges and score concerning on development. On average, our well-being score is a challenge, and something I'd really want us to improve."

Visit this guide to learn more about how to interpret the scores.

Suggest a driver: "Zoios recommends zooming in on just one driver... Given that development is our lowest scoring driver, and that I think your development is important I suggest we focus on that one. Do you guys agree that development is the right focus of our talk today?"

Explain the agenda: "Okay... development it is... We'll go over 4 questions throughout the next 40ish minutes to also leave time for summarizing and next steps:

For each question you'll get 3 minutes to reflect in silence and note down some keywords before we go around the table and say what we thought about."

Note: Make sure everyone is sharing and participating.

Introduce the 1st question: "What does [insert driver] mean to you? ... For example, what's important to you in that regard? I'll start the clock and we'll all reflect in silence for 3 minutes..."

"That was 3 minutes... Who want's to share their thoughts first? Then we'll go around the table from them? ... Yeah, Sophie go ahead." then Sophies goes on to share, and we go around the table sharing our thoughts and allowing conversations to spark.

Introduce the 2nd question: "How could one lift development themselves? ... For example what could someone do to improve their own feeling or progress or personal development?"

Reflect for 3 min in silence. Share. Talk. Progress...
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​Introduce the 3rd question: "How could our team work differently, collaborate or support each other in order to improve [insert driver]? ... What could we do that could move the needle in this area?"

Reflect for 3 min in silence. Share. Talk. Progress...

Introduce the 4th question: "I have a real responsibility to make sure you have the support and means to develop, and to feel you're making meaningful progress in your work. So my last question is: what do you need from me to improve [insert driver]?

This one is a bit different from the others. I want your honest answer, not the polite one, so I'm not going to ask you to share it out loud now. Take 3 minutes to write it down for yourself, and then bring it to our next 1:1 so we can dig into it properly there..."

Reflect for 3 min in silence. People write, they don't share around the table.

Note: Asking the question publicly matters - it shows the team you're making this a team exercise but not shying away from your role in their development. However, asking people to critique their manager in front of peers tends to produce polite answers, not honest ones. Parking it for the 1:1s you keep the visible commitment AND you get feedback that can actually change something.

You've now spend the majority of the meeting having some great conversations and sharing your perspectives, reflections and ideas.

"Thank you all for being so honest and sharing your thoughts. It's been really great getting to understand your view of development even better..."

"We're about to finish up. Let's take 30 seconds in silence to reflect and decide on ONE change that really spoke to you, that you will strive to make for yourself. Note it down for yourself. "

"This is private, so you don't have to share, but does anyone want's to share what change they wish to make after our talk today?"

Do not go around the table. Allow people to share if they wish at this stage.

"Great... Thanks for sharing, Sophie."
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"Let's take 30 seconds in silence for us all, to note down one change we'll make for the sake of the team's development."

Share your own commitment: Before you move on from this, share one thing YOU are going to change in how you support [insert driver] - it doesn't need to be big, they'll appreciate your intentions.

"Finally we need to figure out which, if any, of the team initiatives that we talked about we should try... We will NOT scope the details of the project now but instead select two team members who wish to run with it from here... What do you think?"

Emphasize that we're keeping the commitment small and trying something new - that way it also shouldn't be as scary for you to allow someone from the team to run with a project that's spontaneously spun up.

It's okay if no one wants to run with a team initiative, then it might not be needed.

But if e.g. Sophie suggests "I think it would be great if we tried having a monthly 'Share a case and get feedback' session..." then ask if she, or someone else, would be open to planning that and setting that in motion? Preferably you don't do it but instead you allow the team to take ownership.

Wrap up: "Thanks you again for a great session. I think it's been great. Let's all try to remember the one change we want to make for ourselves and the team, and then we'll check-in on the team initiative next time..."