We’ve been focusing on emotional intelligence within Camplight teams for almost five years. Three of those years we concentrated on Moodlight — we’ve been building it and using it in different ways. Recently I calculated that we spent half a decade in which we patiently listened to one another and empathized with the moods of our teammates. We were vulnerable and uncertain. At times we were fragile and lost in the sea of feelings. Sometimes we cried, other times we laughed. I realized that human feelings are pretty complex — emotions have rhythm, plasticity, and agility. They come and go.

Emotion work is essential work.

Sensitivity to other moods can be contagious. Psychological safety to express oneself can be a burden for someone unprepared to handle the load. Creating an open-minded culture and giving permission to feel is essential, but how do we start with that? We all have crunched numerous studies on why mental health is crucial for our well-being. Still, we try to finish our daily job faster and leave the drama to pile up afterward. We go this compounding unnoticed until it explodes in our faces. Moods are nuanced and granular, and teams often handle the load with more pressure. They dampen the issues by refocusing or squeezing everyone to be “professional” and suck it up. After all, “business is for business”? If you read some unconventional literature on this topic, you know how flawed this stance is. There’s very little mainstream information on how groups can regulate their moods. If we’re left alone, we know what to do — meditate or exercise or something else for reconciling our feelings. It indicates that we often need some space to breathe.

Emotion work requires margins.

So maybe you can improve the emotional intelligence in your team by giving more space? Honestly, I don’t know, but I can tell you what we have tried with Moodlight so far. We have been “moodlightning” in hundreds of sessions and used it to prompt for our feelings. And not only that — we witnessed how thousands of groups are using it. We managed to see opportunities to improve collective emotional intelligence in all 16 types of meetings:

The various use cases include:

Check-in, Check-out of a meeting

When we start/end a conference call, we ask participants how they feel. If we’re less than seven people, we do a round table why everyone has picked a particular moodlight emotion. Then, everybody has one or two short minutes to connect and express. Or we might ask for volunteers to explain. This is our most often usage of moodlighting. It extends to different scenarios — we even saw classrooms in schools using it this way.

Retrospections with emotional candor

We nudge teammates to share how they felt about a particular development in the past. We should account for emotional entanglement, and we need to identify that. Some team members can feel the same way about a singular event in the past weeks. We’ve used Moodlight to shine over that. Moods can be long-lasting, and sometimes people can shove them under the rug for the work to continue without disturbances. Feelings are elastic, and it’s alleviating if we don’t stretch them for too long. Letting them go by expressing them or closing them when we have the opportunity is a great way to close a work chapter.

Answer a special question: How you feel about …?

Sometimes we collect feedback asynchronously. About a persons’ specific involvement in a project or more something broadly. It can be anonymous. The idea is to create a space where people can communicate their underlying

Webinars and workshops to capture the emotional climate

We use Moodlight to see the emotional climate of a big group. Webinars usually are dull watching of a lecture. We break the monotonous cadence of just watching a presentation by introducing an emotional prompt for people to be present. That increases engagement and interaction with the content.

Team journaling for the day (week)

We believe you can try to improve the emotional intelligence in your team by making them use Moodlight systematically. It will aid in observing their state, figuring out their exact feeling, identifying their overall mood, revealing their emotions, and consciously moderating their sensitivity.

1:1 talks

We go through the dial together with a person to have mutual recognition, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating of feelings. Sometimes we frame our talks not about performance but practice. Usually, people hide their true selves if the organizational culture is chasing performance, as this incentivizes behavior of knowledgeability. Most often, people are not knowledgeable, but they are willing to practice until they learn. Practicing is tedious, so a 1:1 talk constructed as a coaching session can achieve marvelous results for unlocking potentials.

Icebreakers

Talking about something different than work can be a breath of fresh air for a team. We do happy hangouts. Sometimes we even have time dedicated entirely to how we feel nowadays. Mental health deterioration is the fastest growing societal global risk negatively impacting well-being, social cohesion, and productivity. Feelings like anxiety, dementia, depression, loneliness, stress and more are creeping on us at unprecedented pace. We don’t have the luxury to neglect this as COVID-19 has intensified these global risks, as identified by World Economic Forum.

Progress check

Combine the status reports with emotional data. We’re often surprised when we achieve something how destructive it can be if we spend more fuel than needed. To have sustainable momentum, we need to work as much as to recover from it. Progress checks should uncover if the group is ready for the next adventure or they feel drained.

Quarterly strategy

Understand if you have alignment as a collective. Logical and emotional convergences are two different things. People might understand the goals, but it might be troublesome for them to connect with.

Vote for ideas/features

Cast your votes by combining them with your emotional valence. Before introducing Moodlight in our voting flow, we reacted with “good” or “bad”, but the reality is more nuanced than that. Sometimes an idea can make us feel excited beyond everything or concerned. Revealing those subtleties can turn vague ideas into something tangible. What if people feel anxious or hopeless before starting something new? Shouldn’t you address that?

In Camplight every team has its own unique set of processes but we all try to follow the best practice of mutual understanding and mindfulness. How are you addressing emotional intelligence in your teams? Share your thoughts in the comments 👇