feelgood thermometer

…maintaining an optimal team temperature

A feelgood thermometer is of course an analogy – maybe taken too far – and slightly euphemistic, but working with others sometimes needs a fun and explicit way of getting feelings out in the open.

It’s cheap, can be cheerful and is ultimately evolvable so give it a try and flex it to meet your own situation.

why does it work?

The feelgood thermometer lets team feelings become more open.

It is a good indicator of how things are for each and every person in the team – it only works if downward trends are communicated about and worked on.

Any member of the team can change the thermometer at any time to reflect their feeling about the team … it works on the assumption that a highly effective teams needs all members to be working well (an happy with the team right now).

Everyone on the team needs to take their own feelgood reading regularly (once a day maybe) – even if there is no change, you’ve been responsible within your team for yourself. Try to be honest and any issues won’t creep into difficult to solve problems or even harder to solve ego battles.

All team members are charged with a responsibility for team ‘health’ – if the thermometer reads low or is on a downward trend – find out why? There are so many possibilities.

measuring good feelings

You need to agree a scale of (usually three or five) points from quite positive to quite negative. It doesn’t have to be symmetrical and it isn’t scientific (it’s emotional).

The two extremes of the scale are meant to be reached – scales can be extended if you find you need to extend in either direction. The act of extending your scale, in itself, can indicate change and growth and is highly informative.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a constructive technique – all feelings are useful so they are loosely described as good - I don’t factor bad as helpful. Some are stand-alone-good others are good-indicators of actions required.

displaying your results

The basics

• Simple is best - a continuous linear scale is easiest to read but you can pick something which makes sense to you.
• You can use numbers but it is more effective to use words or pictures that fit in with your team’s view of the world.
• You’ll need a temperature marker that can be easily moved (stick it on with re-positional tack (blu or white works OK) to show the current temperature measure.

Advanced features (not really advanced, just even more thoughts really :-)

• Give your thermometer a title this provides context
• You can add evidence around your scale to show when highs and lows are reached and why….perhaps also what contributed to them and how they were improved. If the feelgood thermometer is placed on a dry-wipe board comments can be added all around the thermometer itself.
• The theme is feelgood, so evidence for feeling good is what’s needed. Participants area asked to view and comment on positive aspects and spread kudos (or karma points or claps or pats-on-the-back or shakes-of-the-hand or whatever your local currency of positive credit is).

purpose for measuring and displaying good feelings

• it helps keep a perspective on an area (that might otherwise become lost amongst life’s goings on)
• it communicates what’s going on to others (both involved and nearby)
• it helps indicate when things are working well – or becoming in need of attention