Niko Niko Calendar: Team Emotionality

For a long time, cognitive aspects have been privileged to make a workgroup perform successfully. Attend to understanding, intelligence, and the development of analysis skills. However, there seems to be another dimension that has been neglected so far but that can have such an impact that it is very relevant to consider: the emotions in the team; how to generate greater awareness of them and their communication to work in harmony and effectiveness.

Numerous studies show the direct link between positive emotions and good performance, and how stress, anxiety, and negative emotions also impact work performance: Relación de la inteligencia emocional con el desempeño laboralrepository.usc.edu.co › bitstream › Relación de la inteli…

A year ago, I joined an independent human resources consultancy. We are a team of 6 people with a lot of experience in HR. We work in a very freestyle of operation, we organize by projects but we have a close relationship

With my team, we have faced the challenges and pains of the pandemic: Not seeing each other frequently and having fewer projects to work on together. We kept in touch but our work dynamics became more distant.

At the end of 2020 we resumed some work and to reconnect and accompany each other in these somewhat complex moments we began to use the Niko Kiko Calendar practice.

This simple but powerful practice allows us to collect the emotions of the team through emojis on a board. It can be customized according to the reality of each group and used both in the physical and virtual world: niko-niko-calendar

Initially, we start collecting information weekly through Miró:

We still did not have formal meetings but it was a good way to resume our dynamic that has always been very close. Through our chat, we were interacting and taking what was left on the panel. For Karol, the first weeks of December were somewhat complex due to personal issues and in general, the most difficult weeks for everyone had to do with the end of a hard year and issues of his personal life. As a facilitator, I think it was a good resource to reconnect but we needed to be able to use this information more effectively (Seba went on vacation very quickly due to the announcement of a new lockdown in our country)

Since mid-February, we started with part of the team to use this practice daily and the difference in what we were able to manage to feel better was substantial.We started an important and very challenging project in addition to resuming routines which have increased the workload.The most complex days have had to do with achieving a good balance between personal and work and what we specifically activated has been a redistribution of tasks. On March 1 and 2, difficult days for Karol, we analyzed the team’s tasks and distributed them in a way that frees her up a bit so that she could have the necessary time to attend to other matters. This had a clear impact in the days after.For Felipe it has been the wear and tear of the pandemic, so taking up an interesting work project and daily communication has been of great help for him

The last week we have had some very important activities with our clients that have been very positive, from this tool we have also been able to share concerns and previous anxiety and the satisfaction and achievement of shared work.

For me, they have been very positive weeks and so I have been able to reflect and share it in the Niko Niko. I am leading new projects and my personal world is right now so much calmer and I feel more confident in the future.

As a facilitator, I have learned that to ask How are you? How do you feel today? and recording this is simple and transformative.

Sharing our feelings and being able to open conversations about it has brought us closer and allowed us to better work-life balance

Knowing each other for such a long time we often wonder and worry about each other but it is another thing to use this information to take action and make sure we do what is in our power to manage a more positive emotionality. On good days it is an incredible reinforcement of our bonds and allows us to identify what is good for us.

After implementing it in different time frames, I suggest doing it daily since it allows to act quickly and on time

We will continue to use this practice and hope to join others in this challenge soon.

Our next experiment will be to use Niko Niko as check-in and check-out especially on days when the initial mapping is negative to be able to measure the quick impact of some actions that we can implement.

I recommend to those who read this article to use this tool, it will undoubtedly help them in complex times like the ones we are living in.