Cultivating flow for individuals and teams
Facilitator’s Q&A with Jay: Episode 25
Full transcript
Emily: I'll have a meeting, I'll get everybody in a room and say, okay, let's go around see who is stressed. And you go around the room, you get 10 people who say they're stressed. That’s not going to be an effective meeting at that point. I'm like, great. This meeting is not as important as whatever is stressing you guys all out. So take the hour back.
Jay: Emily, how are you doing?
Emily: I'm doing wonderful. How are you, Jay?
Jay: I'm doing so great. We're really excited to talk with you today about this topic of flow. You know, as I was thinking about what we're going get into today, I was thinking about all of my rookie moves of kicking off a really, really important sprint or a workshop or something. And deciding that the most important place to start was my precious agenda. And then just plow through the work because we have a lot to cover today, of course. And then I get so frustrated and let down by the folks that were bringing sort of like the same safe and maybe even stale ideas to the conversation. I was like, what's wrong with them? Why won't they dig in here? Why won't they do their best work? And then I remembered that they're human beings and I probably needed to check in with them first and just let them arrive and let them get into this state of flow. And I was excited to see the way that you do it and you have this framework and these questions that you ask people. So I wanted to talk about it with you today.
Emily: Yeah. So as I've shared with you, I often like at the beginning of meetings to just right check in with people on where they are emotionally, and there are lots of ways to do this. But one that I like that's really simple and can become really quick if it becomes routine, is this three word prompt. So, are you feeling snoozed, stretched, or stressed? And the way to think about that is snoozed is sort of like I'm bored, right? Maybe I'm not that engaged, or I'm thinking about something else, stretched is that good place that place we want to be, or that we might call flow, which is, you know, I'm feeling challenged and I'm feeling engaged. I'm feeling like this is an exciting opportunity to learn something new, right? And then stressed is anxious. Like I'm overwhelmed, I've got too much going on. And so I think it's really helpful as a facilitator to be able to just, you know, take the temperature.
Jay: Okay. So then what about the facilitator that has a timeline that they're working against and a a boss and a boss's boss that expects them to come out of that meeting with some answers.
Emily: Some of this is about understanding where people are emotionally so that you can help them get into that better state. But there's this framework I first learned about it from a first round review article called something like "Tracking Your Engineers Flow States", but it basically says that the state of flow happens when the level of challenge that you're facing is, you know, in line with the skill that you have. When the skill that you have outpaces the challenge you're facing, you get bored. And when the challenge that you're facing way out paces, the skill that you have, you get anxious. I think it just helps you figure out okay, on this access of challenge versus skill, how can I adjust those things in order to get everybody into this flow state?
Jay: Yeah. That reminds me of a book by Ellen Hendrickson. She talks about doing the work for first and then comes the confidence. So, you know, like this, the work that you and I do tends to be fraught with discomfort and uncertainty and all that. And what I think, what I also like about what you're talking about is this repetition to this. So, you know, it's almost like groups that run a sprint the first time they think, you know, one and done kind of thing. And what I like is that it feels like you're talking about a mindset of service, which is like investing in the people and the team, instead of just assuming that you do an activity once and everyone's A-OK. Like very transactional. Right.
Emily: Yeah. And I think if you think about this in terms of career develop, right, as a direct manager, but also as like organizational development, right? As a product leader, I have groups, I have product managers who are facilitating with the same group over and over and over again. That group is going learn and grow over time and they're going be in different emotional states over time. And, so having a tool in your back pocket that can help you, you know, track how the group is, and also understand, okay, as a group, if we're getting better at doing this thing, maybe we can take on a new challenge and, and still be in a flow state. Right? Or maybe if the anxiety level's really high in the group, we need to get in there and figure out how we descope this thing, or, you know, set clearer expectations for the team.
Jay: Yeah. I mean, Emily, I really like this because this is where the difference of a facilitator showing up to run a recipe and be one and done versus really like applied leadership and really kind of investing in your team. So stuff like this is a great investment in the team and the people that are doing the work. So thanks for sharing. I really appreciate it.
Emily: Thank you for having me!
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