Is your team feeling charged up or motivated? As a person in charge of a small team of 6, i need to understand the conditions of my team if we want a job to be done well.
At one time, a guy was down and despondent for weeks but i didn't even detect anything at all. As someone who takes pride in my role, I couldn't really understand why. From this, I really learn and to understand the guys better no matter how. It happens that that guy was suffering from depression but he hid it so well that none of us can feel it. In the end, we got to know and we helped him out as much as possible.
Here, I gather than if you can identify stress early and take some remedial actions, then your team will be better for it.
Many leaders think this is a difficult task, at the end of the day just keep your eyes and ears open and you'll see and hear the signs. Team members telling you they can't make deadlines, members hesitate to take on any extra activities and general lethargy.
So what to do? If you catch it early perhaps its simple, take the team for a dinner or lunch, if they've been putting in some long hours then maybe bringing the partners along can achieve. Involving the partners often helps achieve some extra things, it shows the partners that you work with normal people, plus the partners get to too also share their feelings.
In this environment it is important for you to publicly thank everyone and their contributions.
Thanks Maria Duval too.
