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My team at work begins our weekly meetings with a segue before we get into business, we all share a personal and professional something good. It’s a decent way to force a positive note to the top of the agenda and gives space for connection and relationship building as we share updates from our lives outside of work.

Last December we added a new element to the segue after doing a workshop at our offsite in Austin — our weather pattern.

So now it’s something good at work, something good outside of work, and our weather pattern that day. For example, sunny, partly cloudy, rainy. We realized that we needed that understanding of one another’s headspace and capacity when we entered our two-hour Thursday meetings.

Naturally (at least for us) the weather patterns have veered far away from the standard. We have high-pressure systems, altitude, fog, sunny but cold, windy, tropical storms, and all the categories of hurricanes. Today someone said they felt like they were finally out of the hurricane (that had been the pattern for months) and now there were eight tornados. We someone all took that as a win.

Writing it down like this reminds me of pointing to mood charts you see as a kid . . . it’s such a simple thing, another way to just ask how someone is doing, but I think the weather metaphor lets people be vulnerable with what’s going on with them while adding some levity and creativity.

It’s also a good pressure test . . . if you’re in a hurricane for weeks or months it’s time to try something new to get out of the storm.

With Love,

Natalie