Take 5: Reduce stress in staff meetings.

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Take 5: Reduce stress in staff meetings.

Take 5: Reduce stress in staff meetings.

Take 5: Reduce stress in staff meetings.

A simple ritual with big results. Start each staff meeting sharing happy experiences from the past week to decrease stress and increase openness.

Madhav Nair

Who’s the Take 5 ritual for?

Engineering leaders running regular staff meetings.

Teams who have to discuss hard, contentious topics in a meeting setting.

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Meetings. The word alone can cause a spike in anxiety.

I’ve run hundreds over the course of my career managing engineering teams at Intuit, Wayfair, ZoomInfo, and now as CTO at

Employ⁠

, and witnessed firsthand the stress they cause.

But I’ve learned that meetings, and the difficult topics covered in them, don't have to be the anxiety-inducing “necessarily evil” we think they are. A simple change can make them much more positive and productive.

Ready to de-stress your staff meetings? Copy the

Take 5 template⁠

, then add it to the top of your next staff meeting agenda.

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Copy the Take 5 template

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Problem: it’s not the meetings, it’s the lack of connection.

We all “know” the problem is meetings themselves. However, I’d argue the real problem is the meeting structure and the disconnect it causes. We’re often so anxious to cover all the topics, sometimes because we want to get the hard stuff over with, we start to dig in while forgetting humans are at the center of it all. Humans that can get anxious, defensive, and judgmental. Yes, even engineers!

These feelings can become acute in staff meetings where we’re put under large amounts of pressure as we discuss tough work topics amongst our peers. Pressure that causes tension to rise and make conversations heated. It’s not only unproductive, it’s unhealthy.

I imagine many of us have been in a situation where one meeting became so awkward we were exceedingly thankful for the next entry on our calendar.

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These high levels of stress impair communication and decision-making, creating a cycle of tension and decreased productivity. People may feel they are being judged by their peers or superiors, which can increase stress even further.

It really is a wonder we’re able to get anything done it all!

Solution: Take 5 and create positive vibes that last.

The fix is simpler than you’d think: begin each meeting by building a lasting positive connection.

Ask everyone at the beginning of each staff meeting to share something from the last week that made them happy — a thing they accomplished at work, a tidbit from their personal life, a child’s music recital for example, even a TV show they found enjoyable. This puts everyone in a supportive frame of mind that then carries through the rest of the time together. So that when the inevitable hard stuff comes up, it’s a little easier to deal with because you’ve bonded over these experiences, and your brain is in a much better place, more tuned to make difficult choices and engage in critical conversations.

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I’ve found this relatively small shift in structure makes a big difference in how your meetings play out. There’s research that talks about how this sense of “psychological safety” fosters increased participation and richer conversations, but all I need to do is look around the room to see that it’s working. People are less quick to react and give more thoughtful feedback vs defaulting to criticism.

It’s why I’ve brought this ritual to every company I’ve worked at. It’s so well liked that everyone on my teams has said this is their preferred way to run meetings.

Not just less stressful meetings, but more open ones too.

The core benefit of the connection between team-members is obviously a less nerve fraying 30-60 minutes, but there are plenty of side-benefits, including increased participation, which leads to increased diversity of thought.

I can see people who generally feel a bit apprehensive about speaking up will far more readily share their opinions after engaging in a Take 5 meeting primer. It’s yet another reason I appreciate the ritual, as I’ve found that my teams see better results when we have a greater variety of people expressing their opinions. There’s also the component of how this affects long-term relationships, as each interaction builds on itself over time.

This all may feel fairly intuitive, and it is, but it’s the practice of it which truly makes it work. You’ll find other examples of leaders enacting similar rituals. For example, I follow Arianna Huffington’s work quite closely and she’s shared a practice that her team at Thrive does, which they call “

Resets⁠

”. Each team member creates a 60-90 second de-stressing video they can go back to whenever their stress accumulates. She credits it with her team presenting their “best selves” and I’d say Take 5 is similarly responsible for the teams I’ve managed becoming their highest-functioning versions.

However, it’s not a perfect solve of course, but I’ve found it helps mitigate and prevent many of the most common meeting issues we as leaders encounter.

The Ritual: How to implement Take 5 with your team.

It should be relatively simple in practice, with consistency as the key. Here’s how to run it with your own team:

Carve out the first five minutes from every staff meeting.

Explain and prepare the teams so they’re not caught off guard.

Add the

Take 5 template⁠

to the top of your staff meeting agenda.

At the beginning of each staff meeting, everyone adds a positive memory to the Take 5 table. For even more cortisol reduction, add a photo!

Everyone shares one by one, with each person selecting someone else to pass the baton to when they are done.

Pitfalls to avoid:

Forcing teammates to share if they’re really reticent to. Some people might have had a really bad week personally, and it’s totally okay for them to pass.

Don’t cut it off early. It’s generally “Take 5,” but sometimes it’s “Take 10.” Trust me, it’s worth it.

Doing Take 5 sporadically. It’s key the team becomes comfortable and looks forward to the ritual.

A special thanks to those who helped refine my thoughts on this subject: Latham Arneson, Justin Hales, Apparna Ramadoss, Siddharth Ram, Stephanie Manzelli, Dave Disciascio, Vinay Pai, Lucy Zarlengo (Moran), et al.

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This ritual is part of the EngOS.

Take 5 is part of

EngOS⁠

—a collection of actionable insights powered by the experience of the world’s best engineering leaders. Sign up for the Plato Community newsletter, powered by Coda, to receive more thoughts directly from Directors, VPs and CTOs on how they’ve improved their eng teams.

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