Sharing what we carry
- mayadolgin
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
(May 27, 2025 Newsletter)
Last week I started a new cohort of group coaching and in each kickoff meeting I started with the same prompt: In two words, describe how you’re feeling as you come into this call.
Monday and Wednesday’s groups gave answers that ranged from “excited” to “distracted,” with the rare “overwhelmed.” The energy was generally high.
In my Thursday group, though, the words shifted to something like “excited but also grieving,” “devastated while hopeful.”
Each person tried to articulate their particular swirl of shock that comes after a shooting that devastates a community, while still feeling excited to start a new small group experience that would give them the tools to process it all (and model it for their teams).
Why it matters
If I hadn’t asked, and we dove straight into the agenda, we wouldn’t have known.
We wouldn’t have known what each person was carrying coming into that call.
We wouldn’t have known what we share in common, and what distinguishes us.
We wouldn’t have known how to approach one another: With an extra tone of care? By matching their excitement?
Without knowing, you might make assumptions about someone’s behavior, especially if it seems “off” from their baseline. Is it you? Someone on the team? Something at home or in the world around them?
As a leader, you have to find a balanced way to care for the person and their work product. Too much emphasis on one can diminish the health of the other.
In other words, if you spend too much time on the person, you might not have enough time left to focus on their work product. And too much focus on the work product might mean you’ve missed something important about the person’s state.
Quick check-ins
Below are four ways you can open meetings to check in. They’re designed to allow the team member/s to acknowledge what they’re carrying without it taking over the meeting.
Two words: I believe I originally got this from Brené Brown. The idea is that people are almost always feeling more than one thing at a time, so just asking “how are you” might not give enough guidance to capture their current mood. Pro tip: ask people to be specific; if they say “good and busy” I usually smile and ask what other words they’d use if those didn’t exist.
Mind-body-heart-spirit: I recently picked this up from a colleague of mine, R’ Simcha Zevit. Ask people to offer a word (or a sentence) about how they’re doing on these four dimensions – their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual states.
SPIRE: Another variation on the above comes from Tal Ben-Shahar – SPIRE stands for Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Relational, and Emotional wellbeing. (This video by Ben-Shahar happens to connect to last week’s topic, antifragility).
High-and-low: You can ask the person to briefly share a high and a low moment since you last met. This broadens the lens to the last week (or two weeks), which could be easier for some people to access and could give you better information.
Final thought:
Should you also share your answers to these questions? If the meeting is with your direct reports as individuals or a team, it might be beneficial to participate, but there are reasons why you should keep the focus on them. It can help to build rapport if you give them a brief snapshot into your own inner world, but that might also not be necessary or appropriate.
Let me know which of the above you try, or if you have other variations you like, and whether you use it as a mutual check-in or not.
The Coaching Corner
When a team member shares something vulnerable
If you’re not sure what to say, maybe the below responses will be a good starting place:
Thanks for sharing that with me.
Thanks for trusting me enough to be totally real about that.
I appreciate you coming to me with this.
Ask if they want to talk about it more or if they have someone else to talk to about it.
Whether they end up going into more depth or not, you can wrap up by asking if they’re ready to move on to the agenda.
Recommendations
According to Gallup’s annual “State of the Global Workforce” report, fully remote workers are more engaged in their work, but their wellbeing is also at higher risk.
“How to be a great coaching client” – a new article by my mentor and friend Deborah Grayson Riegel about getting the most out of your coaching engagement.
“The myth of the brilliant, charismatic leader” makes the case for valuing the “boring” kind of leadership – the kind that makes sure that the right things get done well and on time.
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