CATEGORY

collective articulation     communication     entanglement     generating intimacy     game     operating from care     resilience     value system

DESCRIPTION

This tool is used to get to know the emotional, mental and/or physical state of the members of a collective, work group, organisation or assembly, before and after a meeting, without anyone having to feel pushed to share intimate or personal information. Carrying out both check-in and check-out helps to detect to what extent individual moods, and the collective mood of the group, have changed over the course of the meeting.

INSTRUCTIONS

Participants are invited to describe and share their emotional/mental/physical state through weather forecast used as a metaphor for their very own indoor weather. At the beginning of the meeting (Check-in), participants choose the weather best describing their emotional, mental and/or physical state. At the end of the meeting (Check-out), they are again invited to share their weather status.

YOU WILL NEED

Allow 10 minutes both at the beginning and at the end of the meeting/session in which you want to use this tool. Depending on the number of participants, the implementation of the tool may take more or less time.

TIPS/CAVEATS

It is important that the dynamics be swift. Participants need to define their status rather briefly. It should be noted that Check-in at the beginning of the session is usually easier than the Check-out, since sometimes the meetings take longer than expected, causing the participants to wish or need to leave before the end of the meeting. For this reason, it is important to be aware of the end time of the session and anticipate 10 minutes before the agreed time to be able to carry out the Check-out.

FUNCTION IN TE( N ) CUIDADO

Within the TE( N ) CUIDADO framework, we have implemented this tool to find out the mood of the participants in different meetings, workshops or gatherings, with different number of participants. This way, at the Check-in we can detect whether, for instance, someone is feeling stormy, which tells the rest of the group that perhaps it is not a good time to start intense dialogues with that person.