Walk around your teams and ask people, “How are you doing?” You will get one of three basic answers.
“Good!”
“Great!”
“Fine!”
You might get, “I’m good. How are you?”
In most instances, this is a pointless exchange of wasted words. Instead, we could use it assess how people are really doing.
Ask the question slightly differently. “On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being really awful, and 10 being fantastic, where do you think you are today with everything that is going on?”
This turns the question into something you can use. When someone responds as a nine, then we can ask follow-on questions. “Great! What is going on?” That response is going to be different if they say they are a two, when we might say, “Oh wow. Tell me what is going on.”