Checking In with Rituals

Rituals are practiced all over the world in many ways. They have become an important part of everyday life. Rituals have been found to reduce anxiety, help people cope with difficult situations, improve social bonding and lead to higher levels of happiness.

We use rituals throughout the ORSC curriculum to create consistency and embed learning. One of the ORSC rituals is the use of check-in/out questions.

Check in Questions

Check-ins and check-out rituals are simple ways for a team to open or close a meeting, symbolically and in a collaborative way to identify a team’s “emotional field”.

Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen, and heard. Checking-in emphasises presence, focus, and group commitment; checking-out emphasises reflection and closure.

Knowing where every member of a team stands on an emotional level before and after the work provides clarity and increases transparency, trust, and empathy. The use of a ritual builds team identity and cohesion. The metaphor of weather is often used for each team member to share their weather system at the beginning and conclusion of a meeting.

Use of the ritual builds team alliance and cohesion. Choosing not to do check-in/check-out is a ritual.

These questions can be anything! Some examples CRR UK have used in the past:

1.????What’s your favourite colour?

2.????How do you feel about spring?

3.????Who’s your hero and why?

4.????How do you feel after the bank holiday?

5.????Describe how you’re feeling by using the weather as a metaphor

Check in Questions at CRR UK

During our CRR UK weekly updates meetings we always start with a check in question. A couple of weeks ago we experienced the impact of check-in questions during a team meeting.

Each week a member of the team chooses a check in question. Keith chose “how are you with maps?” after being asked for directions on a dog walk earlier that morning. As people pondered on their answers and started to share, our system started to reveal things that hadn’t been discussed before.

One member of the team shared they have dyspraxia, so navigation can be tricky and using maps (even electronic ones) still seems to result in wrong turns. From there we discovered that two other team members have dyslexia and a meaningful conversation on how we see and work differently took place.

From using a simple check in question, that was seemingly completely unrelated, we discovered we were a neurodivergent team with a variety of different strengths and perspectives.

Rituals to Improve Relationships

Our team ritual of using check-in questions allowed us to develop a deeper understanding of each other and how we work as a team and has changed the way we approach tasks and challenges.

Group rituals, such as our monthly community events help to improve social bonding and create an atmosphere of trust. Coming together as a group of like-minded people who share similar values creates connection and a safe space to practice, share and reflect in a safe space.