90 Seconds to Transform Your Team's Entire Week

Your Monday morning meeting starts the same way every time. Someone shares their screen. Someone reads through the agenda. Someone asks if there are questions. There aren't. You move on to status updates, action items, and then everyone returns to their separate corners.

Now imagine something different. Before the agenda, before anyone shares a screen, you ask one question: "What's one word that describes how you're showing up today?"

It takes 90 seconds. And it will change your team more than any strategic initiative you roll out this quarter.

A Leader Who Tried Something Uncomfortable

In The Campfire Effect, I write about a team leader named Lisa whose remote team had gone flat. Cameras off. Clipped responses. Nobody volunteered for anything.

One Monday, she replaced the first two minutes of her meeting with a simple prompt. She asked everyone to unmute and share three words describing how they felt. Not as employees. As people.

The first week was painful. A senior developer asked if they could skip it and get to the agenda. Lisa felt ridiculous.

But she did it again the next week. And the week after that. Slowly, people started participating. A junior developer who rarely spoke shared that he was "exhausted, worried, hopeful." Someone else said, "overwhelmed, distracted, ready." Someone else broke the tension with "need more coffee."

What changed wasn't the content of the answers. It was the consistency of the asking. Lisa had created a ritual. And that ritual, repeated week after week, did something no strategy deck ever could. It turned a group of coworkers into people who actually knew each other.

The Science Behind Small Rituals

Researchers Marilyn Zakhour and Constance Noonan Hadley spent three years studying workplace rituals across 60 countries. Their findings, published in the Harvard Business Review, were striking: teams with more rituals reported higher engagement, greater psychological safety, and more job satisfaction. Not teams with better strategies. Not teams with more talent. Teams with more rituals.

These weren't elaborate ceremonies. They were small, repeated practices that people did together and found meaningful. A Monday check-in. A Friday reflection. A shared moment at the start of every meeting where people showed up as human beings before they showed up as employees.

Rituals don't just feel good. They work because they create predictability. In an environment where everything changes (the priorities, the org chart, the tools), a consistent ritual becomes an anchor. Your brain registers it as a signal: this group is stable. This group is safe. I can let my guard down here.

Camp Has Always Known This

Every camp professional reading this is nodding right now, because camp figured this out a long time ago.

Think about the first morning of a new session. You've got a cabin full of children who don't know each other, who are nervous, who are sleeping away from home for the first time. You don't hand them a schedule. You gather them in a circle. You sing a song. You do a name game. You ask a silly question and go around the group.

It feels small. It is small. But it establishes a pattern. Every morning, we gather. Every morning, we check in. Every morning, you are seen and heard before anything else happens.

That's not filler. That's architecture. You're building the emotional infrastructure that every other experience of the summer will rest on.

The workplace is no different. Your team needs the same thing those campers need: a predictable moment where they are recognized as people before they are asked to perform.

One Thing You Could Try This Week

Before your next team meeting, set aside 90 seconds. Ask one question. Make it low-stakes. "What's the best thing you ate this weekend?" works. So does "What's one word for how you're feeling right now?" or "What's something small that went well for you recently?"

Don't explain why you're doing it. Don't make a speech about psychological safety. Just ask. Let it be awkward. Let someone make a joke.

Then do it again next week. And the week after. The power isn't in any single moment. It's in the repetition. It's in your team learning that every time they walk into this room, real or virtual, someone is going to ask how they're doing and actually wait for the answer.

About the Author

Matt Kaufman has spent 40 years in summer camp as a camper, counselor, and director, studying what makes people belong, grow, and thrive. He writes about intentional community, leadership, and the intersection of technology and human connection.

Connect with Matt:

• Instagram: @mattlovescamp

• LinkedIn: Matt Kaufman

• Website: ilove.camp

Books by Matt Kaufman:

• The Campfire Effect: How to Engineer Belonging in a Disconnected World

• The Summer Camp MBA: 50 Leadership Lessons from Camp to Career