🧠 Why Emotional Monitoring Matters
In a world where agile methodologies have become the norm, we often focus on velocity, backlog health, and burn-down charts to track progress. But what if we’re missing the most critical signal of all?
The emotional reality of the team.
Feelings are not a luxury or a side-topic. They’re the raw material of motivation, trust, and performance.
And yet, many managers still hesitate to track them — as if subjectivity were a threat to professionalism.
Let’s be clear:
What people feel determines how they act.
And how they act determines how the team performs.
Agile teams are made of people, not processes.
That’s why systematically monitoring emotional signals is not just useful — it’s strategic.
💡 The SMTP Model: A Complete Pulse of Team Energy
To move beyond simplistic “happiness” or “engagement” scores, we need a multidimensional lens. That’s why I created SMTP: a weekly and monthly pulse-check method based on four essential signals:
🔵 Satisfaction
What the organization provides to the individual.
Am I equipped to do my job in good conditions?
This includes fair pay, supportive management, clear goals, psychological safety, and a usable toolset.
🟢 Motivation
What the individual brings to the team.
Do I have the energy and the desire to contribute right now?
This includes intrinsic drive, interest in the tasks, feeling of progression, or internal alignment with the goals.
🟡 Trust
How safe I feel with my teammates.
Can I speak up, fail, and still belong?
Trust is the invisible glue in high-performing teams. When it breaks, coordination collapses.
🔴 Pride
How meaningful this work feels to me.
Do I feel proud to be part of this team and company?
Pride is deeply tied to purpose, impact, and identity. It fuels long-term engagement — especially under pressure.
🗓️ How it works:
- Weekly check-in: satisfaction & motivation (0–10 scale, optionally anonymous)
- Monthly check-in: trust & pride (also 0–10, with space for open comments)
- Use trends, not isolated scores, to guide conversations.
🧰 Two Additional Tools to Deepen Your Emotional Insight
SMTP is a powerful baseline — but it works even better when integrated with other tools. Here are two that complement it perfectly:
🧩 1. Motivational Mapping Game: “Engage Yourself”
A serious game to help individuals identify what truly drives them at work.
Players explore 12 motivational cards across 4 categories:
- Material needs (e.g. stability, recognition)
- Relational needs (e.g. belonging, cooperation)
- Professional expectations (e.g. challenge, autonomy)
- Societal commitment (e.g. purpose, impact)
Each team member reflects on:
- Which motivators are most important to them
- Which are currently satisfied in their current role
✅ This creates powerful self-awareness and team-level discussions about alignment, unmet needs, or hidden frustrations.
🔗 Follow the "Engage Yourself" Course
📈 2. Estimation Grid: Complexity, Time, Uncertainty, and Dependencies
Sometimes, emotional tension isn’t due to personal issues — but to the work itself being too complex or unclear.
This tool allows team members to rate tasks (or sprints) on four dimensions:
- ⏱️ Time needed
- 🧠 Complexity of the solution
- 🌫️ Uncertainty about the problem
- 🔗 External dependencies
Each is scored from 0 to 3 — or flagged as “Too huge.”
It reveals when anxiety comes from overload, vagueness, or lack of autonomy.
✅ Use it before a planning session to adjust scope and expectations.
✅ Use it after delivery to debrief what caused stress or slowdowns.
📎 Wrapping Up: Emotions Are Data
Subjective doesn’t mean unreliable. It means human.
By listening to emotional signals through structured tools like SMTP and its companions, you unlock better decisions, better collaboration, and better results.
🧭 Ready to try SMTP in your team?