Slack polls for managers and team leads

Once a quarter, ask your team how you are doing, anonymously. Three questions is enough: a scale on whether they get what they need from you, one thing to keep, one thing to change. Tell them you will share what you heard, then do it in the next team meeting, including the uncomfortable part. The first round is awkward; the second one is where it gets useful, because people have seen you act on it. See the manager feedback template.

Every recurring meeting should have to justify itself twice a year. Ask the attendees, anonymously: keep as is, shorten it, make it async, or cancel. If most say async, try it for a month and ask again. The meeting feedback template has a quick and a longer version, and a no-meeting day poll is the natural follow-up.

For the team decisions that do not need you to decide alone (which day the team sync moves to, which of two process changes to try), post a poll with limit 1 and close after (both Premium) and say up front that the result stands. Then honour it. A poll you overrule teaches the team to stop voting.

Before a team meeting, post an allow-options poll for agenda topics and let people add and vote. Cover the top items in vote order and drop the rest to the next meeting. It takes thirty seconds and stops the meeting being about whatever you thought mattered on the way in. The agenda topics template has the setup.

During a hard stretch, an anonymous workload check every week or two tells you who is close to the edge before it shows up as missed work. Ask the same question each time so the trend means something.