How Leaders Create Flow Within Their Teams
Think of a time you felt wholly engaged in your work. When you had clear goals, were able to use your skillsets against exciting challenges, and you almost lost track of time as you completed your work with ease and comfort. That feeling of being in “the zone” is also known as flow. These moments full of clarity, focus, joy, high performance, and fulfillment are examples of Flow State.
The founder of Flow theory, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, determined that Flow is the state of mind that offers us meaning, fulfillment and engagement in our lives. Flow State can apply to athletes, leaders, and team members and can be linked to remarkably positive accomplishments in many professional fields. Mihaly’s TED talk on Flow and the secret to happiness has over 6 million views and connects Flow to happiness.
How is leadership related to Flow?
Everyday life is filled with opportunities to thrive and most of these opportunities appear as challenges. In fact, it’s how we respond to these challenges that defines us and allows us to flourish. This applies in work settings as well. As we face new opportunities, our perception of those, as challenges or occasions to shine, greatly impacts our outcomes. Leaders can help shape employee reactions to these opportunities and assist their team members as they navigate them.
The Flow Model below, represents a person’s skill level vs. degree of challenge for a task. Different levels of skill and intensities of challenge result in different experiences and feelings. When we feel anxious, it’s often due to low skill level paired with high challenge; we feel apprehension towards our ability to accomplish the task. When we feel boredom, it’s often when we have high skill levels and low challenges; we have more to give than the task requires. Both situations lead to burnout and low performance and are opportunities for leaders to clarify and support. The goal is to create the conditions for skill level and degree of challenge to match or slightly push/stretch skills by the challenge, resulting in Flow. This model highlights how important it is for us to be mindful of our challenges and skills, to accurately assess each of them, and to understand that our perceptions and appraisals of these variables can impact our performance.
Csikszentmihályi M (1990). FLOW: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
How can leaders assist team members in achieving Flow State?
Leaders can take a few key actions to help create the conditions for Flow for the individuals on their team and for their team as a whole. Leaders begin by Taking inventory of each team members’ placement on the Flow model and then partner with each person to modify and adjust the skill level and challenge to create the conditions for the Flow State. For example, if a team member is consistently anxious, leaders can provide opportunities to increase specific skillsets to meet the challenges of the role. Conversely, if you or a team member who is bored, you can increase specific challenges within the role to provide an enriched experience. Leaders can also empower their team members to be in Flow more often by helping them see challenging situations as opportunities to excel.
These strategic steps for leaders can assist team members in increasing awareness of skill levels and degrees of challenges, shifting where needed, and creating Flow State within their teams and organizations.
1. Become curious and mindful of you and your team members’ positions on the Flow model. There is no judgment, no right answer. Are you and/or your team members anxious because of actual or perceived low skill levels for the current challenge? Are you and/or your team members bored because actual or perceived skill level is above what is needed for the challenge? Are you and/or your team members in Flow and thriving with balanced skill levels and challenges?
Leaders can use their one-on-one conversations to better understand and define team members’ current position on the Flow model. You can start your one-on-one sessions by introducing the Flow Model. Bring a printout or draw the basic model on a whiteboard. Describe the model and help your team members understand the concept of Flow and the different pairings of skill level and degree of challenge. Then ask them to describe where they are on the model by task and overall in a given week. Of course, this conversation will be nuanced based on the task, week, month, or year.
If the leader and the team member have differing opinions on where a team member lands on the model, this is an opportunity for open communication, empathy and building trust.
The manager could also leverage a time use audit with the team member to dig deeper into the number of hours they spend on each task per week and determine how investing more or less time in specific tasks would impact their Flow.
2. Once there is clarity on where each person is currently on the Flow model, leaders can create tailored conditions to achieve Flow State using the following guidelines:
Create clear goals that specifically address movement of each team member from their current placement to their ideal placement on the Flow model.
These goals should align the correct level of challenge with each person's skill level. This might mean increasing skill levels, increasing or decreasing challenges, or modifying both the skill level and the degree of challenge.
Provide transparent and immediate feedback to assist the person in adjusting and expanding their performance.
How can leaders support team members who are anxious, bored or in Flow?
Here are a few examples of actions and goals to move each team member from their current state into Flow State:
If team member is currently anxious and stressed:
Clarify your intent – Create a supportive environment and alleviate their concerns; this is not a punitive process. You are there to co-create a plan that will help them build their skills to meet the challenges.
Demonstrate a growth mindset – Share with them the benefits of skill development outside the current challenges, within their role, and beyond. Explore ways to grow the needed skills including training, job shadowing, mentoring, and coaching.
Ask coaching questions – Use questions to create accurate goals and clarify ideal skill levels. What are the key reasons for anxiety? What skillset could they build that would reduce this anxiety and stress? What resources are needed for this? Are there ways to reduce the challenge to allow room for growth? How can the leader support this growth?
If team member is currently bored and checking out:
Determine where the challenge is falling short – Have they done the task too many times and it is no longer interesting? Have they mastered the process and don’t want to do it any longer? Are they missing the connection between this task and the larger organizational picture?
Discuss options to expand the challenge – Identify what can be expanded now and what can be in the future. Share new opportunities to enlarge their responsibilities, touch points or authorities within a current challenge. Could they train others on this task?
Generate options for new challenges – Establish what they could take on that they are not currently doing. Invent avenues to challenge them with new tasks. Create ways to use the full capacity of their skills.
If team member currently reaches Flow most days:
Stay connected – Flow State shifts, skills grow, and challenges can increase and decrease. Intentionally check-in often with those in Flow to determine if minor shifts need to be made to stay in the Flow channel.
Continue to grow skills and challenges – Don’t allow them to stagnate. Continually offer ways to grow skills and develop while broadening and deepening challenges.
Offer opportunities to mentor others – Flow can best be learned by seeing and experiencing it. Allow those in Flow to mentor and teach others. Their engagement and enthusiasm will be contagious.
Understanding the principles of Flow can help both leaders and team members enjoy work more and perform at higher levels. Building the conditions for Flow State will help you intentionally focus on the areas of work and life that bring you energy and fulfillment. If you’re a leader, building Flow conditions for each of your team members will help you, the team and the overall organization achieve greater outcomes and results with full engagement and interest.
** This article is the twelfth in a series of twelve addressing common leadership questions. These questions and challenges touch leaders at all levels and transcend industries. The article series provides valuable information and action steps for leaders to take their skills and teams to the next level.
Author’s Note: Special thanks to Phil Del Vecchio for sharing his expertise on Flow State and coaching leaders and organizations to grow and develop, as well as his generous contribution in co-authoring this article.