Do you know how healthy is your team?

Nov 20

As we approach year end, it’s a perfect time to assess the health of your team.

A team health check looks beyond what the team delivers—it focuses on how the team is working together. When a team truly works, it’s more than just tasks getting done. It’s the quiet hum of connection, the shared feeling of “we’ve got this together”, and the ability to face change with confidence.

But like any living system, a team needs regular care. A teaming health check is that moment of pause, a chance to step back, look at how you’re working together, and make adjustments so the team continues to grow strong and healthy, proactively strengthen how the team operates.

So, here’s a question we ask at Plumtree:

“Do you regularly check how healthy your team is?”

What We Often See

Teams often settle into patterns. They adapt around tensions instead of addressing them, make assumptions instead of agreements, and accept workarounds as normal. Over time, these habits become invisible but they erode performance and trust.

Teams that focus only on what they deliver, and not how they work together, start to notice the symptoms:

Turnover increases as frustration and misalignment build.
Transparency fades when difficult topics are avoided.
Decision-making slows as clarity and ownership weaken.
Engagement drops as people stop feeling part of something shared.

Teaming issues that remained submerged, can suddenly surface when a team is faced with an unexpected event. Instead of tackling the new challenge as a connected group, the team struggles, hampering project progress.

A Different Way

At Plumtree, we believe that these symptoms can be avoided by embedding a regular rhythm of checking how the team is doing.

Regular team health checks help teams:

Surface what is going well. Which teaming agreements are actively being used with positive impact.
Identify where the team is struggling. Which aspects of teaming have recently led to issues or tensions and need clarification.
Make adjustments. Discuss the root cause of unresolved tensions and adapt teaming agreements to re-energize the team.

What Teaming Health Check Looks Like

There isn’t a single holy grail approach to this but in our experience, what works best is combining a simple, standard questionnaire with a facilitated team discussion. Together, this gives you both data and dialogue. A simple structure might include:

Check in on purpose and alignment. Are team members clear on what they are trying to achieve together? Does work clearly link to purpose?
Review how the team is collaborating. What is the level of trust in the team. Do team members feel safe to speak up?
Inspect processes and tools. Are meetings productive? Is workflow clear with smooth hand-offs? Do tools help us or slow us down?
Measure energy and morale. Do people feel valued? Is there energy or fatigue? Do we celebrate wins and learn from setbacks?
Make a plan and commit to action. Identify the most urgent pain points, discuss them in the team and commit to simple experiments to make things better.

Running a consistent health check twice a year helps your team see and feel progress while staying aligned. Check out our Team Health Check Guide. It walks you through how to run one and includes a simple, ready-to-use survey.

What To Watch Out For

Over-analysis. Not every small comment needs an action plan.
Ignoring emotions. Deliverables and KPIs are important but morale, trust and collaboration matter just as much.
Treating it as a blaming session. A health check must feel safe. It’s about improving not finger-pointing.
Doing it once and forgetting. Teaming health checks are not a ‘one-and-done’. It is a steady rhythm of care.

The Impact

Regular teaming health checks is a powerful tool to care for your team with shared ownership. It is a moment to pause and reflect and then act. It allows your team to grow while creating the conditions for trust, speed and resilience. It gives your team the chance to flourish, not just function.

What About You?