Team Health Check

Purpose

The Team Health Check gives teams a structured way to assess their own health across dimensions that matter — such as psychological safety, delivery speed, fun, learning, and mission clarity. By voting with traffic-light cards (green/amber/red), the team surfaces patterns and prioritises improvement areas.

At a glance

How to run

1. Introduce the dimensions (5 min): Present 8–12 health dimensions (e.g., Teamwork, Learning, Speed, Fun, Support, Mission, Codebase Health, Psychological Safety). Use Spotify’s Squad Health Check or customise to your context.
2. Voting round (15 min): For each dimension, read a description of what "awesome" and "terrible" look like. Each person simultaneously votes green (awesome), amber (some issues), or red (terrible). Record the results.
3. Discussion round (25 min): For the 2–3 dimensions with the most red/amber votes, facilitate a discussion: What specifically is not working? What would improvement look like? What is one experiment we can try?
4. Action items (10 min): Agree on 1–3 concrete actions with owners and a review date.
5. Close (5 min): Ask: "If we run this again in 6 weeks, where do we most want to see improvement?"

Materials needed

• Health dimension cards or slides
• Traffic-light voting cards (red/amber/green) or a digital polling tool
• Results tracking sheet (to compare over time)
• Flipchart for actions
• Timer

Pitfalls & common mistakes

• Too many dimensions: 8–12 is the sweet spot. More creates fatigue.
• No follow-up: Running the check without acting on results erodes trust. Track actions.
• Groupthink in voting: Simultaneous reveal (not sequential) prevents anchoring.
• One-time exercise: The real power is in tracking trends over multiple check-ins.

Inclusion & accessibility

• Use anonymous digital voting if people fear social pressure.
• Allow written comments alongside colour votes for richer data.
• Ensure the dimensions reflect what all team members care about, not just leadership.
• Run the check at a time that works for all time zones in distributed teams.

Variations

• Spotify model: Use Spotify’s original Squad Health Check with their predefined dimensions and awesome/terrible descriptions.
• Visual trend chart: Track results over time on a wall chart to celebrate improvements and spot regressions.
• Cross-team comparison: Multiple teams run the check simultaneously and compare patterns.

When NOT to use this

• When the team is brand new (less than 3 weeks together) and does not yet have enough shared experience.
• When leadership uses the results punitively rather than supportively.
• When there is no time allocated to act on the findings.

Source & further reading

• Henrik Kniberg, "Squad Health Check model" (Spotify Labs blog, 2014)
• Spotify Engineering Culture (videos and articles)
• Jurgen Appelo, *Managing for Happiness* (Wiley, 2016)