What’s your TLI number?

I’m going to invent a metric. Let’s call it TLI.

TLI stands for your Team Laugh Index. It is a measure of the number of times that you hear spontaneous genuine laughter during work hours per week.

Now why should you care about your TLI number?

It’s because genuine laughter is a good proxy for your team’s chemistry. You can’t really fake a genuine laugh. So if your team is laughing regularly, then they feel safe in their environment. They can let their guard down. They can be themselves. They can take risks and be creative.

This is important if you want your team to do great work. Great work requires team members to feel safe. Great work requires risk taking. Great work requires their whole selves on the job.

If your team isn’t laughing regularly, that’s a warning sign. Maybe they aren’t comfortable with each other. Or maybe the team is working too hard and is close to burnout. Or maybe people only see their work as a paycheck and won’t go the extra mile.

But, as with all good things, there is a sweet spot. A high TLI means that the team considers themselves “best friends”. But they might be refraining from delivering difficult feedback to each other. And that is a key problem. On the other hand, an extremely low TLI number is a problem. It means that you should start counting down the days before someone quits.

Make it a habit to measure your TLI number regularly. It is a good “smoke detector” for team problems.

What’s your TLI number?