Guide for team leaders
How to set up your Energy Map so the team actually uses it. Five minutes, or jump straight to your bit.
Create (more) teams
A team here is not your company or your department: it is the people you see every day. Five, eight, ten of you. Once the map has forty dots, it stops saying anything about anyone.
- Open Settings → Teams and tap "Create a team".
- Name it the way you actually call it ("Product", "Morning shift"), not the way the org chart does.
- Done: you are its leader and you have an invite code.
Nobody makes you choose. If you are in two teams, every day you decide which ones you share your dot with — or none of them. Your check-in is yours before it is anyone else's.
Invite your people
Whoever opens your invite is in within seconds: nothing to install, no account to create, no passwords. They type their name and they are on the map.
- In Settings → Teams, find your team and tap "Manage".
- Copy the invite link, or show the QR if you are all in the same room.
- Drop it where you already talk: the Slack, Teams or WhatsApp group. It works far better than an email.
Send the link right before the daily and do the first check-in out loud yourself. People copy what they see, not what they read.
Generate a new one from "Manage". The old one stops working instantly (and so do any QRs printed with it). Anyone already in stays in.
Leave your email (this one matters)
Clear your browser data, change phones or move to the laptop, and the team is still there but you can no longer get in — not to your history, not even to your own team. Leaving your email takes twenty seconds and it is the only thing that makes you you on any device.
No passwords: you leave your email, a six-digit code arrives, and that gets you in from anywhere.
- Open Settings → Email.
- Leave yours and tap "Leave my email".
- Open the message and confirm. That's it: your history follows you to any device.
- The Monday report: a two-minute email with how your teams' week went.
- Being able to recover your account. With no email there is no way to prove you were you.
Hook it onto the daily
This is the difference between a team that checks in for three days and one that does it for three months. It is not the app: it is having a moment. Teams with a fixed moment take part twice as much.
- At the start of the daily, two or three minutes for everyone to fill theirs in. Put music on if you like.
- Look at the map together: one glance tells you how you are all arriving today.
- Following the order the dots appear in, each person spends twenty seconds on their dot and their focus for the day.
Works anyway: the team makes a pact — "everyone before 10" — and you set it in "Manage" → Ritual. The app takes care of the reminder, so you don't have to be the nag.
It is not about justifying your day. It is about starting it knowing how we are arriving.
Read the map without turning into a watchdog
The map doesn't tell you who works hardest. It tells you what energy each person is arriving with today, so you can decide how to come closer: when to give space and when to lend a hand.
Up is high energy, down is running on fumes. Right is pleasant, left less so. A dot down on the left is not a bad person: it is a bad Tuesday.
Below the map, whoever hasn't been by today. No counters, no telling-off: it is there so you see the whole team, not only the people who showed up.
Streaks, one-day drops, long silences or someone bouncing back. Every signal comes with what to do — a coffee, an earlier 1:1, reconnect, recognise — and a message ready to copy.
Participation, trend, where the focuses are pointing and who needs a gesture this week. Two minutes, in your inbox.
Never use the map in a performance review, and never bring it out in public to single anyone out. The moment someone smells that this is being scored, the map fills up with happy faces and stops being any use to anyone. If you spot something, ask in private and without an agenda.
Your coach, and your people’s
Happyforce gives you a happiness coach. It is not a chat: it reads what each person puts in their check-in and hands it back in the same order we use with you as a leader.
Today against your own average, a sentence that picks up what you wrote, and your month as a figure and a trend.
What your month says in three lines (what weighs, what holds you up, what repeats) and the evidence with its sample: “across your 3 Fridays…”.
One small thing for today, and three questions for your state to take the conversation to your AI if you want to go deeper.
When you open their card, only you as the leader see “For you, as the leader”: what the coach sees with its numbers, the right gesture with a message ready to copy, and how to carry the conversation given how that person has been doing these weeks. If they asked for space, the coach will tell you not to carry it.
The report is the same coach: it closes the cycle with what it proposed last week, reads the team’s week with the Happyforce method and leaves you one or two things to do.
Because you already said. The coach reads, it does not interrogate; it names what is there and does not try to cheer you up; it cites only what you wrote or marked; and it never suggests opening a conversation with someone else’s data: that turns the check-in into surveillance and kills it.
Connect your AI
You can give your assistant — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot — read access to your teams' data, with the Happyforce methodology behind it. Then you just talk to it:
- "How is my team doing this week?"
- "Prep my 1:1 with Ana: what has her month been like and where do I start?"
- "Draft the retro script with what has happened these last two weeks."
You don't need to be technical. In Settings you create a token and the app hands you the exact URL or command for your assistant, ready to paste. One minute.
- Open Settings → Connect your AI and create a token (give it a name: "Claude on my Mac").
- Tell the app where you are connecting it. It gives you the exact text for that place.
- Paste it where it says and you're done. If you ever want to cut access off, revoke the token right there.
The same as you see in the app: your check-ins and the data of the teams you lead. Not one team more. Stop leading one and your AI stops seeing it.
It is shown once and it opens your teams' data. Don't paste it into a group chat or a shared doc. If in doubt, revoke it and create another: it costs nothing.
Loose ends
Does my boss see what I put?
They see your dot in the teams you share with, same as the rest of the team — and you decide every day whether you share at all. What you write in the context and your focuses is shared too. What never leaves your "Me" view is your 30-day battery.
Is this anonymous?
No, and that is on purpose. Classic Happyforce is, because it measures big organisations. Here what you want is to see how the people working side by side are doing, and that doesn't work with nameless dots. What you do choose, every day, is which teams you share with.
Can I be in several teams?
Yes, no limit. When you check in you choose which ones you share it with that day: all of them, one, or none.
What if someone doesn't want to share?
That is their right and nothing happens: they show up on the bench, no reproach. If it is a one-day thing, it is a bad day. If it lasts weeks, pushing won't fix it — ask in private what is putting them off.
Do I lose my history if I leave a team?
No. Your check-ins are yours and they stay with you. Leaving just means you stop sharing.
What happens if I stop being the leader?
You stay in the team as one more person: your dot is still on the map, but you lose the aggregate data, the Monday report and AI access. A team can't be left with no leader at all: name someone else first.
What does it cost?
Nothing. Energy Map is free: it is how we let you see the way we work at Happyforce.
We have Claude Team (or Enterprise). Does it work?
Yes, and with no tokens. An Owner adds a custom connector for the whole organization using the URL shown in Settings → Connect your AI. Then each person clicks "Connect" in Claude, signs in with their Energy Map email and sees only their own data: their check-ins and the teams they lead.
Still wondering about something?
Write to us and we'll give you a hand. We are people, we answer.
Talk to Happyforce