The first working week after the summer often feels light. People are rested, the inbox is still manageable and meetings have a relaxed feel. Many teams use those weeks to plan their autumn, full of good intentions.
What research says about the holiday feeling
That light feeling is real, but short-lived. Dutch researchers followed 96 employees before, during and after a holiday. Health, mood, tension, energy and satisfaction clearly improved during the holiday. In the first week back at work, they had generally returned to pre-holiday levels (de Bloom et al., 2010).
A more recent meta-analysis of 13 studies with more than 1,400 participants confirms that picture. Holidays improve well-being, but after the first week back at work there is no meaningful difference from the period before. A longer holiday changes little (Speth, Wendsche & Wegge, 2023).
So anyone counting on the rested version of their team in September is counting on something that disappeared after a few days.
What remains when the energy has ebbed away
Once the extra energy is gone, a team falls back on what was always there: the undercurrent. The trust between colleagues. The agreements that are written down nowhere. The role someone once took on without it ever being assigned. The friction that gets resolved in the corridor and never in the meeting.
That undercurrent is there all year. In quiet periods it is less visible, because there is room to absorb things. In the autumn, with full diaries and year-end deadlines, that room disappears. Then whatever was already there comes to the surface.
Why trust is the foundation
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni describes a pyramid of five dysfunctions. The base is an absence of trust. Where people do not dare to be vulnerable, fear of conflict follows. Without open conflict there is no real commitment to decisions, people stop holding each other accountable and the team loses sight of its collective results (Lencioni, 2002).
A team that spends August mainly making plans and leaves the undercurrent alone is building on the top layers of that pyramid. That holds for a while. Until the pressure rises.
Use the first weeks differently
The weeks after the summer are well suited to a different kind of conversation. People still have some distance from the daily work and look at it with fresher eyes. Three questions to discuss with your team:
1. What did we arrange this past year without ever agreeing on it? Roles, tasks and decisions that emerged informally. Do they still work, and does everyone know about them?
2. Which conversation have we been putting off? Almost every team has one. The longer it waits, the heavier it becomes once the autumn pressure builds.
3. How do we notice when trust is under pressure? Think of silences in meetings, decisions that get reopened afterwards, or colleagues who mainly address each other by email.
The holiday feeling is fleeting. Use the breathing space of the first weeks to strengthen the foundation of your team, before the autumn puts that foundation to the test.
Want to know what is going on beneath the surface of your team? Read more about teams in motion, or read how to recognise a stuck team.
Sources
- de Bloom, J., Geurts, S. A. E., Taris, T. W., Sonnentag, S., de Weerth, C., & Kompier, M. A. J. (2010). Effects of vacation from work on health and well-being: Lots of fun, quickly gone. Work & Stress, 24(2), 196-216. doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2010.493385
- Speth, F., Wendsche, J., & Wegge, J. (2023). We continue to recover through vacation! Meta-analysis of vacation effects on well-being and its fade-out. European Psychologist, 28(4), 274-287. doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000518
- Lencioni, P. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.