I feel the urge to commend your approach to manage your team.
When I'm having off-weeks, I'm painfully aware of them. It causes me a lot of personal stress and anxiety. My manager is like you and never calls me out of it during our standups. He may ping me and ask how I'm doing, etc. I'm glad he doesn't call me out on it because that would just amplify my anxiety and probably make things worse.
You're right, after a week, maybe two, I get right back on the horse and manage to catch up.
People wanna feel safe... And go figure, when they do their output usually goes from being minimal effort to above and beyond. Also feeling safe has sooooo many more institutional benefits etc. Errors are identified + corrected quicker, people don't play politics near as much, things just get "easier"... hard to explain.
But yea - definitely give that guy some positive feedback in your 1:1's. That was one thing that helped me really design a system that people wanted to work within, solid feedback when things work/didn't work =)
When I'm having off-weeks, I'm painfully aware of them. It causes me a lot of personal stress and anxiety. My manager is like you and never calls me out of it during our standups. He may ping me and ask how I'm doing, etc. I'm glad he doesn't call me out on it because that would just amplify my anxiety and probably make things worse.
You're right, after a week, maybe two, I get right back on the horse and manage to catch up.