If You Can Only Have One Meeting, Have This One
The Secret Non-Engineering Superpowers of Technical Teams Part 2: Retrospectives
Photo by @kerwinelias on Unsplash
If there’s one practice I wish every team would start, it’s the retrospective. While made famous by Agile, there’s nothing technical about the retrospective. All you do in a retrospective is look at a specific period of time and ask your team to reflect on it; what went well, what didn’t work, and what could work better.
Despite -- or maybe because of -- it’s simplicity, the retrospective holds power. This may have been the most popular meeting I held with the education team when I was COO of Quill, and when a visiting school staff member observed he eagerly told me how he planned to start holding them with his team. And part of the beauty of the retrospective is that you, as a leader, have to do very little -- just show up and be genuinely open to feedback.
Setting the Tone
Your retrospective will only work if you and your team have the right mindset. First, the goal of the meeting is continuous improvement. That means it’s not about blame, and it’s not about venting -- complaints should be constructive.
Second, your team needs to feel safe sharing. So it helps to establish norms around not criticizing others’ ideas, and not punishing anyone for information they share. I like Agile's “prime directive” as an instruction to give at the beginning:
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.”
I also recommend a short exercise called safety check. This quick, anonymous check-in asks how safe people feel sharing their opinions with the group. Anonymity is key here, as it lets people share without feeling like they have to give you the “correct” answer.
It can be tempting to assume that everyone feels safe, especially when you, as the leader, do. But if you do that, you miss out on two important opportunities. First, there’s the opportunity to find out more if the psychological safety level is low, letting you intervene before it turns into a crisis. Second, even if the level is high, iit signals to your team that you’re invested in their experience.
Running A Successful Retrospective
If you’ve created a safe environment for sharing and did a safety check, you’re already well on your way to success. Here are some more key pieces:
Make it different. Try formatting the retrospective more like an interactive brainstorming session. If you’re in person, bring pens and post-it notes so that everyone can write their ideas down and then take turns sharing. If you’re remote, you can use a tool like Miro to simulate this process. Also, vary the questions you ask at your retrospectives. Asking the same 3 questions can get old, and you can find tons of ideas at Fun Retrospectives, or even just by googling for retrospective ideas.
Give everyone time to think and write. Building in time for writing down answers at the beginning of the meeting has several benefits. First, it helps ensure that the quieter members of your team will participate. Second, it allows for deeper reflection instead of blurting out the first ideas that come to mind. And third, this in itself will likely make the meeting feel different and more participatory than most meetings, which will help you get and maintain people’s attention.
Give everyone time to share, but save your feedback for last. By having everyone write down their ideas, you’re already setting an expectation that everyone will share. You can follow through on this by asking that each person take turns putting their post-its (or virtual post-its) in the applicable categories and sharing their thinking. Here your goal should again be that each person has a turn to share and that loud voices don’t dominate quieter ones. So you may want to ask a quieter team member to share first. If you need to, you can also set time limits (e.g. spend five minutes per person) to make sure the meeting is balanced. In addition to loud voices, also watch out for “loud” positions. You and anyone else in leadership roles should share last so that you don’t bias the team. You can also consider structuring so that more junior team members share first.
Listen openly. Especially for the first retrospective, people will be watching you to see how you are reacting to their feedback. Your posture and facial expressions communicate a lot even when you aren’t speaking, so try to stay open and genuinely curious. To do this, you can remind yourself that the meeting is about improvement and to take suggestions in the constructive spirit in which they are offered. Use the meeting to practice your active listening skills. If something is upsetting or you disagree, and even after calming down and reflecting it’s still upsetting, you can discuss in a respectful way after the meeting. But because you are the leader, you are setting the tone for the meeting. If you’re being defensive, either just in your listening style or by explaining why someone is “wrong,” the message you communicate is that the retrospective isn’t really about improvement after all. So, focus on the truth in people’s suggestions, even if it’s hard. Remember that by doing this, you are making things better and getting the feedback you need.
You don’t need to agree with everything, and it’s fine to say you’re going to think about suggestions instead of immediately agreeing to implement them. Even in the best circumstances, resources will likely prevent you from being able to act on every suggestion. What’s important here is that people feel heard when sharing, and that they feel safe giving you feedback.
Ending the Retrospective
I like ending retrospectives with a summary of themes and any next steps identified. Asking people in the room to summarize is nice since it helps keep the discussion going, but if you’re short on time you can provide a quick summary yourself. Also, make sure you take a photo or screenshot of the post-its.
After the retrospective, make sure you follow-up with your team. Again, you don’t need to act on every suggestion. But if you said you’d take action, do so. If you said you’d consider or escalate an issue, make sure you do and keep people informed. This shows that you take your team and their feedback seriously, making sure the next retrospective will be a success.
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If you try using retrospectives, please let me know how it goes. If you’re interested in guidance on implementing these or other processes (or general coaching), you can schedule a free session with me here.