Finding respect in retrospective
What’s puzzling you?
Maybe it's that time of year and my brain can only do puzzles and nothing else. (Is Minute Cryptic better than Wordle? Discuss) But I was so happy to find the word 'respect' inside 'retrospective' today!! Respect has been my word of the year and I feel there are few things more respectful than making time to do a retrospective with colleagues.
I have been super lucky to find a brilliant assistant in the form of Reed Amos. It's only been 2 months of working together and already we have achieved a lot. They have been like a train driver picking me up every Tuesday morning from the rural idyll of family life and getting me into the rhythm of a short working week - short in length and in day - between school drop off and pick up I need to put on the hats of 'event planner', 'consultant', 'sales', 'marketing', 'thinker', 'doer'. Reed keeps me on track and helps me switch hats - utilising time effectively.
Today we got off the train and sat by the side of the track to look back on how far we've come.
If you're not familiar with a retrospective - it's a team ceremony to look back on the last week, or other significant slice of time, and see how things went - well, badly, puzzlingly - usually with a view to improve working practice.
It's really important to start by establishing psychological safety - eg. by reading out the 'prime directive':
"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."
--Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review.
Then there's various formats that can be used - Miro has a whole template library to choose from. We went with my own idea of a timeline to anchor us and then storytelling. The timeline was a copy-paste screenshot of our emails flipped sideways showing the bursts of activity - not perfect - just a set of hooks from which to hang our significant events - sticky noted down as we mutually told the story of the last two months.
A timeline can work well as a retro format - but don’t feel you have to be linear, work-life isn’t!
As we told the story and remembered we listened to each other’s highs and lows. We also thought about significant moments where we saw our communication working well. We felt really proud of what we had achieved. And ended chatting about Christmas - what we're looking forward to. Food, family and most of all - rest!
If you’re a retrospective aficionado, what is your retro pattern? Do you adapt that pattern at this time of year? At Thoughtworks, I became a retrospective aficionado together with colleagues we were hot on psychological safety, and it was important to us to be self-reflective as a team and drill in to what we could do better. I appreciate that training in sharpness but I also like to adapt to be more conscious of relating well - especially at this time of year. It’s ok to just retrospect in appreciation and kindness. It recognises the drain of the season - but it’s good at any time when you sense more respect between colleagues would help. And if you need an independent facilitator - just ask.
How ever you are ending your year of work, I hope you have moments to respect each other and look back with pride and understanding.
With great respect for who you are, where you are and where you’ve been, I wish you a Merry Rest-mas, And a Fresh New Year! :)
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Becky is a Facilitator & Founder of Sandkind, offering leaders support relating with their team including facilitating and consulting over Winter, and Team with Nature days in Summer - a chance to reconnect with your team, with the help of nature - have a look: https://sandkind.uk