Are your agile team’s retrospectives feeling more like complaining sessions than productive meetings? 

It’s time to shake things up and try a structured dialogue that focuses on action and progress. 

By asking a series of targeted questions in a specific order, you can shift the conversation toward small actionable steps.  And move your team towards a desired future state.

Ask these series of questions in this particular order:

1️⃣ What is the current state?

Discuss what has been challenging. This lets the team vent and allows them to release whatever frustrations they might have. Your team might feel heard afterwards.

But, also discuss what has been working well right after. It’s important to acknowledge what is also good. Especially when the team hasn’t taken the time to celebrate those – no matter how small.

2️⃣ What do you hope the future will be like?

If they can get out of this rut or overcome the challenges, can they imagine what that future is going to be like? This re-focuses the team to define what a desired state or outcome could look like. If they can dream about this – what is it?

3️⃣ What is your commitment to taking the small steps from the current state towards that future state?

Now shift the conversation for them to commit to small steps to try and move towards that desired state. Even investing 5% of their time to will be worthwhile and might go a long way.

4️⃣ What support would you need from management or external stakeholders?

It’s quite easy to blame and whinge about management or leadership or the “other”. But how can you turn that into a clear request for support? Your manager or stakeholders might even appreciate the feedback. Take the outcome of this to engage with your manager or stakeholder.

Say goodbye to whinging and hello to progress with this simple and effective approach. 

Check out the image below for a helpful visual metaphor to get you started.