Great Teams Have Issues Too
Key difference is they actually talk about them
One of the greatest misconseption is that great teams don’t have issues or problems. If you believe that, you might also think you’re absolute trash at leading teams — because your group has problems and issues.
“Why am I born under this unlucky star??” you scream, in silence.
The secret is that every team, almost always, has some sort of big or minor issues that should be talked about. If not, then you got a flatline-team, and I would actually say this is worse and potentially more difficult to fix.
A passionate group with issues and problems has greater potential to be steared in the right direction compared to a “ded” group. Because with a “ded” group, you need to first fire them up, only to then start working on issues and problems that will come up.
Remember the whole thing about psychological safety? You need dynamics to create trust. In other words: you want issues and problems, so they can be fixed.
The key difference between an OK/good team and great is that great teams communicate. They have issues or problems, but they actually talk about them — let alone deal with.
Talking about things that’s uncomfortable to talk about
Firstly, if your group doesn’t talk about things, shit will not magically get better. It will linger on the surface, only to one day explode.
It’s like a toxic relationship where both sides tries to kind of ignore the giant turd in the living room. Like, wtf, there’s a giant turd in your living room. Talk about it — let alone do something about it.
When you’re building a great team, you’re building relationships with the people within the group.
But, talking about things can be difficult. A lot of issues within in a team can be very nuanced or subjective. Some examples can be “The designers don’t talk to us developers”, “we only keep the lights on with our products” or “I dont feel a place in this group or goals”. It can also be “I dont like the jokes in the office”, “you eating apples at the desk is really annoying” or “No one wants to join when I try to do something social”.
For a person to raise these questions naturally within the group, out of the blue, would require a) a person that’s not sensitive on feelings, b) someone coragues c) true trust within the group.
If you’re a team that doesn’t talk about the real stuff, you might have a or b, but you don’t have c.
The positive thing is that it’s completely fixable.
You just need a system that provokes discussion.
Retrospective: The system to talk about things
There’s multiple ways to talk about things, but Retrospective (retro) is the way I’ve been taught at SpareBank 1 Utvikling and continued to carry on.
In a retro, you look back one month (usually) as discuss what was good and what can be better.
First I’ll go through how I recently held a retro for a team that’s on a journey to have full ownership of what they want to achieve.
Second I’ll go through how our team does retro. A team that I consider a great team.
Before we head on, here’s some questions I tend to get:
- “Should the retro be mandetory when I send the invitation?” Yes.
- “But, not everyone has time to come” That’s part of the problem, because the team always comes first. See question one.
- “How long should it be?” 1.5 hours is a good starting point. Everyone’s brain will be fried after this. Don’t recommend longer than that.
- “Should it be a recurring event?” Absolutely! You will not fix everything in one retro, and it’s important to constantly communicate. Most people say have it at least every 4 weeks, but I would be more aggressive and say every 3 weeks.
- “Should it be done digital or analog with irl post its?” I can write a whole article on why digital retro is better, but do what flows best at your company. If in doubt, do it digitally with for example Miro.
- “We don’t want another meeting” If the team has too many meetings, it should be said in a retro and be worked on later. Hopefully with focus, the team will have less meetings, while retaining the retro.
1: Holding a retro for the first time
Welcome, you’re doing a retro with a team for the first time. As you can see under, there’s essentially three steps in the retro. You don’t have to do the first one (we don’t anymore), but it’s a positive start (we loved it when we did it)
If you’re really nervous about holding this retro, or know there is a lot of big issues to talk about, consider having a person with experience hold the meeting and retro. That way you can focus on what people are saying and your own post it’s.
I’ve made a simple retro board in Miro you can copy and use. I’ll use that as an example under.
First task — Writing highlights last month:
- Task: Have everyone write positive things that has happened the last month. This can be everything from launching something, getting good data to everyone getting ice cream that one day. Make them try to but it ca where it should be on a timeline.
- Why: Both to warm up people, getting them used to miro and post its, but also reminding people that a lot of positive things happens.
- Timer: 3 min
At the end, you justt read them out loud for the group. Use max 2 min on this. If the team struggles to put much on the timeline, that’s something that can be written as a red post it.
Second task — Writing positive and negative posts:
- Task: Everyone takes green and red post its and finds a corner for themselves. You want to encourange clear and direct post its. Everyone should understand what is ment without it being read aloud.
- Why: This is where everyone can say what they feel. Remind the team that if things aren’t brought up in the retro, no one can complain about the issue afterwards (unless it’s a complicated HR issue).
- Timer: 3–8 min
- Rules: 1) No talking during this session, unless it’s your time to talk. This is one of your tasks to stop people from talking. 2) Write the notes outside the main area. Everyone will drag them in later.
After the timer is done, one after the other will go through both their positive and negative points — dragging them in to the main area. Let everyone talk, but don’t be afraid to nudge people a long if they take too much time.
If you’re 10+ people, consider doing max 3 positive and 3 negative post it’s per person. You can say this after they have written everything, so they don’t limit their mind from the start.
I would also recommend staying away from long discussions happening. If everyone jumps on one of the first post its, you might miss valuable insight from the person last in line. We discuss everything at the end. If you need a line to say, try something like “This is a great conversation, but let’s keep on going and see what everyone else has written”
Advice to you as a leader: For your own notes, please, don’t be cute with your post its. Don’t try sounding smart and all political. If you want everyone else to open up and be direct, essentially being vulnarable, you must lead by example.
“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid” — Epictetus
Third task — Choosing which actions to prioritise:
Once everyone has talked, hopefully everything has been kind of grouped together. Nonetheless you have probably seen something that has been mentioned multiple times.
If it’s something you can focus on, you write these as a black post it to be worked on. Because, you will not fix everything in this meeting.
If there’s too many black notes at the end, have everyone in the team talk about what they think is most important, and what is secondary. Prioritising, babyyyyy.
Advice to you as a leader: It’s vital that between this retro and the next retro (because you remembered to already book that next one, right?), the black post it’s gets worked on. If they don’t, the team will lose trust in the retro and eventually the team. “Why should I stick my neck out with things I see wrong, if nothing get’s done?”. You don’t have to do everything yourself, but you have to see that progress is being made — if it makes sense to do it. Not working on the issues after a retro is a classic mistake.
If you do all of this, you’ve done your first retro.
Easy peasy.
2: Setting up continues retros for a great team
Our team currently do a 15 min retro every Tuesday before the check in.
- Every week is so often that we can easily skip a week
- Since we have it so often, rarely is there any lingering issues for us
- Still to this day, things come up at retros that wouldn’t have come up otherwise
- Our team consist of 7 people
Our retro board is in our Commitments board in Miro.
Writing positive and negative posts:
We set a timer on 3 minutes where everyone writes their posts. Since we have it every week, we don’t need to hold more time than that.
Once timer is gone, everyone takes their turn to add their “What’s working” and “What can be improved” notes.
We’re not strict that there’s no talking, but all of us has had enough retros to know that everyone needs to be able to talk, and that we will talk about things later.
Choosing which actions to prioritise:
Once everyone is done, we choose what should be focused on/fixed until next week.
Usually I make the black post it, but everyone can do this.
We add a black action notes on top of the board so it’s easily visible, and then we remind ourself throughout the week that we wanted to focus/prioritise that particulary action.
For each week, we usually land between 2–5 black post its.
Nice, you made it to the end! 🎉
P.S. If you want to read more about teams, check out: The secrets sports teams can teach us about building teams.
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If you would like more stories like these, check out Failing Forward.
