3 Tips to Run Effective Retrospective Meetings Remotely
How to facilitate a successful virtual retrospective meeting when your participants are all working from home
In the world of Agile and iterative work cultures, it is a common best practice to have a retrospective meeting frequently with teams so you can learn about what is working well and what needs improvement. In an ideal retrospective meeting, the team is all together in one room, laptops and mobile devices are turned off and people are actively participating in discussions regarding how the overall team is functioning together. There’s usually someone, a Scrum Master or Program Manager, facilitating the meeting. There are sometimes interesting and interactive activities like drawing pictures or ice breaker games to help the team bond and feel more comfortable sharing feedback with one another.
In a world where many, if not all, of your meeting participants are working from home or from another remote location, how do you create the same sense of togetherness and bonding in your retrospective meetings? Below are 3 tips to help you conduct effective retrospective meetings when all of your participants are dialed in remotely.
1. Encourage positive ‘virtual body language’
As someone who regularly interfaces with team members globally, I am constantly having to rely on video conferencing technology to make sure our remote team members can participate in meetings. Luckily, I work at RingCentral and we already make great collaboration products (Phone, Message & Video) that allow for greater communication between teams. But even the best technology and products can’t help if people don’t use the tools in a way where they are “showing up” as engaged participants during a meeting. This is especially important during a retrospective meeting where the whole point is to engage with other team members both through listening and talking. I like to think of this awareness of how we “show up” on video as virtual body language.
One example of virtual body language when people join a video conference, but have their video turned off. In this case, the message you are sending to others is that you are not really paying attention to the meeting, but instead “dialing it in” so-to-speak. When your video is turned off, it can send a message to others that you are merely attending to get credit for attendance, but not for any other reason. To show others you are engaged and present at the meeting, turn on your video so others can see your bright, shiny face and facial expressions.
Another example of virtual body language is when someone’s video is turned on, but that person is not actually looking at their screen or camera. Whether they realize it or not, it is obvious to others when someone is working during the meeting and not engaged in the conversation. If someone keeps glancing down at their phone or talking to the other people around them with their mute button on, it does not show that person is engaged.
If you are conducting a retrospective meeting, as the facilitator, it is important to discourage this type of behavior on video. Reminding people to turn off their mobile devices, close their browser windows, and turn on their video cameras is a great way to help encourage an engaging and interactive atmosphere for your virtual retrospective meeting.
2. Create an inviting atmosphere
Great! Now that you have everybody paying attention to everybody else in the meeting, the next important part of facilitating a retrospective meeting on a video conference is to make sure that each person feels comfortable speaking. Make sure you are calling on each person to speak during the meeting. This will ensure that everybody has a voice during the meeting.
Another way to create an inviting atmosphere during your virtual video retrospective meeting is to make sure that you leave space for people to answer and respond to one another. Try not to rush through one topic after another. Make sure that you are leaving enough room for people to insert themselves into the conversation. Also, make sure that you are not talking too much as the facilitator of the meeting. It is tempting to want to insert your own opinion and your own experiences into a retrospective. But it is important to try to remain as neutral as possible, just like you would if the meeting were happening in an actual conference room.
I like to think of myself more as a talk show host when I am facilitating a retrospective. Keep things moving along, keep things lively, and be aware of the tone of the conversation. Always remember, when you’re in a video conference people can start talking over one another more easily due to audio delays that tend to happen over the Internet. Make sure to allow for delays and create audio space. It is better if you, as the facilitator, do as little talking is possible in order to help create this space.
3. Show feedback visually
The third important key to running an effective retrospective meeting over a video conference is to make sure that you are visualizing the conversation as much as possible. There are different ways you can visualize the feedback you are receiving from the different team members.
You can share a slide deck or document in your virtual meeting and manually type in the feedback you are receiving during the meeting. This helps people see the feedback in real-time, visually, just like you would on a whiteboard. Sharing a live document with three columns labeled, “What is working”, “What needs improvement”, and “Possible solutions” is one method I’ve used in the past that has worked really well.
Another way you can collect feedback visually, is to simply create and send a Google survey form ahead of the meeting. Then, during the meeting you simply review the comments and share it with the rest of the participants in the meeting. The way I’ve done this is to read aloud each comment, one at a time, and then ask the person who made the comment to speak to it during the meeting so that the rest of the group can hear the participant express their thoughts. That way, you’re not the only one talking during the meeting. It also gives the person a chance to elaborate on their ideas in front of the entire group and most importantly, be heard.
One really fun way I like to visualize feedback is to have each person draw a picture using crayons or colored pencils about how they actually felt during a sprint or project. In a virtual setting, you can just have everybody scan or take a photo of their pictures ahead of time. Then you can put that into a slideshow to share and review during the meeting. It’s a really creative way to get everybody talking and lighten up the mood of the meeting. This also acts as a bit of an icebreaker and can be done at the beginning of the retrospective.
Now, one drawback to some to these solutions is that it’s hard to see people’s faces and create that human connection with people merely staring at a shared screen of words or images. So I would recommend perhaps at the end of the meeting to make sure that you aren’t sharing your screen. That way, you can go back to viewing everybody’s faces and people can actually talk to one another to discuss any additional feedback. Plus, it is always nice to end a retrospective meeting with everyone seeing each other’s faces.
Don’t let distance or circumstance prevent you from running effective retrospective meetings with your teams. Retrospectives are a great way of bringing the team together, especially when the team cannot meet together physically in the same office. I hope some of these tips work for you when you are running your next virtual retrospective meeting.
