Meetings & notes21 categories
Plan and facilitate a retrospective
Running a retro that should produce change rather than a list of grumbles.
Longretrospectivefacilitationteam
Design a retrospective for the situation below. 1. Choose a format suited to this specific situation and say why, rather than defaulting to went well / went badly. 2. Write the opening framing: two or three sentences that make it safe to be honest without sounding scripted. 3. Give the exact prompts I will put on screen, with timings for a session of the length I specify. 4. Include a step for surfacing things people are reluctant to say out loud, such as silent written input before discussion. 5. Describe how to get from a long list to at most three actions, each with an owner. 6. Give me two facilitation interventions: one for when the room blames a person, one for when it goes quiet. Situation, team size and session length:
Making it yours
- Paste your own material where the prompt asks for it. Everything above that line is instruction, not content.
- Delete any rule that does not apply to you. A shorter prompt that fits beats a thorough one that does not.
- If the answer comes back vague, add a line saying what you do not want. Constraints work better than encouragement.
Before and during. Agendas, pre-reads, prep for a 1:1 or an exec slot, and plans for retros and workshops.
Related prompts
Design an agenda that earns the hourBefore sending a calendar invite that would otherwise just have a title.Write a pre-read people will actually readWhen the meeting only works if everyone arrives with the same context.Prepare for a one-to-oneFifteen minutes before a 1:1 you would otherwise improvise.Prepare to present to executivesYou have ten minutes with senior people and a deck built for forty.Structure a brainstorm that produces somethingBefore a session where the loudest person would otherwise set the direction.Plan a half-day workshopFacilitating a longer session and needing a minute-by-minute plan.
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