[teampractices] Retrospectives: Getting deep and personal

Wed Oct 5 09:05:40 UTC 2016

Thanks Kevin for the reminder!

So here is a short description of the "Adjectives Game":

First, note of warning, this game is probably getting deeper and more
personal than most team are comfortable with, use with caution.

1) ask the participants to write a list of 10 adjectives that describe
themselves, both positive and negative
2) each participant chooses one adjective in that list, writes it on a
piece of paper and offers it to someone who shares this trait with him
/ her
3) discussion / question on the adjective you received
4) go to 2) and repeat as long as necessary

Notes:

* The idea is that as you only offer adjectives from your list, it
defuses the hostility that can come from harsh critiques. If I give
you "disorganised plutocrat", you can't feel too much offended as you
know I think I share this trait with you.
* Even in teams that are fairly opened to non standard exercises, this
can be hard to actually execute. We are not used to do direct
critiques in a work context.
* We work together and we will continue to work together. This means
that we need to preserve a work relationship, which makes it harder to
do personal critiques. This game can turn into a "I'll only say nice
things to make sure I don't offend anyone" (which might also be OK).
* This game has a strong "AA meeting" feel to it.
* All that being said, with the right team at the right moment it is
an amazing way to address deep issues and make the team stronger.

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 10:54 PM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Thank you indeed, Guillaume. I have added my interpretations of these to the
> Planning Offsites page[1]. It's great to have more tools available! I look
> forward to hearing about the "adjective game".
>
> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Team_Practices_Group/Planning_offsites
>
>
> Kevin Smith
> Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 12:50 PM, Arthur Richards <arichards at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> These are awesome, Guillaume. Great suggestions - thank you for sharing!
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 3:16 AM Guillaume Lederrey
>> <glederrey at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> A few additional thoughts (read brain dump, not much structure here):
>>>
>>> If we want to talk more about emotions, feelings and all those fuzzy
>>> things (which I think we should, it isn't because it is fuzzy that it
>>> isn't important!), we usually need to bring different kind of tools to
>>> the table. Language tends to steer us into analytical thinking.
>>> Language requires us to build structured thoughts and tend to not help
>>> all that much to get us started into a deeper discussion of
>>> interpersonal issues, or discussion about emotions. I know the "left
>>> brain / right brain" is a gross over simplification of how our brain
>>> work, but it is a useful metaphor here. Language activate our
>>> metaphorical analytical left brain more than our metaphorical
>>> emotional right brain.
>>>
>>> So we need tools to activate our right brain. I have a bunch of them,
>>> but none is adapted to a distributed setting. Or at least not without
>>> quite a bit of modification. Still a few idea, someone might know how
>>> to adapt them:
>>>
>>> * photolanguage [1][2]: A classic that seems to be more documented in
>>> French than English. By bringing pictures into the game, we activate a
>>> different kind of thinking. In short, the instruction could be "In all
>>> the pictures that are "here", find a picture that expresses something
>>> that your team did well this past week". Discussion starts from the
>>> pictures.
>>> * positioning games: I can't find a link for that one, but the general
>>> idea is: "please move along the wall here according to how you found
>>> the last feature development went, if you think it was really crap,
>>> move to the far left, if it was brilliant, move to the far right, if
>>> it was just ok, move in the middle...". Having people physically move
>>> around tend again to activate different ways of thinking. I have no
>>> idea how to adapt this to a distributed / online retro...
>>> * I have an unnamed variation of the rocket retrospective: find one
>>> thing that went well, one thing that went bad. Write 2 words (max) on
>>> 2 pieces of paper (one piece with what went well, one with what went
>>> wrong). Pass one piece to your left neighbour, the other to your
>>> right. The person receiving the piece of paper must imagine what that
>>> thing was based on the 2 words. While not as radical as the 2 other
>>> examples, this tend to stimulate imagination more. Variants can be
>>> that the person receiving the paper must present a solution /
>>> improvement to the problematic thing, or a way to generalize what went
>>> well. We can add constraint such as "the solution must be implemented
>>> by the person proposing it", ... The more constraints, the more we
>>> need to think outside of the box.
>>>
>>> I might add the "adjective game" in a follow up.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9thode_Photolangage
>>> [2] http://www.picturetelling.ch/e/method/
>>> [3] http://tastycupcakes.org/2014/06/the-rocket-retrospective/
>>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 8:44 PM, Arthur Richards <arichards at wikimedia.org>
>>> wrote:
>>> > +1 to Strine's thoughts. Very similarly and in line with David said
>>> > about
>>> > getting a team to name emotions that occurred around mechanical
>>> > feedback
>>> > (I'm removing the 'factual' part that David originally included because
>>> > emotions are facts too!), I've also had success combining the "mad,
>>> > sad,
>>> > glad" format with the "timeline" format (also in the Esther Derby book,
>>> > which worked really nicely for a more engineering-centric group. The
>>> > timeline portion helped lay everything out in a logical, event-based
>>> > (feeling-free) manner; but then layering the "mad, sad, glad" piece on
>>> > top
>>> > of that helped reveal how folks were feeling about various events that
>>> > happened, which spurred deeper conversation.
>>> >
>>> > On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 10:31 AM David Strine <dstrine at wikimedia.org>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> The book "Agile Retrospectives" by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen has a
>>> >> section on managing group dynamics and a description of the "Mad, Sad,
>>> >> Glad"
>>> >> format. I also found an online example here [1].
>>> >>
>>> >> I've found that if you get a team to name emotions that occurred
>>> >> around
>>> >> the mechanical/factual feedback you can get a glimpse into the
>>> >> interpersonal
>>> >> issues. The emotional statements open the door for you to dig deeper
>>> >> ask
>>> >> pointed questions.
>>> >>
>>> >> [1]
>>> >> https://www.retrium.com/resources/techniques/mad-sad-glad
>>> >>
>>> >> On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 9:58 AM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Hi all,
>>> >>>
>>> >>> I'm looking for advice about how to structure retrospectives to
>>> >>> encourage
>>> >>> more feedback about interpersonal issues. I believe the teams I work
>>> >>> with
>>> >>> feel the retros are a "safe space", but the vast majority of the
>>> >>> issues that
>>> >>> come up are mechanical, not personal.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Of course, it's possible that there really aren't that many
>>> >>> interpersonal
>>> >>> issues on these teams. (They do seem to be more emotionally healthy
>>> >>> and
>>> >>> mature than many teams I have interacted with.) But I don't want to
>>> >>> take any
>>> >>> chances. And I don't have a ton of experience running retros, so I'm
>>> >>> hoping
>>> >>> those of you with more experience can provide some pointers.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Thanks!
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Kevin Smith
>>> >>> Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>> _______________________________________________
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>>> >>> teampractices at lists.wikimedia.org
>>> >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/teampractices
>>> >>>
>>> >>
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Guillaume Lederrey
>>> Operations Engineer, Discovery
>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>> UTC+2 / CEST
>>>
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-- 
Guillaume Lederrey
Operations Engineer, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation
UTC+2 / CEST