By Rebecca Jones
Tags: Agile
The Individual strengths retrospective is a great way to level up a team by reflecting on and reinforcing their individual contributions. Here’s how you run one.
Use the Individual strengths retrospective when:
You want to inspire and energise the team by reminding them how they contribute to the team’s success.
For the Individual strengths retrospective you need:
At the end of the Individual strengths retro, each team member will have an individual goal. Everyone will know one way they can use their strengths to level up the team, reinforcing everyone’s contributions.
1 hour
Write up a whiteboard like this:
Pick the opener of your choice.
Ask everyone to silently brainstorm what they think their own biggest strength is. What’s the top thing they bring to the team? Write this on a post-it. Don’t share it yet.
1 minute brainstorm
Ask everyone to silently brainstorm what they think everyone else’s biggest strengths are. Write these on post-its. Use a separate post-it for each team member. Don’t share these yet.
2 minute brainstorm
Pick someone to start with. Ask the rest of the team to take turns to tell them what they think their biggest strength is. Post these beside their name on the board.
After the team has shared, the person then shares what they think their own strength is, and adds it to the board.
Repeat for each team member.
Pair people up. These pairs take turns to discuss their strengths. These could be the strengths they identified themselves, or those shared by the team.
You can prompt them to discuss:
After the time is up, swap people around until everyone has been paired with everyone. In bigger teams, limit this to a couple of pairings.
4 minutes per round, 2 minutes talking about each person in the pair
Ask the team to reflect on the insights they’ve gained from these discussions. Based on this, they’ll silently brainstorm one retro goal for themselves. How can they harness their strengths to level up the team or the project?
1 minute brainstorm
Everyone shares their goals with the team, along with when they’ll get them done. There should be a goal for every team member.
Pick the close of your choice.
Post them on your physical board and share them digitally. That way it’s easy to keep them in mind and to follow up on them at the next retro.
Welcome aboard retrospective — when new team members join
Golden moments retrospective — when a project or phase ends
Development continuum retro — tailor your skill-building
Google Forms remote retro — step-by-step guide with pros and cons
The Treasure Island Retrospective — learn what motivates your team
