A time and place for everything

Last week at the pub, I got into a heated discussion about how to handle certain situations in retrospectives. It was a great discussion though I do wonder how other people would handle the situation. We got into the topic of dealing with safety during retrospectives, and what we can do to address safety. Someone mentioned a specific retrospective where, during the Art Gallery exercise, one person (out of a group of 25) had drawn a picture of many smiley faces and a single sad face. The Safety Check results didn’t indicate safety was a problem. The question posed was should the facilitator go ahead?

I gave a, rather rambling answer. Fair enough since it was a Friday, and well past normal working hours. Not to mention it was at the pub…

I said that, as a facilitator, you need to be constantly aware of what the situation at hand is. I explained that if I’m facilitating a meeting for someone else, particularly retrospectives, I’ll normally prepare by interviewing a few people first (informally, sometimes formally if need be). I like to know who’s going to be in the room, and what problems might surface, or what situation I might be stepping in to. I learned this tip from Kerths’ original book. I like to prepare the room before everyone enters, set up posters, whiteboards, flip charts, etc. It’s courteous to the participants, and I’m always hopeful they appreciate the effort that I made an effort, with the end result being better quality discussions. I’ll observe people as they enter, and watch the body language of people through the activities.

Given the particular example above, I can understand why the facilitator continued as they did. I often see the Art Gallery exercise used as an ice-breaker, a way of letting people have a bit of fun without being too serious. With a high safety check score, and the general mood of the group upbeat, I can understand why they proceeded.

Had many other circumstances been different, the mood of the group excessively sombre, or the safety check average versus significantly high, the outcome might be different. I talked about how, if one person out of that group had a real problem, I’d hope that there were other avenues to allow that person to express their discomfort. For example, one-to-one meetings is a great way of establishing this, or even tea and coffee breaks work with trusted co-workers does wonders. Retrospectives shouldn’t be the only place for dealing with issues.