It was one Tuesday morning, around 10 AM.
One of the teams I work a lot was having a scheduled Retro in that morning. Absolutely all members were tired, stressed out and had a lot of tension. We had a coffee together before the Retro.
I was thinking - another opportunity to improvise - if I would use the sequence I had prepared for this session, it will not bring any value to them.
So what did I do?
What happens when people are stressed / tensioned / tired?
When tired, scared (in this case was frustration blended with scariness of what happens next in the project), stressed in any way, 80% of our cognitive performance goes down.
This means your brain has limited capacity to:
🧠 make complex decisions
🧠 communicate constructively
🧠 control your emotions
From the neuroscience perspective, taken into consideration the status of the team members I could (in my perspective) either reschedule the Retro (which I do not particularly like as the situation might repeat in any case) or do something about it.
I chose the second option.
What did I do?
I asked everybody if they would mind going out to make some walk. They said all they agree.
We had the good luck to have a garden in the working space we were working and so it was an easy alternative.
Here are the steps I did to help them relax, enter in the constructive approach context:
🎲 Get fresh air: we walked outside to a part of the garden where we talked about what is next. They had on the way time to get fresh air, BREATHE.
🎲 Walk & Talk: I asked them to walk & talk in a structured specific way. Made pairs of 2 persons and asked them to walk in the garden for 15 minutes. Each person would share their fears and hopes upon the next sprint for 4 minutes. Then would be 1 min break. No interruptions from the other person while one person talks. Then switch. At the end conclude what are the patterns you find between each other.
🎲 Check their state: We had a certain time to meet inside after the walk & talk ( I let it run for 25 minutes instead of 15 minutes as they enjoyed it very much). I had prepared a whiteboard with drawings of two areas: Hopes & Fears. After they came back I made a check with their state of mind and it was a miraculously changing into constructive approach, they were more awake and ready to work as a team.
🎲 Retro: We went through Fears & hopes and what they concluded during they walk (in a sticky notes collection and each of them sharing after writing down in silence their reflections). Then we extracted insights and reasons upon specific topics they voted they want to focus on. Action points were at the end found.
One-phrase summary:
“Build the airplane while flying it!” was one of the highlights of a session I had with Thiagi - meaning improvisation is the key! And this is what I did here. But more than this, I applied neuroscience, identifying the state of the team and knowing how to help them arrive in a better one. It’s not only doing a Retro as planned, but it’s about being able to adjust it to the participants state of mind and change it on the spot.
How can I help your team?
If you are looking for a facilitator or trainer who knows how to “read” the room and applies neuroscience principles for the sessions, I am happy to support.
Resources:
I first found out about Walk & Talk in this specific way from my Lego Serious Play trainer, Manuel Grassler
Neuroscience of Communication training from Mindarchitect.ro
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Sometimes you need to shift down to get up the hill. Well done!