Look Back to Leap Forward: Running an End-of-Year Retro Your Team Will Actually Enjoy
Description
End-of-year retrospectives don’t have to feel like grim post-mortems or blame-fests. In this episode, Kate Megaw and Ryan Smith break down how to run a year-in-review retrospective that’s fun, psychologically safe, and actually leads to change!
Drawing on the Team KatAnu R3 facilitation model (READY-REACH-RAP), they walk through how to set your retro up for success, design engaging activities (for in-person and virtual teams), and keep the focus on improving the process -not attacking people. You’ll hear practical ideas like emotion timelines, appreciation rounds, dot-voting on themes, and using a “what we can/can’t influence” bullseye to keep energy on what the team can control.
Whether your team uses Scrum or not, you’ll leave with a simple, repeatable structure for looking back at 2025, choosing one or two meaningful changes, and stepping into 2026 with clear, actionable experiments instead of vague resolutions.
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