JO’s Newsletter 📰

Hello, and welcome to the retro newsletter. This week, I’m looking at how I use Virginia Satir’s temperature reading as a retro format.

“Change rests on the total albeit temporary acceptance of the status quo” Virginia Satir

What's in this newsletter

• The Temperature Reading 🌡️

  • 1. Appreciations

    • Process

  • 2. New Information

  • 3. Puzzles

  • 4. Complaints with Recommendations

  • 5. Hopes and Wishes

  • Bonus: Learning

• Decisions workshop

  • How often would you like to hear from me?

• Subscribe

• Next Issue

The Temperature Reading 🌡️

The Satir Temperature Reading is a powerful tool for fostering open communication and emotional connection, originally developed by family therapist Virginia Satir. While traditionally used in personal or family settings, it's also highly effective as a format for retrospectives.

I set up the retro by reminding everyone that we are here to look for process improvements and thanking everyone for being there. Then, I run through each phase.

Here’s how each phase can be applied in a retrospective setting to help teams reflect and grow:

1. Appreciations

Start the retrospective on a positive note by encouraging team members to express gratitude. For this phase, each team member has the opportunity to share an appreciation for anyone in the team. I like to use the format … “Jo, I appreciate you for…“

If I have the time, I don’t timebox this activity because it can be incredibly rich and deep for a team and incredibly powerful for building connections. If I don’t have lots of time, I might get people to write their appreciations on stickies. I always let people pass if they have nothing to add, but I have never had anyone who didn’t have someone to appreciate.
The best way to do this is to get people to express their appreciations face to face, but that isn’t always possible in our world.

Process

For each of the following stages, I give people 3 or 4 minutes to think and write things on sticky notes. Then they add them to the Miro board, whiteboard, or whatever tool I am using. We will then spend some time generating insights about what we see and looking for options on what to do next. I’ll collect the options and ideas from each section, and then at the end, we will decide what to do by choosing one or maybe two.

2. New Information

This step allows the team to share relevant updates that have surfaced since the last retrospective or stand-up. It’s about bringing new knowledge, changes, or challenges to the forefront.

It is often interesting to ask the question, “What new information do we have that needs to be shared?” This gives us

3. Puzzles

This phase invites curiosity and allows team members to ask questions about things they don’t fully understand. It can uncover ambiguities in the project or team dynamics. I ask the question, “What puzzles do you have?” and leave it fairly open.

What I notice is that people who are frustrated or annoyed about something but don’t know how to express it will often share it here. It can be a safe place to bring something up.

4. Complaints with Recommendations

Here, the team addresses problems constructively by pairing complaints with potential solutions. This ensures that frustrations are aired in a way that moves the team forward rather than getting stuck in negativity.

I love this because it’s easy to complain about things, but this means that we need to offer solutions. I often find that this is where the action items come from. Giving people the opportunity to share their frustrations and ideas gives them the opportunity to be creative. So, this can be a place with lots of new ideas; the tricky part is then deciding which one to take forward.

I give this section a longer timebox because there are often more things to discuss here.

5. Hopes and Wishes

This final phase allows team members to express their aspirations for the future, whether related to the sprint, product or broader team goals. It’s an opportunity to inspire forward-thinking and alignment on long-term visions.

I ask, “What are your hopes and wishes going forward?”

The hopes and wishes sections often provide great ideas, and I can often get themes or focus points for other retrospectives from this section.

Bonus: Learning

If teams have a daily Scrum every day, then asking about New information can feel redundant and unnecessary because, by default, a team will do that daily. So sometimes, I will swap new information for learning.

I ask, ”What have you learned in the last sprint?” This gives people the opportunity to visualise and share what they have learned, and it doesn’t always have to be about the work. Sometimes, it's about their personal lives, and it can be a great way to connect.

After working through all five sections, I close the retrospective by making sure that the team has decided on an action team that they are taking from this and that the action item has a champion or an owner.

I then ask for feedback about what the team liked about the format, say thank you, and close.

Even though the temperature reading has five phases, I use each phase as a mini, gather data and then generate insights for each. Once you see how impactful the five phases are, you notice how you can apply them in many different ways.

Decisions workshop

Myself and Marcus Blankenship are running a 2-hour workshop on decision-making.

This workshop will allow you to explore your organisation's decision-making culture and explore ways to enable your teams to make decisions effectively so they don’t need to wait.

How often would you like to hear from me?

At the moment, I publish this newsletter weekly, but maybe that is too much for you or not enough.

So, how often would you like to hear from me? Let me know - [email protected]

Subscribe

Feel free to share this newsletter with others who might find value. Subscribers can get 10% off the Remote Facilitation Practitioner Course using the Codes NEWSZA10 or NEWS10EU. If none of those geographies work for you, contact me, and we will see what we can do. You can also check out BuyMeA Coffee, where I have shared additional resources and will keep adding things.

Next Issue

I am busy scheduling the interview with Esther, but in the meantime, next week, I will dive into a format called Proud and Sad. Contact me at [email protected] and share what you want me to discuss or ask for help with specific scenarios.