 Making music. The topic of this retrospective is to help a group of individuals that operate independently to become more of a team. We're going to be using the theme of music to explore and enhance the team's collaboration. You will need the following resources. Several pieces of flip chart paper, some index cards, some marker pens. We've also included into the files section some music manuscript template paper and some large cut out musical notes. Print some of these off in advance of the retrospective and bring those along with you. There are also two sound files that you can download and will be using during this retrospective. Hook. If you, like me, have ever played a musical instrument in a band or an orchestra you'll know the importance of a delicate balance of teamwork and individual performance. Even if you haven't played an instrument, music is a medium that we can all relate to having heard it at some point in our lives. Using the theme of music for this retrospective I think the songwriting skills of Bill Withers would round this up quite nicely. Lean on me. When you're not strong and I'll be your friend I'll help you carry on. For it won't be long till I'm going to need somebody to lean on. Feel free to get creative with your own hook yourself and come up with some alternative lyrics to set things up. Explain that this retrospective is likely to take about 90 minutes and will involve some listening skills and activities. Writing on sticky notes too and working in pairs and small groups then consolidating as a larger group. But don't worry, we're not expecting anyone to play in a musical instrument as part of this retrospective. Events. This part of the retrospective involves a listening task. Set the room up with an audio speaker that can play the two sound files attached to this tutorial. So explain to the team that they're going to listen to these two clips one after the other. So, for now, play the first sound clip. One, two. Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday dear and Hopefully you'll have recognized the tune there. Now, we're going to ask you to play the second music clip. Happy birthday to you Happy birthday dear and to you You should have noticed it was the same tune but an entirely different version. So once your team have listened to these two versions ask them by a simple vote using their hands as to which version was better. Allow the team at this point to freely discuss why one was better than the other. Don't worry about capturing their thoughts for the moment because we're going to do that in the next section. Meaning, there are a number of factors that separate good team musical performances from poor ones. But we are going to focus on two here. The synergy of the team and the individual performance. On two separate pieces of flip-chat paper write down the following headings. Team constants and individual skills. By team constants we mean things that the teams members do together such as meetings or planning and also any rules or working agreements that bind them together as a team. These skills are the skills that team members display in order to function effectively as a team. Ask the team to focus on the better musical performance they just heard. Firstly, ask the team what team constants were required to ensure a good performance there. Some of the more musically minded in a group might suggest things like harmony or time signature, which is great. Note these down on the team constant sheet. Secondly, ask the team what individual skills would be on display to allow such a good musical performance. We are hoping the attendees might suggest things like listening or selflessness or adaptability or positivity, for example. Write each of those suggestions down on the second sheet. If there are a lot of suggestions here ask the team to condense them down to the five that they feel are the most important to their own team's growth. We are now going to ask the team to consider as a group how their own performance compares to that musical performance by asking the following questions. Where are we off key as a team? In what areas are we all in sync and performing well? Record the headline responses on a new piece of flip chart paper. Next, we're going to ask the team to appraise themselves against the individual skills that they highlighted earlier and how important they are to team performance. Sit the team in a circle of chairs. Arm them with one piece of manuscript paper that you downloaded from the beginning of this section. Ask everyone to label the first line of music with five individual skills that the team agree are important to their performance as a team. Then each individual will place one of the cut out musical notes on their scale to indicate their own assessment of how they believe they are performing against that skill. The higher the note, the better the skill. So if I believe I'm a very strong listener then I would score myself as five or in this case an F on the scale. Give the team some time to reflect and complete their assessment in piece. When complete, it's important that each individual writes their name on the top of the manuscript. Then ask all of the team members to place their completed manuscripts in the centre of the table and shuffle them. You are then going to randomly hand back the team members so that everyone has a piece of paper that is not their own. Each team member will be able to see their colleagues' self-assessment results for the first time. And now they must provide their own assessment underneath it. Once all the results are back in, reshuffle the papers and hand them back to the appropriate team members to allow them to see how they are perceived not just by themselves but by one of the team member. Now depending on the team's maturity here you might prefer to keep some of the results anonymous and private. It's up to you. Else. So instead of focusing on the process or individuals, at this point we can ask some questions about the music that we are playing. A great musical performance comes from musicians who enjoy the music they are playing. On a new piece of flip-chat paper ask the team members for answers to the following questions. Do we enjoy the music we play? If so, why? Or if not, why not? How can we make the music more exciting to play? In recent times what was our favourite piece of music to play and why? Decisions. In order to take some positive steps forward from this retrospective the team are going to create a new piece of music to summarise their goals. This is going to take the form of verses and the chorus. The verses are individual objectives. Give the team some blank index cards on which they must write down something they will personally do to increase one of the skills highlighted in this retrospective. Give people time to come up with an action they feel they can complete in the next sprint. Once completed ask each team member to read it out aloud to the group. Now the team move on to creating their chorus as one larger team. The chorus is something the team will work on together in order to improve the team. The results of the verses might help to point the team in a certain direction but the results should be updating one or more of the team constants reflected on earlier in this retrospective. Again, use the index cards to aid the experimentation here. Once the verses and choruses are agreed lay the index cards out in order of verses followed by chorus on the table. Bring out the same index cards at the start of the next retrospective as the chorus was made against them.