 Reframing. The topic of this retrospective is how to use reframing to stimulate reflection. Reframing involves using external or abstract media to allow a team to think differently about their current situation by reflecting through a different lens. Now, there is a little bit of pre-work for you to do before this retrospective can take place. This pre-work involves the research and download of some short inspirational or informative videos from the internet. In present times, there's a wealth of content freely available for you to use. Try TED.com for instance, if you don't know where to start looking. Pick a video that could spark thought-provoking discussion within your team. Maybe decide on the theme of the discussion you'd like to facilitate, then pick a video accordingly. Once you've decided on the video you'd like to use, prepare for your retrospective by hooking up the right equipment in a suitable room for your team to view the content as part of the events section which comes later. If the content includes audio, make sure the sound system is tested before the event to avoid any last-minute hitches. As well as the video, you'll also need some flip chart paper, marker pens, sticky notes for this retrospective. Hook. To help set the scene for this retrospective, I'd like to tell you a short story. So if you're sitting comfortably, then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there was an old farmer called Jack who lived on his farm with his wife, June, and their faithful dog, Barney. Every day, Jack and Barney would spend all day out in the fields tending to their sheep, ensuring that they came home safely each night. But one cold winter day, Jack fell ill and wasn't able to go out into the fields with Barney to tend the sheep. As a result, Barney was forced to venture out into the snowy fields without his owner. As Barney trudged through the snow, he became colder and colder as the snow stuck to his furry coat. As he grew colder and more snow settled on his fur, the walk slowed and he stood alone in the field. Just then, he noticed he was being followed. He turned to see one of the sheep from Jack's flock walking behind him. It seemed that Barney's snowy fur coat had disguised himself as one of the sheep. And as Barney slowly walked back towards the farmhouse, more and more the flock began to follow him. Until finally, the whole flock returned safely to the barn that night while Jack lay sleeping in his sick bed. As the flock approached the farmhouse, June looked on in amazement and decided to knit both Jack and Barney new woolly jumpers for the winter. And ever since that day, during the winter months, Jack and Barney always wear their white-colored woolly jumpers that June knitted for them so that the sheep can follow them home. We would encourage you to download this short story from the file section here and suggest that you read it to your team and then ask them to ponder for a moment on how this story could affect or apply to them. They might pick up on certain themes, maybe around teamwork or sharing responsibilities or even happy accidents, for example. Explain to the team that this type of exercise is called reframing and that's exactly what we're going to be doing in this retrospective. To allow them to analyze their own situation from a different perspective. Explain to your team that this retrospective is likely to take around 90 minutes. So now that we're prepared, we're ready to move on. Events. Explain to the team that you're going to play a short video. Set some expectations on the length of the video and ask them to be prepared to discuss the content afterwards. If individuals prefer to take some notes at this point, that's fine but it's not mandatory for this exercise. Allow the team to watch the video and then we can start a discussion as part of the next part of this retrospective. Meaning. Once the video content has concluded, we're going to ask some questions of the team to stimulate some reflection. To increase the diversity of those reflections, we suggest splitting the large group into smaller subgroups of around three to four people. This will allow everyone to be included rather than being isolated as part of a larger group discussion. Ask each subteam to nominate one team person to collate notes onto flip chart paper and then to consider these two questions. What were the key messages in the video? And how do any of those messages apply to our team? These are examples of what we call powerful questions. Powerful questions are those that provoke deeper thought and reflection. We need to allow more time to answer these questions as we are reframing the content of the video into our own context. The order of these questions is important as we are trying to identify both the underlying principle and intent of the video as well as how that can apply to our team. What's great about this type of exercise is that different individuals will draw out different learning depending on how the video affected them personally. This allows for some great discussions and reflections in the wider group. I would allow a good section of time, up to about 20 minutes, for those subgroups to have these discussions. Then bring the wider team back together and ask each subgroup to summarize their analysis. Now as a facilitator, capture the main points from each group onto a new piece of flip chart paper. And we're going to use this in the next section. Else. Instead of video content, you do have plenty of alternatives you can try here as part of a reframing exercise. Remember, the benefit of this retrospective design is that the individuals will draw out their own learnings appropriate to their context. Consider some of these examples as a way to draw out different kinds of learnings. A passage from a book. A poem. Song lyrics. A movie clip. A joke. A piece of art. An image. A white paper. A news article. A mental puzzle. Or a game. Think carefully about your room setup depending on which medium you choose here, but we've had success with all of these formats. Decisions. This retrospective design is a good example of an open-ended discussion as we don't really know yet what conclusions the team will come to from the material that they've seen. From the in-depth analysis that the team went through in the previous section, ask the team to break out back into their subgroups and discuss answers to the following question. What benefits can we take from this and apply as a team? This decisional question should encourage the team to start thinking about how to put into action what they've learnt from this retrospective. Suggest that each team should propose three achievable actions for the wider team to consider. Again, give the teams 15 to 20 minutes to come up with answers to these questions and ask the team to write those actions down on sticky notes. Bring the wider group back together to facilitate the presentation of those actions from each subteam by talking through each action and sticking the sticky notes onto a new piece of flip chart paper. As you could have a large number of potential actions here, ask the team to remove any duplication or consolidate actions as necessary. Finally, we need the team to select which actions to take on. You could try some silent prioritization here. Arrange the remaining sticky notes on the flip chart paper in a vertical list. Gather the team around the flip chart and ask them to change the order of the list to reflect what they should do next. The trick is to try and do this without talking. Should anyone fight over the placement of a sticky note, allow those individuals to talk to try and work it out. You might be surprised how much people can agree without the need for too much discussion. I would suggest just taking maybe two or three actions to put forward into the next iteration. Close the retrospective and thank people for coming and their engagement and involvement during the exercises.