Workshop Exercises: Discuss

Team Radar

Visualize team agreement and discord

Also called: Agile Radar

Alternative plays: Hopes and Fears, Sailboat

Follow-up plays: Hopes and Fears, Start / Stop / Continue

Timing: Monitoring and Control

Prep time
30 minutes

Run time
1-2 hours

Group size
4-10

Why: Pinpoint areas of consensus and divergence in team opinions to promote open communication and understanding

When: Gauge team alignment during team-building activities or post-project reviews

Instructions for running this play

Plan the graphic and topics beforehand on a flip chart
Introduce the exercise and explain its purpose of gaining alignment, understanding, or clarity. Explain why each of the listed topics were chosen and ensure a shared understanding of each.
Ask the team to assign and agree on a rating (1-7) for each topic. Timebox discussing each axis to 10 minutes. Ratings could be confidence level in the topic, future outlook, etc. Discussion starts with the first axis and working your way through all, topic by topic, rating by rating.
Discuss. Connect any dots or determine which topics have scored negatively and why.
Gauge general sentiment from the team by asking them to do Roman Voting on each topic on whether it is improving or if they expect it to get worse.
Plan Next steps. Assign action items for 2-3 of the topics. Start with topics that scored the worst (or lowest) and note what steps can and should be taken next.

Agile values are popular:

So is:

Master and adapt the play to fit your context and needs.

Consider introducing the Team Radar as a recurring exercise every quarter.

More advanced teams can decide on the topics during the meeting

If two cultures collide, consider painting the Team Radar as represented by each cultural mindset to highlight differences and gaps.

Run better workshops with Learning Loop card decks.

Every card deck includes workshop patterns, so your team can put the methods to work in your next session.

Running behavioral design workshops? The Persuasive Patterns Workshop Playbook (PDF) shows you how to design and run them.

Sources