Latest / New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics / How New Managers Can Run Their First Team Retrospective
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about the single highest-leverage meeting most new managers skip entirely. Luna: I'm guessing it's not the one-on-one. Lucas: Right. It's the team retrospective. I'm not talking about the project post-mortem—I mean a structured, regular session where the team reflects on how they work together. Most new managers never schedule one. They think it's something agile development teams do, not something a marketing or finance team would ever touch. Luna: And you think they should. Lucas: Absolutely. And I've got a concrete example. A friend of mine, Priya, took over a 12-person marketing team at a mid-sized B2B SaaS company about eight weeks ago. She was promoted from senior manager to director. Her team had never done a retro. They had weekly status updates but no time to talk about process friction or interpersonal dynamics. Luna: So she decided to introduce one. How did she frame it? Lucas: She called it a 'team check-in' to lower the intimidation factor. The format was the classic start, stop, continue. Each person wrote down one thing the team should start doing, one thing they should stop doing, and one thing they should continue doing. Anonymous, on sticky notes. Then they grouped them and discussed. Luna: And the 'stop' column—that's the scary one for a new manager. Lucas: That's exactly the column that matters most. Because the 'continue' items are usually safe—'keep our weekly stand-up,' 'keep our Slack culture.' The 'start' items are aspirational—'let's do more cross-team collaboration.' But the 'stop' items? That's where the real friction lives. Priya's team had three big ones: stop holding two-hour weekly all-hands that recap things already in email, stop assigning work without deadlines in the ticket, and stop scheduling meetings during the team's designated deep-work block on Wednesday mornings. Luna: Those are concrete. And they're things Priya might not have learned from one-on-ones. Lucas: Exactly. In her one-on-ones, people were polite. They'd say 'things are good' or 'I'd like more growth opportunities.' But the anonymous retro format gave them permission to name the structural pain points. That two-hour all-hands had been running for two years. Everyone hated it. Nobody said anything because they assumed the previous manager valued it. Luna: So what did Priya do with that information? Lucas: She took action within a week. She cut the all-hands to 45 minutes with a strict agenda. She added a deadline field to the project ticketing system. She protected Wednesday mornings as a no-meeting block. And then, at the next retro, she opened with the changes she'd made and asked for feedback on whether they were working. That built credibility fast. Luna: So the retro isn't just about collecting feedback—it's about closing the loop publicly. Lucas: That's the entire point. If you run a retro and don't act on anything, you've actually made things worse. You've signaled that you'll collect complaints but not address them. Priya understood that. She treated each retro as a promise: 'I will report back on what we discussed and what I'm changing.' Luna: How often did she run them? Lucas: Monthly. That's my recommendation for most teams. Weekly is too frequent—you don't have enough signal yet. Quarterly is too infrequent—you lose momentum. Monthly gives you enough time to see patterns but not so much that you forget the frustrations. Priya ran her first one at week six, which I think is actually early enough to shape the team's norms before bad habits solidify. Luna: But what about the psychological safety piece? If a team has never been candid, are they going to be honest in a retro? Lucas: That's the million-dollar question. And the answer is: probably not at first. That's why Priya used anonymous sticky notes. She also asked a specific opening question that I love: 'What's one thing you wish we would stop doing but never say out loud?' That question frames the retro as a safe space for taboo topics. She got more honest answers from that one question than from any other prompt. Luna: So the facilitator has to be intentional about the prompts. Lucas: Absolutely. Don't just say 'tell me how things are going.' That's too vague. Use a structured format like start, stop, continue, or Glad, Sad, Mad, or the four L's—Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For. The structure gives people a framework to think in. Without it, you get silence or platitudes. Luna: What about teams that are completely distributed or hybrid? Does the format change? Lucas: Great question. For hybrid teams, you need to level the playing field. If some people are in a room and others are on Zoom, the remote folks will be quieter. Priya's team was fully remote, so she used a digital whiteboard tool with anonymous sticky notes. Everyone wrote at the same time, then they discussed. For hybrid, I'd recommend everyone dials in individually, even if they're in the office. Don't have the room people huddle around a whiteboard while remote people watch. Luna: That makes sense. So what's the biggest mistake new managers make when they try a retro for the first time? Lucas: Two mistakes. First, they try to solve every issue in the room. Someone says 'we have too many meetings' and the manager says 'okay, I'll cancel all meetings,' but that's not thoughtful. You need to prioritize. Pick one or two things to change before the next retro, not a dozen. Second, they don't follow up. They run a great session, everyone feels heard, and then nothing changes. That's worse than not running one at all. Luna: Let's talk about when NOT to run a retro. You mentioned earlier that it's not always the right move. Lucas: Right. Do not run a retro immediately after a layoff, during a major reorganization where people are worried about their jobs, or when you've just taken over a team that's in crisis—like a product failure or a PR disaster. In those moments, people need stability and direction, not a process reflection session. Wait until the dust settles. Priya waited eight weeks because she wanted to establish some trust first. Luna: So timing matters. You wouldn't run one in the first two weeks. Lucas: Definitely not. Your first 30 days should be about listening and building relationships, not running process improvements. But by day 60, you should absolutely run a retro. That's my concrete recommendation: schedule your first team retrospective within 60 days of becoming a manager. It's a signal that you care about how the team works, not just what they produce. Luna: I want to come back to something you said earlier—about the retro building your credibility. That's a huge benefit that new managers underestimate. Lucas: It's one of the fastest ways to establish yourself as a leader who listens. And it's low risk, because the format is collaborative. You're not issuing edicts; you're inviting input. And when you act on that input, you demonstrate that you're responsive. That's the foundation of trust. Luna: If we've helped you think through leading your team differently today, that kind of practical insight is exactly what we try to deliver here. And the way we keep the show ad-free and focused on real cases like Priya's is through listener support. If today was useful to you, you can help us keep doing this at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a simple way to say 'this mattered'—and it goes directly into keeping the podcast independent and without sponsors. No pressure, just an option if you've gotten value. Luna: Totally. And now back to Priya's story—she actually told me that after three months of running retros, the team started self-organizing. They'd bring up issues in the moment instead of waiting for the monthly session. Lucas: That's the ideal outcome. The retro becomes a scaffold for a culture of continuous improvement. Eventually, you might not even need the formal session because the team has internalized the habit of reflection. But you have to start somewhere. Luna: So for a new manager listening who's thinking 'my team would never go for this,' what's your advice? Lucas: Start small. Don't call it a retrospective. Call it a 'team check-in' or a 'how we work' session. Use a simple prompt: 'What's one thing you'd change about how we work together?' Keep it anonymous. Bring snacks or a digital equivalent. And commit to acting on at least one thing. The first one is the hardest. After that, it gets easier. Luna: Any final numbers or data points that make the case for retros? Lucas: One study from Harvard Business Review found that teams that hold regular retrospectives improve their performance by about 20% on average—measured by project completion time and quality. That's not trivial. And for new managers, it's a low-cost, high-impact tool. You don't need a budget or a mandate. You just need a facilitator's mindset and a willingness to listen. Luna: And a sticky note template. Lucas: And a sticky note template. Exactly.