Learn how to facilitate a Safety Check Radar.
Take Retrium's Technique Quiz to figure out which retrospective technique best fits the needs of your next retrospective.
This radar is the best way to ensure that everyone is willing to participate fully in the conversation. After all, what’s the point of setting aside time to discuss issues or concerns if no one is willing to openly share their perspective?
Facilitating the Process
Begin the safety check by selecting this option from the radar list. During the “define” phase, the team should agree on your team’s shared definition for the labels on each spoke of the radar retrospective.
For the safety check, these are:
- Do you feel comfortable speaking up?
- Do you feel included?
- Do you feel heard?
After this, you can move on to the “collect” phase, where each team member will rate their safety on these spokes from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) before moving on to the “analyze” step.
Analyzing the Results
When People Feel Safe
If you find that everyone feels safe, meaning the numeric feedback on this radar shows fours and fives, you can move onto another retrospective immediately following your safety check radar.
In this case, we suggest that you proceed in one of two ways. First, you can start a column-based retrospective to gather data, generate insights, and decide what to do using your last interaction or your project as the topic for your retrospective. We suggest starting with a “what went well” column-based technique if you’re new to retrospectives, but you can certainly try this quiz again for more guidance around the appropriate technique for your situation.
Secondly, you could also move on to another radar technique to refine the topic of your retrospective to be something different than your last iteration or project. Narrowing in on an area of focus is great for those who have done retrospectives consistently and want to mix it up.
When People Don’t Feel Safe
However, if there are lower scores present on the safety check (even a few responses from 1-3), you should strongly consider making “safety” the topic for a deeper dive. You can either do this by:
- Picking the “what went well” column-based retrospective and having the team share what’s going well and what’s not as it relates to psychological safety and team trust,
- Selecting a future-oriented technique like “stop, start, continue,” where the team can brainstorm things to do that could impact psychological safety going forward,
- Getting feedback from the team to determine the best format for your meeting.
Check out more guidance on safety checks.