TEAM YEAR-END SUMMARY – A GOOD START

Time is running out… so why these summaries?

Ask your team members to take a moment to reflect on what was, what is, and what they expect in 2018. The task is to write down your comments, ideas, and thoughts in five areas:

Past

• what happened, what we remembered from the last few months

Present

• what is currently happening in our team

Positives

• what we can benefit from – what are we satisfied with?

Negatives

• what we need to change/improve – what makes our daily work more difficult?

Future

Time is running out… so why these summaries?

The days are starting to get a bit longer, we think about what has been and what awaits us in the future, we make summaries and self-assessments…

The beginning of the year, when everyone has recovered from New Year’s Eve and is slowly getting back to daily tasks, is a good time for a team summary.
Why is it worth finding time for them?

First and foremost, because your team consists of completely sensible, intelligent people who are worth listening to 🙂 The team can see more than an individual, so why not take advantage of that?
Secondly, drawing conclusions prevents the repetition of the same mistakes, allowing us to act more effectively. During the busier times of the year, we often rush like hamsters on wheels, leaving no room for reflection, which is worth catching up on now.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly – when someone asks for our opinion, we stop feeling like a nameless ‘cog in the machine’ and start feeling like someone whose opinion matters. Let’s make the team feel that they have the space to express themselves and that we take it into account, and the increase in motivation will be noticeable.
Team summary step by step
How to approach it so that the team summary does not end up as team gossip or venting? You will need:

• 1 hour of time
• summary cards (one for each person)
• a flipchart and markers will be useful

Step 1

Gather the team and give everyone a summary card Team year-end summary(printable version – CLICK HERE!#) (minimalist version: show them the template on a projector/flipchart and let them copy it onto their own sheets).

Step 2

Ask your team members to reflect on what has been, what is, and what they expect in 2024. The task is to write down your comments, ideas, and thoughts in five areas:

Past

• what happened, what we remembered from the last few months

Present

• what is currently happening in our team

Positives

• what we can benefit from – what are we satisfied with?

Negatives

• what we need to change/improve – what makes our daily work more difficult?

-there are no stupid / unimportant ideas! You can ask them auxiliary questions (below), but there is no need to answer each of them separately. Warn them that they will later read what they have written.

Past
– What has happened in recent months?
– What events of the past year were significant milestones?
– What influenced where we are now?

Present
– At what stage are we currently?
– What do you think about the current situation?
– Does the current state meet your expectations? Why yes, why not?

Positives
– What benefits us? What opportunities and positives do we see in our situation?
– What have we achieved?
– What have we learned?

Negatives
– Where are our weak points?
– What should we improve?
– Is something dragging us down? What?

Future
– How do you envision the coming year? Where should we be heading as a team?
– How will we know we’ve succeeded? How can we measure it?
– How can we prepare for upcoming challenges?

Step 3

When everyone is finished, ask each person to share what they wrote. You can do this one by one.  It is best to collect the conclusions in keywords on a flipchart – this way you will see which topics appeared most frequently, which events were most significant, etc.

Step 4

Time for a discussion about what you wrote and presented. You can ask, what each person considers most important for the upcoming year?  Where were the biggest differences and similarities in the answers? What would they like to see on the sheets during the summary next year?

Step 5

Here, the decision is up to you. At this stage, you can:

• Take a break to give yourself and others time to reflect on what is most important to you. (This will also be a time for you to think about the resources you will have at your disposal in the coming year, to take the team seriously and not make empty promises during the planning stage.) By choosing this option, end the meeting by setting a SPECIFIC DATE when you will meet to finalize the joint arrangements.
• Create a joint action plan – it can be both personal and team-oriented. In this case, after concluding the discussion (step 4), ask everyone to choose the three most important topics that you should focus on to improve results or the climate of collaboration. In this version, plan the first steps together – actions to be implemented over the next month. Remember to assign tasks to specific individuals, as those without an owner tend to disappear into the depths of everyday reality… 😉

Prepared by Zosia Augustyniak
Source: www.trytriggers.com „Recapping the year with your team: reflect and get insights”