If there are only 1 or 2 main members of the team that dictate the pace of the conversation, that crowds out the rest of the team from buying in and/or providing their insights. The entire team needs to be empowered to own their success, not just a handful of members.
I notice this all the time, some folks might be really outgoing, and love to talk and drive conversations, while others are content with staying silent. But all opinions on the team are valuable.
I've experienced this first hand where I've worked on great teams, and we all got involved in discussions about equally. I think it's easy to get someone quiet to speak up (if they have thoughts about the topic at hand they aren't saying), the more difficult challenge, at least for me, is trying to quiet down the team members that go on tangents.
A good practice is to ask people to write as opposed to speak. You can give some space for everyone to put their thoughts on post-it notes before the conversation starts (or to put things in a doc before the retro meeting).
There are so many dimensions: shy v. not, or introverted v. extroverted, or active v. passive thinker, or oral v. written communication, etc. Ideally you shape practices that can account for this diversity of thought.
And +1 to setting expectations so that people who are very vocal don't take up all of the space.
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I notice this all the time, some folks might be really outgoing, and love to talk and drive conversations, while others are content with staying silent. But all opinions on the team are valuable.
I've experienced this first hand where I've worked on great teams, and we all got involved in discussions about equally. I think it's easy to get someone quiet to speak up (if they have thoughts about the topic at hand they aren't saying), the more difficult challenge, at least for me, is trying to quiet down the team members that go on tangents.
A good practice is to ask people to write as opposed to speak. You can give some space for everyone to put their thoughts on post-it notes before the conversation starts (or to put things in a doc before the retro meeting).
There are so many dimensions: shy v. not, or introverted v. extroverted, or active v. passive thinker, or oral v. written communication, etc. Ideally you shape practices that can account for this diversity of thought.
And +1 to setting expectations so that people who are very vocal don't take up all of the space.