Team Culture Retro

Take a closer look at your team's culture, habits, and rituals to decide – together – what to start doing, what's not working, and what's worth keeping.

PREP TIME

15m

Run TIME

60m

Persons

3-10

5-second summary

Take a closer look at your team's culture, habits, and rituals.
Use the “Start, Stop, Continue” framework to decide as a team what's working and what to change.
Assign owners to action items and follow up to keep momentum going.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

Meeting space or video conferencing with screen sharing
Physical or digital whiteboard, like a Confluence whiteboard
Sticky notes and markers for in‑person sessions
Your preferred AI tool, such as Rovo

PLAY resources

Team Health Monitor

Team Communications Norm Play

Ritual Reset Play

How to run a team culture retro

Reflect on your team's habits and rituals to decide what to start, stop, and continue.

What is a team culture retro?

A team culture retro is a structured exercise where a team reflects on their habits, rituals, and ways of working. Using the “Start, Stop, Continue” framework, team members share what they'd like the team to start doing (what could work well), stop doing (what isn't working and should be dropped), and continue doing (what’s valuable and worth keeping).

Unlike a sprint retrospective, which focuses on project delivery, a team culture retro zooms out to look at the underlying norms and behaviors that shape how a team collaborates.

Why run the Team Culture Retro Play?

Every team develops habits over time – some intentional, some not. A team culture retro creates dedicated time and space to reflect on those habits and make deliberate choices about how you work together.

Research shows that teams with higher levels of reflexivity – the extent to which team members collectively reflect on objectives, strategies, and processes – are more innovative, adaptable, and effective at problem-solving (Schippers, West, & Dawson, 2015).

Organizational culture has also been shown to be a significant predictor of employee attitudes, organizational effectiveness, and financial performance (Hartnell et al., 2019).

By regularly reflecting on your culture, you can build shared ownership of your team's norms and create a foundation for continuous improvement.

When should you create a team culture retro?

You can run a team culture retro anytime your team is:

Starting fresh with new members or a new project
Adapting to change, such as a reorg, new tools, or a shift to hybrid or distributed work
Focused on inclusion and wants to make sure everyone's voice is heard
Feeling stuck or noticing friction in how the team collaborates
Looking to adopt new ways of working, like exploring how the team uses AI

5 benefits of team culture retros

Team culture retros are proven to help:

Align on priorities. Teams zero in on what’s effective and what’s not — because culture works through specific, identifiable practices, not vague values. (Hartnell et al., 2019)
Build shared ownership. Everyone contributes to shaping team norms — and equal contribution is a hallmark of the highest-performing teams. (Duhigg, 2016)
Create space for improvement. Encourage candid discussion and follow-through — structured team reflection on processes predicts innovation and better outcomes. (Schippers, West & Dawson, 2015; Schippers & West, 2017)
Surface hidden friction. Psychological safety — the top predictor of high-performing teams — lets people name what isn’t working without fear of judgment. (Duhigg, 2016)
Drive intentional change. Reflexivity only improves performance when reflection leads to concrete, adapted behavior — not just conversation. (Schippers & West, 2017)

1. Prep the Play

Est. time: 5 MIN

Schedule a one-hour meeting with your teammates, and pick a topic to discuss that’s related to your team’s culture. It could be a broad topic, like communication or collaboration, or a specific topic, like using AI.

Next, nominate someone on your team to run this activity as the facilitator. It can be someone who's a skilled presenter or who’s keen to build their facilitation skills.

Then, prepare a physical or digital whiteboard, like a Confluence whiteboard, with three columns: Start, Stop, and Continue. If you’re using a digital whiteboard, give all attendees access.

Start	Stop	Continue

2. Set the stage

Est. time: 5 MIN

Open the meeting by setting the intention for this session and introducing the topic. Let your team know this is a safe space to reflect on what's working and what could improve. Remind them that the goal is improvement, not blame.

If you're facilitating the meeting virtually, don’t record the meeting or use an AI notetaker. This can help create a more psychologically safe environment that encourages honest feedback.

3. Run the activity

Est. time: 15 min

Ask each person to write down their ideas – one idea per sticky note or whiteboard entry – in each of the three categories:

Start

What should our team start doing? Encourage suggestions for habits, tools, or ways of working that could improve collaboration.

Sample questions to discuss:

What habits or rituals should we start doing?
Is there a communication style that might work better for the team?
Is there a tool that could improve how we collaborate?
What rituals could we create to encourage the team to explore new ways of working, like AI?

Stop

What isn't working and should be stopped? Focus on unhelpful behaviors, tools, or rituals.

Sample questions to discuss:

Is our team doing something that doesn't work for you?
Is there a meeting style or communication method that isn't working?
What happens on this team that limits or discourages you from exploring new tools or ways of working?

Continue

What's working and worth keeping? Highlight things that bring value but might not yet be formal team habits.

Sample questions to discuss:

What's something we do as a team that you appreciate and would like to continue?
What norms or rituals help you feel included and supported?
How has the team encouraged you to try new things, like AI, that you'd like to see continue?

Start

Stop

Continue

What should our team start doing? Encourage suggestions for habits, tools, or ways of working that could improve collaboration.

Sample questions to discuss:

What habits or rituals should we start doing?
Is there a communication style that might work better for the team?
Is there a tool that could improve how we collaborate?
What rituals could we create to encourage the team to explore new ways of working, like AI?

What isn't working and should be stopped? Focus on unhelpful behaviors, tools, or rituals.

Sample questions to discuss:

Is our team doing something that doesn't work for you?
Is there a meeting style or communication method that isn't working?
What happens on this team that limits or discourages you from exploring new tools or ways of working?

What's working and worth keeping? Highlight things that bring value but might not yet be formal team habits.

Sample questions to discuss:

What's something we do as a team that you appreciate and would like to continue?
What norms or rituals help you feel included and supported?
How has the team encouraged you to try new things, like AI, that you'd like to see continue?

4. Discuss and assign actions

Est. time: 15 min

Group similar items, and talk through which suggestions you want to try implementing as a team, along with who owns each next step.

If you’re meeting in person, use AI to digitize your whiteboard, save time, and make sure nothing gets lost in translation.

Take a photo of your physical whiteboard.
Use your preferred AI tool, like Rovo, to extract the sticky note contents.
Ask AI to sort the sticky notes into the Start, Stop, and Continue categories.

For virtual whiteboards, use AI tool to summarize the key themes and group them into categories. This helps you quickly identify patterns and prioritize what to act on.

Finally, save the digital version of your whiteboard, and link it in a prominent place (like a bookmark in the team Slack channel) where the team can easily find and revisit the norms.

tip: Add team culture norms to onboarding

Consider linking to your team's culture retro results in onboarding guides for new team members. It's a great way to jumpstart their understanding of your team's norms and how you work together.