Trust is the foundation of real teamwork. To run everything smoothly, building strong relationships between colleagues and fostering trust among them should be a focus of every project manager. With trust present in the team, team members plan more effectively, work more efficiently, and grow stronger as a group. But when trust is missing or damaged, it can affect everything from overall morale to employee engagement and, team performance.

A way to build trust among team members is by using short exercises/energizers at the sprint retrospectives, a recurring meeting held at the end of a sprint used to discuss what went well during the previous sprint cycle and what can be improved for the next sprint. How is trust connected with sprint retrospectives? Trust is different from assuming everyone is on the same page as you, and that they don’t need to be pushed. Trust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they’re doing it because they care about the team and project goal.

Our goal for this session is to engage the audience with exercises that we used with our teams that demonstrated increased trust, which in the end had a positive impact on the team performance.