Best pulse review outcomes are achieved when the discussion is:
Candid to ensure challenges or concerns are discussed
Inclusive to hear multiple perspectives and increase the collective buy-in to decisions
Objective to really focus on the topics at hand while avoiding influence of unrelated personal feelings or interpersonal dynamics.
These recommended frameworks are designed to help you facilitate discussions where everyone is active and focused on the topic. After understanding your pulse results to find out the topics you're looking to address, think about the desired outcomes and choose the suitable framework from below.
The frameworks
The plus-minus retrospective framework
is both a teamwork improvement tool and group therapy. This framework provides a simple way to facilitate discussion about potentially difficult topics. It’s clear and elegantly guides participants to find solutions instead of placing blame for problems.
is useful for bringing up "the hard stuff". It’s smart to talk about people’s concerns rather than let everyone worry about stuff in their own heads. Using the concerns framework helps create psychological safety that is needed in order to talk about issues.
is useful in situations where your team faces challenges on soft topics such as motivation, autonomy etc. It adds more depth to the Concerns framework by separating the past disappointments and the future worries. It also brings up the positive experiences and hopes, expanding the perspective (it’s not all that bad..) and inserting positive discussion points into a gloomy situation.
is powerful when there is some confusion about which ideas or tasks are important for a team, and what are not. Thinking in terms of the two dimensions, effort and impact, helps you determine what’s the best use for the team’s effort, and to weed out the ideas that are simply not worth it.