Should the boss run the retro?
2026-10-16 · The Scrums team
Today is Boss's Day in the US. So here's a question for managers: are you the right person to facilitate your team's retrospective?
October 16 is Boss's Day in the US. It's a good day to ask managers a question they don't often hear: should you be the one running your team's retro?
Often the answer is no, and it has nothing to do with whether you're a good manager. A retrospective asks people to say what isn't working. When the person facilitating is also the person who decides on their promotion, some things go unsaid. Nobody has to be afraid for that to happen; it's ordinary caution.
Ways to take the pressure off
- Rotate the facilitator. A different team member runs each retro. People learn to facilitate, and the meeting stops being "the manager's meeting".
- Take part as a participant. Write your own cards, vote with your own dots, and speak after others have.
- Let the format do the protecting. Anonymous cards, written before anyone speaks, mean nobody has to choose between honesty and caution.
- Act on what you hear. The surest way to get honest retros is for people to see honest feedback lead to change.
How Scrums helps
- Anyone on the team can facilitate a session, and the facilitator can hand over to someone else at any point. If the facilitator's connection drops, anyone can take over.
- Retros are anonymous by default: other people's cards stay face-down while everyone writes, and their authors never leave our server. In anonymous retros, comments can be anonymous too.
- The facilitator has what they need to keep things moving: a shared countdown timer with a chime, a "ready" meter showing who has finished, and buttons for moving between steps.
And if you're a manager reading this today, here's the best Boss's Day present your team can give you: feedback you'd never have heard otherwise. Make it safe to give.
Try facilitating a retro in your browser, no account needed.
More on running retrospectives in Scrums.