# Dare, Care and Share Retrospective

Participants write short notes across three specific categories: bold proposals they dare to voice, concerns they care about resolving, and general news or feedback to share. The team then reviews the notes together to surface unspoken risks and ideas.

**Time:** 25 minutes. Source suggests 5 to 10 minutes for writing alone; UWT expands total session time to 25 minutes to allow full-group reading and debrief for up to 24 people.
**People:** 4 to 24. Individual silent writing, followed by pair review or whole-room rounds depending on group size.

## Choose this exercise

**Purpose:** Collect bold proposals, team concerns, and informational updates into three distinct visual categories during a sprint or project review.
**Use it when:** Use at the end of a work cycle when team members hesitate to bring up experimental ideas or need a structured way to separate emotional concerns from routine updates.
**Skip it when:** Skip when a project crisis requires an immediate, singular root-cause investigation or when the group has unaddressed personal conflicts that need dedicated mediation.

## Materials and tools

- Sticky notes in three colors or one color with markers (at least 6 notes per person)
- Markers or pens (one per person)
- Wall space, whiteboard, or tabletop divided into three columns labeled Dare, Care, and Share
- Digital whiteboard tool if running remotely
- A visible countdown timer

## Before participants arrive

1. Draw three vertical columns on the board or wall labeled: 'Dare (Bold ideas and wishes)', 'Care (Concerns and gaps needing attention)', and 'Share (News, lessons, and highlights)'.
2. Distribute sticky notes and pens to each seat.

## Say this to open

Welcome to our retrospective. Today we are using three categories to sort our reflections. 'Dare' is for bold ideas or experiments that take courage to suggest. 'Care' is for worries, missing steps, or friction you feel need attention. 'Share' is for general news, lessons learned, or shout-outs worth hearing. You will write silently first, and you may contribute to any or all categories.

## How to run it

### 1. Introduce the prompts (3 minutes)

Explain the three columns using neutral examples. For Dare: 'We stop estimating story points entirely for two weeks.' For Care: 'Pull requests are sitting unreviewed for three days.' For Share: 'The client praised our fast turnaround on Tuesday.' Answer brief procedural questions.

### 2. Silent note writing (7 minutes)

Start a 7-minute timer. Participants write one thought per note. Encourage at least one note in Dare, Care, or Share, but allow anyone to write more or skip a category. People who choose not to write may review notes silently once posted.

### 3. Post and read aloud (10 minutes)

For groups up to 10, go around the circle. Each person reads their notes aloud and posts them under the matching column. For groups of 11 to 24, have participants post their notes silently on the wall, cluster similar notes by theme, and call on 6 to 8 volunteers to read specific clusters.

### 4. Reflect and identify actions (5 minutes)

Review the board as a full group. Ask the debrief questions to identify any recurring themes or one concrete action the team will test in the next cycle. Record the agreed action point.


## Debrief questions

- Which 'Dare' item seems easiest to test immediately without major risk?
- What recurring pattern appears across our 'Care' column?
- How do the items in 'Share' change our understanding of what happened during this cycle?

**Finished output:** A three-column board populated with team notes, clustering similar topics, and at least one chosen follow-up task recorded for the next cycle.

## Remote

Set up a digital board with three labeled columns: Dare, Care, and Share. Give participants 7 minutes to type stickies with editing visible or hidden until the timer ends. Run read-outs by calling on people to unmute or by having the facilitator read clustered cards aloud while participants react in chat.

## Hybrid

Provide remote participants access to the digital board. Appoint an in-person scribe to transfer digital stickies onto the physical wall or display the digital board on a main conference room screen so in-room participants post directly to the digital board from personal devices. Rotate turns between in-room and online speakers.

## Access and participation choices

- Participants may submit notes anonymously via digital board or private facilitator handoff.
- Participants may pass entirely on speaking during the readout and let the facilitator read their posted card without attribution.
- Large text cards and screen-reader accessible digital boards provide alternatives to small paper stickies.

## If the session gets stuck

**Participants only post safe complaints under Dare instead of genuinely novel ideas.**

Remind the group that Dare items are speculative experiments or new methods, while current process problems belong in Care.

**Too many cards are posted for the allotted read-out time.**

Group identical or closely related cards together before reading, and discuss only the synthesized cluster rather than every individual sticky.


## Terms used here

- Retrospective: A structured team meeting held at the end of a project phase to review what worked, what caused trouble, and what to change.

## Sources and adaptation

Observed in EasyRetro template documentation ('Dare, Care & Share Retrospective'), credited on their platform to the EasyRetro Team.

Retained the three core columns (Dare, Care, Share) and card-creation workflow documented on EasyRetro. UWT added explicit group size pacing, hybrid mechanics, facilitator examples, debrief questions, and anonymous participation options to support groups up to 24.

[EasyRetro](https://easyretro.io/templates/dare-care-share/)

Current run sheet: https://unitedwetransform.com/exercises/dare-care-share/