Team’s Year-In-Review Template

What is the Team’s Year-In-Review template?

Reflect on the past year to acknowledge the obstacles you’ve experienced, recognize invaluable lessons, and gain focus and willingness to take action in the next year. Gather with your team for about an hour (or more if needed) to become more self-aware and challenge your thoughts and ideas for the upcoming year. Take into consideration the most essential, professional highlights from the past twelve months and discuss them with your coworkers.

Start the exercise by collecting events, milestones, or other important happenings on the digital calendar or timeline. Mark them in colored circles or highlight them using the already-prepared sticky notes. Then, reminisce on your personal and team’s learnings. Discuss what you’ve accomplished, learned, or overcome, and celebrate together what a great year you had.

What are the benefits of the Team’s Year-In-Review template?

Thanks to the Team’s Year-In-Review template, you can:

• Review all the highlights from the past year and reflect on your learnings and achievements.
• Get a holistic view of all the milestones your team reached in the last twelve months.
• Spot if there are any unresolved issues that you drag into the new year and decide whether to recommit to them or let them go.
• Treat it as an opportunity to learn recurring patterns or themes and use (or stop using) them in different areas of your work.
• Develop a habit of reviewing your and your teammates’ work at regular annual intervals.

How to use the Team’s Year-In-Review template in a few steps?

1. Open the ready-to-use template on a new whiteboard to conduct the team’s review exercise.
2. Mark important dates or events on the annual calendar using ready-made symbols. Highlight important happenings with sticky notes, circles, or emojis. If you want to try a different format than the calendar view, write down events, projects, or milestones on a timeline.
3. Reflect on the items you’ve noted down and discuss with your team the biggest achievements, challenges, and lessons of the last year. Set up a timer to ensure this part of the exercise will not last several hours.
4. Move to the next part of the template and focus on your personal learnings and reflections. Use sticky notes to write down what you’re proud of, what you’ve learned, and what you’re grateful for. Set the timer for this part as well to keep the discussion short.
5. Celebrate your and your teammates’ achievements in a form available and most suitable for you!

**The emojis were designed by OpenMoji – the open-source emoji and icon project. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. The “Show Your Gratitude” stickers were designed by paulalee. The “Express Yourself” stickers were designed by Stickers. The calendar was originally created on canva.com.