A trust meter you can feel
A live Room Trust Meter (0 to 100, four named bands) rises and falls with each facilitator move, turning psychological safety research into something a learner watches change.
Corporate L&D · Gamified simulation
RETROSPECTIVE
A Project Manager's Guide to Building Team Trust, plus its mirror for team members. Two simulations, one meeting, opposite chairs.
The problem
A project manager asked me for a more engaging version of the team's retrospective materials. Reading the source documents showed the format wasn't the gap. The materials trained participants, but the need was facilitation: the person running the meeting sets the ceiling on what feels safe to say.
Performance goal: project managers run retrospectives where the team raises risks early, names failures as system problems, and leaves with owned experiments.
What I did
- Re-scoped with the client from participants to facilitators, and named the course around the behavior.
- Action-mapped seven facilitator moves: set the ceiling, decode the hedge, reward the flag, reframe the blame, break the silence, sequence the retro, and match the model.
- Built a seven-unit simulation with five interaction types, three video slots with shot lists, and a five-page PM field guide.
- Built the mirror. The team-member simulation trains the same seven moments from the other chair (come ready, say the uncertain part, raise flags early) on the same engine.
Key decisions
Coach and return, no restarts
A wrong move brings a coaching note and a second try at the same moment, the way a real meeting continues after a misstep.
Never color alone
Every verdict uses an icon and a word as well as color, so the feedback works for color-blind learners and on any screen.
Evidence
44 / 44automated QA checks passing on the simulation engine
7 movestrained from both chairs on one shared engine
5 pagesPM field guide: agenda, scripts, reframes, checklist
Because both simulations share one engine, the same test suite runs on each. A content change can't quietly break scoring or navigation.
Run the meeting
Start as the project manager, then switch chairs.