I’ve never been very confident trying new things for the first time in a retrospective meeting. I recently, and very belatedly, read Agile Retrospectives by Diana Larsen and Esther Derby and realised the importance of really covering the five stages they recommend. It gives the retro a solid structure and makes me more confident about trying new approaches within the structure.
At the moment I’m working with remote teams. We do retrospectives over HangOuts using https://realtimeboard.com/. The results are sometimes frustrating, often hilarious and always worthwhile.