December is here, which means you've got about three weeks before everyone checks out mentally for the holidays. This is your window to run a proper team retrospective on 2025 before all those lessons get lost in holiday brain fog.

And no, a retrospective is not just complaining about hard-to-fill roles for an hour. Here's how to actually make it useful.

Set the Frame

Block 90 minutes. No interruptions. Tell your team this isn't a performance review - it's a collective learning session. You want honest feedback about what worked, what didn't, and what you're going to do differently in 2026.

Start with data. Pull your recruiting metrics for the year: time to fill, offer acceptance rates, source of hire, candidate satisfaction scores, hiring manager satisfaction, whatever you track. Put it on the screen. No spin, just facts.

The Three Questions

Keep it simple with three core questions:

What worked well this year? Get specific. "Our employee referral program" is lazy. "Increasing referral bonuses for hard-to-fill engineering roles from $1K to $3K tripled our referrals" is useful.

What didn't work? This is where people get scared of being blamed. Shut that down immediately. You're looking for process failures, not people failures. "Our interview scheduling process added 5 days to every candidate's timeline" is actionable. "Sarah's bad at scheduling" is not.

What are we changing in 2026? This is the money question. For every problem you identified, what's the actual fix? Be realistic about what you control vs. what requires executive buy-in or budget.

Watch for These Patterns

If your team keeps mentioning the same bottleneck (slow hiring manager decisions, budget approval delays, terrible ATS), that's your 2026 priority. Don't try to fix 17 things - pick the top 3 that'll move the needle.

If nobody's willing to be honest, you've got a trust problem bigger than this retrospective. That's useful information too.

Document and Commit

End with a written summary: 3-5 things that worked, 3-5 things that need fixing, and specific actions for Q1 2026. Share it with your team and your leadership. Make it real.

Then actually follow through in January, because nothing kills team morale faster than running a retrospective where everyone shares honest feedback and then nothing changes.

You've got three weeks. Make them count.