I appreciate your thoughts, Rakia!

Personally, I’m not a big fan of making surveys anonymous, but of course, it depends on the general climate of the organization. Sometimes, it does feel unsafe to give feedback and anonymous would be the most reasonable choice. Other than that though, I feel it’s more empowering to team members if they are able to give out their name. Plus, it’s an opportunity to follow up with more clarifications.

I read somewhere about retrospectives that managers should not join these meetings (except, perhaps, in special cases) and I understand why. If the member is comfortable opening up to the team, having the manager would hinder that. If they feel unsafe to speak up within their teams, then 1:1’s with their manager would hopefully be a “second line” where they could bring up their thoughts outside of the retrospectives. I still pop into retrospectives once in a while, but more as an observer of the process. Generally though, I would try and avoid it.