Team Debriefing Tips and Outline
Debriefs are a quick, simple, yet powerful tool for ensuring a team learns, gels, and improves over time. During a debrief, team members reflect upon a recent experience(s), discuss what went well and identify opportunities for improvement. They attempt to build a common understanding (e.g., clarifying priorities, roles, goals, or how to handle certain situations) and establish agreements to ensure future success (e.g., how they intend to work together in the future).
A debrief can occur after any team experience, for example, after a challenging situation or event, at any point during a project or work cycle, at the conclusion of a shift, or following a team activity.
Research shows that teams that debrief outperform other teams by an average of 20%! And the actions you take as debrief leader can make a big difference.
• Conduct short periodic debriefs and not just end of project “postmortems.” While an end of project debrief may provide insights for future work, they are too late to make a mid-course correction. Get in the habit of conducting relatively quick, periodic team debriefs.
• Schedule a time to debrief. While it would be great if debriefs happened spontaneously, in our experience that rarely happens. Allocate 30 minutes for a quick debrief and 60 minutes if you want to take a deeper dive. While there isn’t a magic frequency, a reasonable target is to debrief once per month or every other month. However, if your team operates in a dynamic environment and works together constantly, you may want to conduct more frequent debriefs (that’s why agile programming teams huddle up daily). For teams that only work together periodically, such as senior leadership teams, a more appropriate target may be to do quarterly or biannual debriefs.
• If you are the team leader, be sure to use the following debriefing tips:
1. During the discussion, let your team members talk first.
• If you respond first it, can discourage their input.
2. Find a way to acknowledge a mistake you made or how you intend to change.
• It makes it easier for others to do so.
3. Encourage all team members to participate in the discussion.
• Research shows that the best debriefs are those in which more team members contribute.
• Simply “allowing” everyone to contribute often isn’t enough for some members to speak up; you need to actively encourage people to share their perspective, in some cases asking directly. “Suzanne, what do you think?”
4. If someone voices a concern or admits they could have done something better, do not chastise them—make it safe for them (and others) to speak up.
• Otherwise, you discourage others from voicing a concern or admitting a misunderstanding.
• You can’t see everything, so you need your team to be willing to share their observations.
5. Be sure to periodically ask, “Should we make an adjustment in how we do this?”
• If so, explore how best to adjust (the forward look).
• Capture any agreements and follow up on them during the next meeting.
• Avoid the five debriefing “pitfalls.” We’ve observed five common problems that can derail or diminish the value of a team debrief. They are all avoidable if you’re conscious of them.
1. The leader talking too much and talking at the team (“telling” and not asking enough questions to engage the team).
2. The focus is strictly on task work (e.g., technical aspects of work) and not on discussing teamwork issues (e.g., how well we are communicating and backing up one another).
3. Team members feel that they aren’t able to weigh in (a common concern in hierarchical teams).
4. Time is wasted discussing areas of agreement and avoiding challenging topics (without guidance, almost all teams gravitate towards “safe” topics and defer the important issues to later, if ever).
5. The discussion looks backward (reflect/discuss) but not forward (action/agreements).
To get the most value out of any debrief that you lead, be sure to have the following “mindset.”
• Participants first, you second. When it is time for reflection and critique, let the team go first. If you begin by telling the team what you think they did wrong (or right), it may discourage them from speaking up and the team will be less likely to “own” any subsequent plans. So, avoid telling too much or too soon—either results in less learning.
• Look back, then forward. There are essentially two parts to a debrief. The first part is to reflect and understand what happened (the “look back”). Then, based on those observations, agree to specific action plans (the “look forward”).
• Ask and pause. Let silence be your friend. Ask questions and give the group time to think and respond without “filling in the blanks” for them. You can’t see and know everything about your team, so you and the team will learn more if team members speak up.
• What’s right, not who is right. Avoid finger pointing or chastising. If team members feel they are being punished for admitting a problem they will stop speaking up. Moreover, other team members will be less likely to acknowledge anything that might make them look bad.
• All aboard. When possible, try to involve all team members. Invite all team members to participate. Ask quieter team members for their input.
• Be the navigator, not the driver—unless they aren’t driving properly! It is helpful to think of yourself as the navigator for the debrief rather than the person driving all the answers.
• Reinforce and thank. Reinforce the team for what they did well. Thank people when they acknowledge a mistake, so they feel comfortable doing so next time.
• Acknowledge something (work-related) you could have done differently or better. When you acknowledge how you can improve it makes it easier for your team members to do so.
© The Group for Organizational Effectiveness, Inc. From gOEbase (www.gOEbase.com). Permission granted.
1. Set the stage (30 seconds).
• Explain why you are conducting a debrief and what the team will be discussing.
• “This is a quick opportunity to learn from our experience. Let’s take a look at how we handled this [situation, project, event, meeting, shift, activity]. What we did well and could improve.”
• “Let’s consider how we worked as a team, in addition to any technical issues.”
Basic Assumption: “We’re all competent and well-intentioned people who want to do our best. This is about getting better at what we do.”
2. Ask the team for their observations (5–20 minutes).
• What did we do well? What challenges did we face?
• What should we do differently or focus on next time?
• Do more or less frequently? Do faster? Do better? Stop doing? Start doing?
Tip. Ask the team for their perceptions first. Then if possible, acknowledge one thing that you could have done differently or that you will focus on in the future. This will make it easier for team members to voice their own observations or concerns.
Tip. If the team doesn’t discuss teamwork, ask “how well did we work together as a team?” Perhaps ask one or two specific questions such as
3. Add your observations/recommendations and confirm understanding. (2–5 minutes)
• Reinforce their observations, or if you noticed something different, share your view of what happened or needs to happen in the future.
• Be sure your feedback is clear, actionable, and focuses on the work, not personal traits.
4. Summarize any agreed upon actions or focus for the future (2–3 minutes).
• Confirm if the team will do anything differently going forward and, if so,
• Be clear about who will do what, when, and how this will help the team.
• Specify when and how you’ll follow up to assess progress (e.g., when the next debrief will occur).
© The Group for Organizational Effectiveness, Inc. From gOEbase (www.gOEbase.com). Permission granted.