Do you facilitate team debriefs or after-action reviews? When a team continually shares, identifies what did and did not work, plus discovers what to do better in the future – the team gets better.
“Debriefs are a type of work meeting in which teams discuss, interpret, and learn from recent events during which they collaborated. In a variety of forms, debriefs are found across a wide range of organizational types and settings. Well-conducted debriefs can improve team effectiveness by 25% across a variety of organizations and settings.”
Debriefs: Teams Learning From Doing in Context
Have you wondered how to facilitate a team debrief through a learning and review process?
In a recorded webinar (below), I share the team debriefs or after-action learning process called Distinctive: Working Well: 100 Days Better with a management team. The method uses a solution-focused approach, and teams can use the debrief with various teams and areas of goals or objectives.
To download the entire how-to packet with templates – CLICK HERE
What Makes a Team Debrief Effective?
The list below is from Debriefs: Teams Learning from Doing in Context
- Debriefs must be diagnostic (i.e., identify specific ways to improve work).
- Ensure that the organization creates a supportive learning environment for debriefs.
- Encourage team leaders/members to be attentive during performance regarding what they may want to discuss later (i.e., work tasks to be debriefed).
- Educate team leaders on the science of leading team debriefs (i.e., facilitation processes).
- Ensure that team members feel comfortable in debriefs (e.g., psychological safety).
- Focus on a few critical performance issues during the debrief (i.e., less is more).
- Describe specific teamwork interactions and processes involved in team performance.
- Support feedback with objective data.
- Provide outcome feedback later (i.e., not during the debrief) and less frequently than process feedback.
- Provide both individual and team-oriented feedback at appropriate times.
- Shorten time delay between task performance and debriefing.
- Record conclusions made and goals set during the debriefing and follow-up.
Team Debriefing and handling complexity, uncertainty, and change
“Consistent with the process of debriefing and outcomes discussed. Debriefs help individuals/teams “make sense” of highly equivocal and ambiguous situations, learn from them, and perform better and safer moving forward.” – Debriefing
For you and your team to learn together, you must have a process. A process to identify plus learn from what makes this team or challenge Distinctive; what did the team and team members do to keep things Working Well (what needs little to no adjustment); and what can we Improve or do better in the future.