Successful Debriefing: Ask, Don't Tell

You've just helped lead a team through an experience, and now you want them to debrief what happened and draw some conclusions that will allow them to be more effective the next time.  This sounds simple in theory, but it can be tough in practice, particularly if your team members aren't predisposed to self-reflection.

I recently exchanged emails with a second-year student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business who will soon be leading a team of first-year students through a number of exercises and debrief sessions.  She's concerned because in past debrief sessions that she's led the discussion came to a halt well before the allotted time, and the team didn't learn all they could have as a result.  Here's my response:

Could you be pushing them to the "right" answer too quickly if they don’t appear to be headed in that direction?  Remember that it's OK to let them struggle and to feel frustrated.  There's always the temptation when leading a debrief to tell people what happened--that's an efficient way to get your points across, and yet it's an inefficient way to help people actually learn from the experience.  The learning isn't internalized, it doesn’t stick, and you may wind up shutting down the discussion before the debrief time is up. 

It's generally more effective to ask questions that help people reach their own understanding of what happened, even though this may feel like a less efficient process.  You can share your observations as well, but then ask them to interpret those observations--don't jump in with your own interpretation unless it's absolutely necessary.

I'm reminded of a challenge that I encountered as a reporter in my first job after college.  To get people to talk in clear, readily understandable and quotable language, you have to ask really simple questions that can have the effect of making you look uninformed at best and foolish at worst.  If you give in to the temptation of showing an interview subject how smart and well-informed you are, you'll do all the talking, they won't say anything useful, and you don't really make any progress.

Leading a debrief (and coaching in general) is somewhat similar--the more you talk, the less effective you are.  And when you do talk, you should be asking questions more often than making statements.  And those questions should be open-ended, not leading questions that are really statements in disguise.

Photo by twofivesevenzero.  Yay Flickr and Creative Commons.