You've 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 in the future. Here are some ideas that may be useful, particularly if past debriefs haven't yielded as much learning as possible.
A leader can easily push their team to the "right" answer too quickly if they don't appear to be headed in the leader's desired direction. Instead, check your need to appear competent or your impulse to be time-efficient, and allow people to make progress toward their own answers at their own pace. This often entails resisting the temptation to tell people what happened–that's an efficient way to convey your point of view, but it's not an effective way to help people actually learn from experience. Learning that results from being told is much less likely to be internalized.
It's more effective to ask questions that help people arrive at their own understanding of what happened, even though this will 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.
To get people to talking more extensively and reflecting more deeply on their experience, it's important to ask simple questions that can have the effect of making you look uninformed or even naive. Asking complicated questions may demonstrate how smart and well-informed you are, but in the process you'll do more talking then they will, and they'll learn much less as a result.
In general, the more you talk when leading a debrief, the less effective you are. When you do talk, questions are usually more useful than statements. And your questions should be open-ended inquiries, not leading questions that are really statements in disguise.
For Further Reading
Experiential Learning Revisited
William James on Experiential Learning
Your Guide to Active Reviewing (Roger Greenaway)
- Greenway, a British trainer and consultant, is one of the leading experts on debriefing, which he calls "reviewing." Don't be put off by the somewhat baffling design of his website–it's a treasure trove of resources.
Updated April 2021.
Photo by Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index.