• Goal—a debrief is an evaluation of the decisions each team member makes during an action cycle to determine if our plan, organizing, acting, and adjusting helped us accomplish our mission.
• Good, bad, and the ugly—celebrate the things that went really well, recognize failure, and review things that we did but did ugly. Discuss from the perspective of an end user and team member.
• Teaches the values of a team—for new team members, the debrief is the best way to figure out what a team is truly passionate about; a mission statement may be posted, but the debrief will tell everyone what the leader’s passion is.
• Destroys the easy belief that we did good enough—the debrief should remind us that we have plenty of room for improvement; they are necessary to take a team from okay to a level of excellence that comes from internal accountability.
• Begin by reviewing the facts of what happened—we must have the integrity to accept what actually happened.

Opening Questions

1. What can be scary about a debrief?
2.  Accountability for bad choices—I don’t want to relive a bad situation; either just a giant pat on the back or a way to blameshift.

Closing Thoughts

• Learn from mistakes; don’t just assign guilt.
• Leaders should lead debriefs.
• Discuss root causes of continual failure.
• Don’t be afraid to discuss an individual’s decisions.