The art of the TEAM DEBRIEF

Nobody gets out of bed to crash a helicopter.?

And yet I've crashed a helicopter... MORE THAN ONCE in fact.?

The same is true for the people in your team.

None of them want to make a mistake. And yet they will. And therefore it stands to reason that if one person makes an honest mistake ANY OTHER person could have made the same mistake. Therefore it’s crucial that we can extract and share the learnings from our mistakes so that everyone can benefit, we can refine our processes and improve our performance.?

If an organisation fires someone who has made an honest mistake they've just fired the person with the most information about what went wrong, and the most motivation to put it right.?

Hopefully you can see therefore, that punishing mistakes is NOT the way to prevent them happening again.?

Instead we need to create a culture where we can recognise, report and share our mistakes.

This is where the TEAM DEBRIEF can be helpful. We did these every day in the military, so I took them for granted. But I realise this idea may be new to you. So I’ll walk you through it.

THE TEAM DEBRIEF

What is it?

So you might wonder what a debrief is? In the flying world it would happen after EVERY flying mission. So every day, after we landed we get together as a crew and go over the mission. It was pretty formulaic in that we’d follow the same structure every time.

Something like this:

Flight safety points? (Did anything happen that nearly killed us? How can we report this to the rest of the aviation community?)

Crew resource management? (“how did we work as a team”)

Task achieved? (“Did we achieve what we set out to and if not why not?”)

Learning points? (What could we do better next time, as an individual, as a team, what processes or resources would we need next time?)

Next event? (When does the bar open?)

The captain would lead the debrief but it was an open floor and anybody could pitch in.?

Why do we do it?

This is an important question to ask yourself if you decide to implement the team debrief. ?

Why are you doing it? What do you hope to gain from it?

It‘s worth pausing on these questions because the objective of the debrief might be different in different scenarios.

For example:?

On front line operations, the primary purpose of the debrief was to reduce risk to life (RtL). After all, we were in the business of taking risk (you can’t really go to war without taking risk) but doing so as safely we could (because crashing planes is expensive and gives the enemy an advantage). The best way to reduce the risk was understand it in the first place. That means we needed to be able to talk about things that increased risk. And then we could learn how we could mitigate it better next time.?

During training the aim of the debrief was to accelerate learning. This was aimed both at the individuals and the team. Learn what you did well, learn what you could do better so you can fly better next time. Learn how to work as a crew better. This would in turn reduce the risk to life because we would get better and therefore safer.?

A secondary outcome of the debrief was creating the culture where it was normal to talk about mistakes and to receive feedback. These days, in your organisation you might recognise that as creating psychologically safe culture.?

Here are some of the outcomes that could be relevant for your organisation;

-Create the right culture?

-Accelerate growth from learning (for individuals and/or teams)

-Recognise success and show appreciation for hard work (increase employee engagement)

-Horizon scan for potential challenges (reduce risk)

Deciding what you want to achieve from a debrief will shape how you go about it and how you structure it. For example if you want to increase employee engagement you might prioritise “recognising success and showing appreciation.” If you want to win the next “great place to work” award you might prioritise “create the right culture.”

So how do we go about it?

How do we go about it?

Regardless of your “why” for implementing debriefing there are a few “golden rules” that I’ve observed that will stand you in good stead. In fact, in my research for this article I realised just how important the HOW is. I’d been trying to come up with a “standard format” that I could take to market and had been speaking with several experts on this, both military and commercial. ?And I realised the format depends on your why, hence the paragraph above. Furthermore, as Iain Lunan OBE reminded me - the how is more important than the what; you can have the most beautifully crafted debrief script in the world, with really quality questions, but if you punish people for speaking up or you carry your “rank” into the room it’s just not going to work. In fact we even discussed if there is a chicken and egg scenario here: what comes first, creating the culture so that debriefing can be effective or implementing the debrief to shape the culture. I hope that by focusing on the HOW this article will give some insights into the latter; implementing the debrief to shape the culture.

So what are the “golden rules?”

Comment on observable facts and behaviours and their impact. In the flying world that would sound like this: I noticed your speed was higher than normal on the approach. ?The effect of that was you needed to decelerate more aggressively in the final stages of approach which put the tail quite close to the ground.?

Notice the instructor is only commenting on what they can see (behaviours). And because of that they can comment on the consequences (impact) of those actions. They might even go on to recommend a different set of actions (behaviours) to end up with a different set of outcomes (impact).?

I would recommend bringing your speed back earlier next time. Remember to look out the window at top of drop and set a “fast walking pace” in comparison to the ground. That will make the deceleration more comfortable next time.

Now imagine the instructor said this;?

“You were obviously in a hurry to land. You were way too fast and then you nearly spanked the tail in at the end. You must consider the safety of the crew.”

You see how the instructor has assumed they knew what the student was thinking and had been critical about it? Imagine the student was actually trying to impress the instructor by showing them they could do things more efficiently. They’d be crushed. And they’re likely to feel resentment for being wrongly assessed. Truthfully - this happened quite a lot in flying training. It was a frustration all training pilots can identify with. I’m not pointing this out to settle an old grudge. I’m pointing this out to remind us that it’s REALLY easy to fall into the trap of assuming you know what is in someone’s mind.?

You don’t. So don’t go there.?

Comment on the observable behaviours and facts. Comment on the impact. ?

And if you must make assumptions about what someone else is thinking always always assume positive intent.

Which brings me onto the next point. ?

Assume positive intent. I’ll say this again. Nobody gets out of bed to crash a helicopter. This was really drilled into us whenever an incident happened. The assumption was EVERYONE intended to do a good job that day and therefore ANYONE could have made the same mistake. That’s not to remove accountability or to try and assume some kind of collective responsibility as a get-out clause. It was to ensure that when an incident was investigated, we went about it in the right way: to learn from it so that everyone could benefit. I’m not saying there won’t be occasions when someone is being negligent or even malicious. This happens. But start by assuming positive intent, gather the information and THEN you can make a decision about their motives.?

In military aviation the most common motivation was “risk taking for organisational gain”. In other words highly motivated people will sometimes make mistakes when they are trying to do the “right thing” for the organisation.This highlights another important point… if you want to be an agile organisation that grows, people need to be able try new things and take some risk. So we need to be careful not to punish people who are prepared to stick their neck out to do a good job. ?This is another reason to assume positive intent (remember intent is not the same as impact - we can acknowledge people wanted to do the right thing, even if it turns out they didn’t actually do the right thing). Most of the time your assumptions will be right.

Make it a regular thing. If someone turns to you completely out of the blue and says - “could we talk about what happened last week?” - what would you be thinking? You wouldn’t be alone if you were to assume the worst and think you’re about to be managed out of the company. This is because of the way we are wired - we have a negativity bias which means we default to thinking the worst (and you’ll think this EVEN IF YOUR WORKPLACE CULTURE IS REALLY HEALTHY). We can’t suddenly decide to only think positive things but we can create the evidence for a more balanced way of thinking. In other words, by regularly debriefing in constructive way, we start to realise “ok the last debrief wasn’t so bad, maybe I don’t need to panic next time.” And when we start to trust the process a bit more, we’ll be more likely to share mistakes and be more willing to take on some feedback.?

Ok so those are some golden rules to get you started.?

Now you need to decide what does a team debrief actually look like?

What does it look like for you??

It is a good idea to have an agreed format which you follow every time because this makes the debrief consistent and objective and therefore people are less likely to freak out every time you conduct one. However as I mentioned above, the precise format of YOUR debrief will depend on your WHY and your HOW. My recommendation is to take time to consider the points above and then agree with your team the standard format you will use.

You can use the image below to get you thinking about what your team debrief could template could look like. If you’d like me to walk you through this process then reach out and ask me about my TEAM DEBRIEF workshops. ([email protected])

But before I go…..

Some important health warnings?

I understand that in the commercial world we always want to understand the return on the investment. Will debriefing demonstrably increase our growth, revenue, will it reduce errors and how will we know? The answer to all of these question is YES. But be aware of the “false positives” issue. In Amy Edmonson’s “The Fearless Organisation” she makes the point that when she started studying psychological safety in hospitals she noticed the “best” medical teams were making more mistakes than lower skilled teams. A closer look, however, revealed they weren’t making more errors they were just more open to reporting them which led to them refining their work processes and finding better ways of working.?

So the key message is, if it feels like you’re going backwards, you might actually be going forwards. Rather than obsessing on measurements and metrics, pay attention to how the culture feels and how open your team mates are. And keep in mind, you’ll need to keep the faith. ?

And finally…..If you go down this brave path you need to be prepared to learn that sometimes your actions don’t have quite the impact you were hoping for. Remember intent and impact are not guaranteed to be the same thing (See my previous blogs). Just because you want to do a good job doesn't mean you won’t sometimes miss the mark. The team debrief will help you to see that, but that doesn’t mean it won’t sting a bit. Maybe you’ll realise your killer pitch wasn’t landing the way you wanted it to. Maybe sending 25 reminder emails in the vinegar strokes of a project was more hindrance than help. But please take heart, if it’s hard for you, it’s hard for everyone. And by stepping forward and being open to sharing lessons and receiving feedback you’re showing great courage. ?

And that’s a great way to start building a formidable culture because as I like to say….. fear is contagious, so is courage.?

Key takeaways….

??Most people want to do a good job. So if they’ve got something wrong its better to assume anyone could have made the same mistake and extract the learning.

??A team debrief is a great way to capture learning and accelerate growth: it can also be used to build a positive learning culture, to horizon scan and to recognise effort and success. ?

??Working out WHY and HOW you are going to debrief is as important, if not more important than working out WHAT the debrief will look like.

??Take some time to consider your WHY and HOW and then you can decide WHAT the debrief will look like - consistency and repetition is key here.?

??Remember that this can feel counterproductive to start with; An increase in error reporting might look bad but will ultimately help refine processes, and receiving feedback might sting, but you can feel proud that you were brave enough to do it in the first place.

If you’d like me to come and talk to your team about how to create a growth mindset culture and how to implement your own team debrief please reach out to [email protected]