The Key to Developing Your Team, (and Yourself)

There’s a key method that successful CEO’s, professional coaches and all top organizations, including the military, use to continually improve their business or operations.

This incredible technique is also one of the most valuable things you can use to improve the quality of your personal life. It will supercharge your self confidence and increase your learning curve 100 times over.

Your relationships will improve. It’ll make you a more effective leader. It will help you overcome anything that leaves any kind of emotional mark, whether it’s positive or negative.

It’s the process of DEBRIEFING.

Knowing how to properly facilitate a debrief will give you the ability to better assess a situation or event. It will help you identify and extract key information that you need to move forward. It builds confidence, competence and efficiency. It eliminates confusion, doubt and fear.

The context of the Debrief obviously varies by circumstance. But it’s applicable in any kind of operation to better train yourself or a team. For example:

• Debriefing a sales meeting, presentation or marketing campaign
• Debriefing a business or sports event
• As a teaching aid or business tool for further development
• And even debriefing an emotional debate or argument

The problem is that most people don’t implement The Entire Debriefing Process into their lives or their business. I’ve witnessed countless cases of people, even in large organizations, miss this critical part of a winning management culture.

They’re “too busy” to facilitate these meetings. Or they don’t see the value in spending billable hours on an employee when that employee can be “working“. In most cases, management doesn’t know how to lead a successful Debriefing.

No matter what the situation is, HOW you facilitate an informative Debrief is based on some simple questions. This is the basic foundation of a debrief. Use this to build on in relation to your situation.

1. WHAT HAPPENED? – Think about your original intention or objective. Then without any emotional charge, go over just the facts
2. WHAT WENT WELL? – Most people skip right over this. They focus so much on what went wrong, cause it’s usually more emotionally charged. But they overlook some key information that can be used to build on. Take the time to cool off if necessary in order to clearly identify what went right, FIRST!
3. WHAT DIDN’T GO WELL? – Again, leave out any negative emotional charge. This is NOT the time to justify or blame. Do your best to honestly and objectively identify what didn’t go well. A lot of people have a hard time with this one because it takes some honest self reflection that may hurt the EGO. So in order to facilitate a successful debrief, it may require some tactful approaches. Dictatorship and blaming only creates separation, and this one sided approach will limit the entire purpose of the debrief.
4. WHY? – This can be most challenging question. Whether you’re by yourself or with a group of people, you’ll get a limited perspective based on your own level of experience or competence. You don’t know what you don’t know. However, just by posing the question you’ll be able to gain some valuable insight. If you want Better Answers, ask Better Questions.
5. WHAT DID I LEARN? – This is the Magic Question. I’m sure you’ve figuratively ‘kicked yourself in the butt’ after an intense situation. Most people will blame, justify and come up with a million excuses why something didn’t work. They’re probably good excuses and most likely all true. But it doesn’t make anything better, except for maybe your ego!

“WHAT DID I LEARN?” is the most important question. [What did you learn] takes it out of right and wrong, and takes it out of whether you screwed up or not.

Replace the words “Right and Wrong” with “What Worked and What Didn’t Work“.

This will take away emotional charge, so you can focus on what matters most.

And ask yourself, what did you learn about you? Look for any pattern of behavior.

The key is to come out of any negative or emotionally charged situation and see the good, or the lesson in it. Without getting that far, you’re bound to repeat the same mistakes in the future.

Seems like common sense? IT IS! But we all know that “acting out on common sense” is Not That Common! Especially when dealing with different personality types. People are emotional beings and everyone responds differently to situations.

I challenge you to try “debriefing” and see what happens!

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