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Think about one of the best teams that you've been on. It could be a team at work or a team from outside of the workplace. Was that team great on day one? We've asked this question to thousands of people over the years and very, very few teams are great when they are first formed. The best teams become great because they learn from their experiences and they make adjustments. They self-correct. While a few teams and team leaders seem to do this naturally, most need a little structure and guidance. Fortunately, there is a relatively simple, inexpensive technique, called a team debrief, that when applied properly, has been shown to consistently enhance team effectiveness. This article highlights what you need to know to conduct successful team debriefs.
Not all teams are created equally, but virtually any team can benefit from a team debrief. The technique was originally developed for military use in the '70s1, but since then, it has been shown to be useful in a broad range of settings. The original debriefs were fairly elaborate, thorough affairs (imagine debriefing a recent battle), but most current debriefs, particularly those in corporate settings, are fairly efficient, often being conducted in 15 to 60 minutes.
Well-conducted debriefs work, and there is strong meta-analytic evidence to support that contention. A meta-analysis is a statistical combination of all prior empirical studies on a topic. We generally have more confidence in the findings from a meta-analysis than from any one study. Tannenbaum and Cerasoli conducted a meta-analysis of 46 prior research samples that examined debriefing.2
On average, teams that conduct debriefs outperform those that do not by over 20 percent. That's a remarkable bump for a relatively simple intervention. During a debrief, a team simply reflects upon and discusses recent experiences, identifying what went well and where improvements may be possible. They reach agreements on specific adaptations they intend to make and then they get back to work. In the course of doing this, they often fill in team members' knowledge gaps ("I didn't know that happened"); surface where they might need additional support (which perhaps their leader can request); and develop shared mental models about priorities, roles, or what to do in certain situations ("if-then") in the...