The Importance of a Debrief

By Michael Firman, MEA Chairman

Attending the recent MEA Evolve conference on the Gold Coast confirmed for me that our industry is beyond ‘recovery’, we are now in a phase of delivery and celebration.

With a strong demand for events it appears most are focused on strengthening their ability and capacity to deliver. Professional development is now a key focus for many as skill shortages still cripple some segments of our industry. 

For me this translated into a real vibe and a hunger from delegates at Evolve to learn from the great program of speakers on offer and network with industry colleagues. There was a real desire to learn, share ideas, benchmark experiences and celebrate success with peers.

I hope every single delegate uncovered at least one golden nugget of learning that will help improve their development or progress towards future success.

For me there were many little nuggets, but the one session I found empowering was the session delivered by the Afterburner Fighter Pilots. It wasn’t because I’m a Top Gun fan from the 80s energized by the “need for speed”.

The team of Boo, FuZZ and Jazz compared their role of a fighter pilot to that of the every-day event planner, where we suffer from decision fatigue, task saturation, endless prioritising and distractions, with problems to solve and immovable deadlines to meet.

How do we become adaptive leaders and innovate within our teams to become expert communicators? We’re not talking about working at the edge of human endurance like fighter pilots, but how do we develop our people and deliver consistent success?

By analyising your performance and comparing results, a team debrief can help you identify what went right, what went wrong, and what could be better next time. When your life is on the line, fighter pilots debrief after every mission as they strive for continuous improvement and eradication of mistakes.

The key reason to debrief is to learn from your experience and to seek improvement. A debrief allows individuals, teams or organisations to reflect on their performance and identify areas for improvement. Through open discussion and feedback, we can learn from our mistakes and celebrate the successes.

A debrief can also help prepare for future situations by identifying potential challenges, risks and roadblocks to success. By understanding the impacts of decisions made on the fly we can develop strategies to overcome them and set in place safeguards to problems that may arise.

If it’s a recurring project or event, a debrief can provide valuable information to help you improve the next one. And even if the exact same project won’t happen again, you can still glean lessons from that project and apply them to others.

When the team has an opportunity to assess its performance and decision-making, a review of those decisions can provide important feedback that results in a process or procedure to be put in place around the decision-making process for future projects or activities. In this way everyone in the team is on the same page and knows how to react when a problem arises.

Many of us work in high-paced environments where we move quickly from one event to the next, never really taking the time to unpack our teams performance. A debrief allows for acknowledgment and appreciation of those who contributed to the success of the project. A debrief is not always about what did not work, but what did work, what actions individuals took that overcame a particular situation that others can learn from.

When we don’t stop to debrief and reflect, we risk repeating our mistakes or missing opportunities to improve. A debrief should not be seen as a burden or a waste of time - It’s the final step—and a crucial step—in whatever it is we’re doing. Debriefing doesn’t have to be a long, complicated process. It can be as simple as asking what went well, what could have gone better, and what to do differently next time.

How do you take a group debrief to the next level? Sometimes a debrief can get sidetracked, or may focus on the issue rather than the response to the issue. The key is not who’s right, but what’s right. Therefore, a debrief needs to be nameless and rankles whereby anyone in the group regardless of stature or position can contribute without fear or favor.

The debrief is not unfamiliar for our industry, but do we really take the time to honestly appraise our actions and mistakes? While it’s not a ‘life or death’ situation that fighter pilots face, it is an effective way to develop our people and have consistent success in event delivery.