Everything You Need to Know About Debrief Meetings

If you’ve ever served in the military or in medicine, you’ll be well aware of what a debrief is – and if you haven’t, you’ve probably seen one in the movies or on TV. In those contexts, they are often quite traumatic and done under pressure, to get to the bottom of something that has gone seriously wrong. But what about in the world of business? What are debriefs and are they useful for running a company?

What is a debrief meeting?

Essentially, a debrief meeting is where everyone who had a stake in a certain event gets together to talk about how it went. It could be any event – a sales push, a conference, a product launch, a recruitment drive, a supplier change – that is likely to be repeated and which affects the business. 

A debrief can happen after a dismal failure or a roaring success – it’s all about analysing how everything went and deciding which practices should be kept and which should be abandoned. The goal is continual improvement in business practices.

How to run a debrief meeting

A debrief meeting will usually be chaired by someone in a supervisory role, either the person directly in charge of the event that has just happened or someone superior to them. It helps if someone is taking minutes for the meeting too – we’ve got advice on that skill in a separate article.

Invite all stakeholders

Everyone who was involved with the conception, planning and execution of the event should be present either in-person or virtually. That’s the best way to get a full picture of what happened, and to respond to other people who might be mistaken or could be trying to deflect responsibility.

Make it open, honest and blameless

It doesn’t matter how badly the event went – start by thanking everyone for coming and assuring them that the purpose of this debrief is to learn and to improve. Unless there’s a culture of honesty, you’ll never get to the bottom of what happened. 

When there has been a business calamity, it’s rarely down to one person; management and the company owners can be just as responsible through lack of planning, training, delegation or trust in staff. Being open includes accepting potentially being held responsible yourself as manager.

Don’t lead the conversation

This is an important guideline – don’t impose your own views about what happened to your subordinates. It will be very difficult for them to contradict you. It’s generally considered good practice in debriefs to start by asking the most junior people on the team what their experiences and lessons were and work up the hierarchy. 

That way, nobody is taking cues from those above, and opinions can be given without fear or favour. For management, a debrief should always be about listening, not talking, so set the mood from the start.

Start with the positives

Now it’s on to the debrief itself. It’s always good to ask attendees what positives they can take from the experience because these will be the things to repeat and focus on next time. It also helps ease the meeting off on a good footing and can lubricate the sense of openness that will be useful in the next part.

Move on to the negatives

Inevitably, there will always be things that have gone wrong. It’s much easier to talk about the negatives from an overwhelmingly positive event than it is from a disaster, but it’s the most important hurdle to cross if you and your team want to improve. It can’t be stressed enough that candour is crucial, even though it can lead to friction, as it’s inevitable that someone will feel someone else is to blame for something. 

But as we said before, if management makes it clear that any failings below them are at least partly their fault, honest, constructive criticism of anyone should be treated as criticism of their actions, not their personality. Actions can be remedied a lot more easily than characters, so that’s a good thing.

Obviously, in the real world, we all understand how hierarchy or interpersonal stress can make it difficult for people to criticise others. For that reason, it might be useful to have some sort of channel via which individuals can report either anonymously, with the understanding that they won’t be identified or have any identifiable parts of their testimony revealed. While openness should be encouraged, it could be anonymous information that cracks the nut and leads to the improvements that need to be made.

Plan how to fix issues and who is responsible

The debrief started on a positive note, and now it can finish on one. How can we take the lessons we have learnt and channel them into making sure the bad things don’t happen again, and the good things do? Were there communication issues? Was technology lacking? Were people making decisions above their pay grade for want of a manager to talk to? Was there insufficient funding? Were deadlines too tight? There are hundreds of potential issues that are solvable. 

While it might not be possible to come up with detailed plans in the debrief meeting, you can start to nominate people on the team who can report back with potential remedies. Give people sufficient time to come back with solutions to be discussed later.

Distribute minutes

Let everyone present have a copy of the meeting minutes as soon as possible after the debrief. It acts as a full stop and gives an opportunity to move on. You can include a note of thanks for attending and contributing, and some positive messaging about how things are going to improve going forward.

Follow up

Finally, although not part of the debriefs itself, the issues raised are the whole point of the meeting, so make sure they don’t go ignored. Let people know what has changed as a result of the debrief – it’ll make them more likely to open up next time such a meeting is called. Another way to encourage openness is to be forgiving and grateful to people for being honest, especially if it’s to their own detriment. Unless there has been a serious breach of rules or someone has broken the law, for example, don’t dwell on people’s mistakes. Draw a line under the event and make a fresh start.

Location is important

It’s often a good idea to hold you debrief meeting on “neutral territory”, especially if it is dealing with the aftermath of an unfortunate event. It helps to foster the air of neutrality and openness that you’re aiming for. With remote workforces, fresh meeting space can also be neutral geographically, too. 

That’s why it’s smart to hire a meeting room for the purpose. With Meetingo, you’ve got all the services you’d expect of your own office – receptionist, full connectivity, air conditioning, comfortable seating and possibly food delivery and so on. However, you can choose this one from thousands of locations worldwide, from cool city-centre boutique meeting rooms to large spaces in business parks, whichever suits you best. Find out more here.