Debrief

Goals of the debrief

The goal of our debriefs is to improve quality and performance of the whole unit, and to stop bad practices from happening again in the future.

General Guidelines

• Keep the goal in mind - The debrief should help improve the unit's as well as the individual's performance.
• Be fair - Do not complain about the performance of other leaders, especially not in their absence (during the squad debrief). You may address issues you had in a constructive manner in the platoon debrief.
• Do not accuse, do not judge, do not single someone out - This leads to people becoming defensive and thus is not expedient. Address issues you have with other people in a way that you give them the chance to address them themselves first, and if they don't then talk about it in a constructive manner. Keep in mind that others made decisions based on information they had at that time, which might differ from what you knew.
• Keep it brief - Stay on point and make sure the conversation does not drift. Do not hold monologues. Do not lose the point of the discussion by arguing about specifics of a certain situation. The debrief should be as short and on point as possible.

Schedule

1. Element debriefs - The individual elements split up to hold the squad internal debriefs. This should not take longer than 5 minutes.
   1. Team internal feedback - SLs should first ask the Teams (Red, Green, …) for individual feedback for each other. They should have observed their Team members during the ops and noticed any bad practices. Go through all teams first. Ideally you use most time of the squad debrief for this step. If teams drift off the SL should intervene.
   2. Open discussion - SLs can point out errors that were not addressed in the previous point and should ask if anyone noticed any important mistakes. Nobody should feel pressured into saying something just for the sake of it - if there is nothing to say or everything has been said already, move on.
   3. Feedback for the SL - The SL asks for feedback on their personal performance as an SL. Make sure not to go too much into details, keep it brief.
2. Announcements - Everyone joins together. Officers / NCOs inform about current announcements.
3. Platoon debrief - The PL moderates the debrief. The Platoon Debrief should not recap everything that has happened.
   1. Open discussion - The PL asks if there was anything going majorly wrong in the ops and guides the discussion to focus on only the single most important issue.
      • The PL should ask even if he thinks he knows the answer. This is to give others the chance to speak first.
      • The PL should moderate the discussion to focus on up to one point only, this one point being the gravest mistake that happened. The leading question for this discussion should be "How can we make sure this does not happen again".
      • If nothing majorly bad happened and the OP went well you may well skip this whole discussion.
      • This is not a discussion about element internal problems, as those should have been addressed in the element debrief.
      • The discussion should involve everyone. If the issue at hand is exclusively about mistakes made on a leadership level the discussion should be moved to the leaders debrief.
      • This is not about blaming people or pointing out errors individuals made, but rather to make sure the unit does not repeat this mistake in the future.
      • This discussion should not take longer than 5 minutes. As such, PL will have to guide the discussion to stay on point.
   2. Feedback for the mission maker
   3. End of Platoon meeting - People who were not in any leading position are dismissed at this point (they may stay however if they wish). The leadership elements will continue debriefing after a 5 minutes break.
4. Leaders debrief - After the 5 minutes the leadership personnel (PL, SLs, 2ic, leaders of additional elements) and any interested other people debrief about the OP on a tactical and command level.
   • The discussion happens as an open discussion, PL will not moderate. In fact, the command hierarchy is dissolved at this point.
   • Make sure you give constructive feedback, treating everyone with respect and giving them the benefit of the doubt. Often people made decisions that may look stupid from your point of view but were well justified given the information they had at the situation they were in.
   • This part of the debrief still is about improving the unit in future operations. It is not expedient to discuss specific situations in great detail.
   • If two people get into an argument or a lengthy discussion about details others should step in and stop it.