The Debrief I'll Never Forget
I used to treat debriefs like checklists.
Who did what.
What went wrong.
What to fix before the next round.
It was efficient. Neat. Contained.
And utterly incomplete.
Then one moment changed everything.
The High-Stakes Project
We'd just wrapped a high-stakes initiative.
Tense. Fast-moving. Full of late nights.
On paper, it was a success.
We hit the goal.
We delivered the outcomes.
We had the metrics to prove it.
But something felt off.
The room was quieter than usual.
The relief was muted.
The energy didn't match the achievement.
A Different Kind Of Debrief
So instead of running a standard post-mortem, we tried something different.
We asked three questions:
- What did you need that you didn't get?
- When did you feel most supported?
- When did we miss each other - and why?
The answers were humbling.
Someone admitted they'd been afraid to speak up.
Another shared that they felt invisible during the process.
One voice, softer than the rest, said:
"I didn't think anyone noticed how hard that was for me".
The Mirror Moment
It wasn't a debrief.
It was a mirror.
And what it reflected back wasn't just about process or tasks.
It was about people.
That conversation changed how I think about leadership.
Less about control.
More about care.
Less about performance.
More about presence.
Because leadership isn't only about achieving the goal.
It's about what happens to the people along the way.
What I Learned
Since that moment, debriefs and retrospectives have never been the same for me.
I learned that teams don't just need clarity on what went wrong.
They need space to name what they felt.
What they needed but didn't get.
Where support showed up - and where it didn't.
Those insights aren't just "soft" lessons.
They're strategic.
They're the difference between a team that survives a project and a team that grows stronger because of it.
A Quiet Redefinition Of Leadership
Looking back, that debrief wasn't about the initiative at all.
It was about trust.
Trust built not through smooth delivery,
But through honest reflection.
Trust earned not by fixing problems quickly,
But by slowing down long enough to see what really matters.
That day taught me something I carry into every piece of leadership work I do now:
If you're only debriefing what went wrong,
You're missing the deeper lessons of what your team needs.
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