How to Lead An Effective Debriefing Meeting

Here’s why I’m liking the book so much: it doesn’t assume that you know how to do something. Most leadership-type books out there assume way too much. They give lots of general principles of things that you should be doing, but they don’t teach you specific ways on how to do them. That’s a really important distinction.

In chapter 5, for example, he gives some questions they use to debrief after a church service, but that I think can just as easily apply to any kind of event.

1. What went right?

2. What went wrong?

3. What was missing?

4. What was confusing?

He says,

“We praise God for what went right. We send thank-you cards to show appreciation to volunteers who went beyond the call of duty. We encourage one another for a message well preached, a song well sung, or a video produced. We all need encouragement. This created an opportunity to build up staff and servants who are working very hard. Then we discuss the other three questions at the same time. This allows us to be specific about problems that took place on Sunday and how they can be remedied. Lastly, we assign the task of fixing the problem to a specific staff member. The solution may be as simple as buying duct tape…or cutting ten minutes off a future message…” (p. 38).

I think there’s two important factors here that we shouldn’t miss. For one, they’re willing to do the painful work of a thorough debriefing. I’m sure this isn’t always the most comfortable thing to do, especially if you’ve messed up in something. But it’s important to learn from it so that the mistake doesn’t happen again. Secondly, they do this every single week on monday. Everything is still fresh on their minds from how the worship experience went. I know most churches (mine included) do not currently debrief this often. But I think it’s the best way, and I will be transitioning to do this very soon.