Note:  this is a post on how to become your own debrief coach.  I think it is possibly as important as anything I have written, if you desire to keep getting better at what you do.

First, a book excerpt:

The ritual for students on the IS 318 team was that, win or lose, after each game they would come back to the team room for a postmortem with the school’s chess teacher, Elizabeth Spiegel.
She started re-creating the game on the board between them, making each of Sebastian’s opponent’s moves while Sebastian relayed his own moves.
(Paul Tough, How Children Succeed)

In How Children Succeed:  Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, Paul Tough describes in detail the one-on-one debriefing that each chess player has to undergo after each match at IS 318, a Middle School with a remarkably successful chess team.  The teacher/coach who leads the debrief is Elizabeth Spiegel.  That’s the “she does not hug” chess coach.  She gets in their faces, challenges them, and goes over their every move with insight and counsel.  (Read chapter 3, How to Think, in How Children Succeed.  It is a remarkable chapter).

There are some universal truths we should have learned by now.  One is, you don’t get better at what you do without working at it.  Another is, you probably need the help of some training, and maybe mentoring, and maybe coaching to keep getting better.  And, the closer to one-to-one that is, especially if that one-to-one help is really good at the coaching/helping task, the better chance you have in your quest to get better.

And what I learned from the example of this great chess coach is that the one-on-one help must be very specific.  “This is what you did.  This is what you did that worked well – here, let me show you.  This is what you did that did not work – here let me show you.”

But, sadly, most of us do not have the luxury of a master coach debriefing us once a week with such precise attention to the detail of how we actually performed our tasks, our jobs, or how we tackled our challenges.

So – here is the challenge we all face.  We have to learn to coach ourselves.  And, that means we have to learn to do specific, point-by-point, moment-by-moment debriefs of the tasks we performed.  We need to have a “video” (at least in our minds) of what we did.  And then we need a “brain scan” (again, not a real one) to help us examine why we did this instead of that.  All with the intent of improving the next time we tackle a similar task.

I think of professional football players, and the gifted genius of Peyton Manning.  We all know that every team has sessions where players watch game video together, and the coaches debrief the players.  “This is what you did well on this play.  This is how you blew this play.”  Not to make them feel bad.  Not to make them feel good.  But to help them do better in the next game.  But Peyton Manning, though he probably fully participates in such sessions, goes a big step further.  From what I’ve read about him, he watches himself, by himself, and critiques himself relentlessly.  And he watches his next opponent with the same kind of focus.   He is constantly thinking, planning, plotting.  Peyton Manning’s most important and helpful and critical coach/teacher is …Peyton Manning.

And if we could learn to debrief, and then correct, on our own, with debriefing skills as good as the play-by-play debrief of a master coach/teacher like Elizabeth Speigel, then we would have a much greater shot at actual and continual improvement.

So, here are the takeaways from this post:

#1 – Recognize that you will not get “better” at what you do without attention-to-detail debrief coaching.
#2 – If you can afford to hire a great debrief coach, do so.
#3 – If you can’t, you have to learn to debrief yourself.  You have to learn to do so with specificity – play-by-play, step-by-step.
#4 – Do not let a week go by without your “weekly debrief session.”
#5 – Repeat, week after week after week.
(#6 – And, you have to debrief your own debrief coaching.  How are you doing as your own coach?)

Now, a couple of footnotes:

A “pre-mortem” might be just as valuable as a “post-mortem.”  In other words, plan with specificity, and then debrief with specificity.

and

You’ll have to figure out just what part of your weekly activities to debrief.  You could:  videotape a presentation you give (even if it is a three minute presentation in a team meeting); you could print out 10 of your e-mails, and re-read them in a debrief session; you could “replay’ a crucial conversation or two.

But this is what I know.  The “be your own coach” advice requires some actual coaching – some actual work, some actual debriefing sessions, over the long haul, over and over and over again.

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Note:  after you get good at debriefing yourself, then you can spot some things to work on.  That is the idea.  Read this post from my blogging colleague Bob Morris, What if I Cannot Afford a Consultant.  He makes a generous offer to point you to some critical resources to help you work on your specific areas.

And – note:  if you give presentations, it really is worth it to get some presentation skills coaching, with some video debriefing.  That is one of my areas of professional expertise.  Contact me, and let’s discuss.