The Most Critical Yet Often Overlooked Step to Success – the DEBRIEF!

If you are a SPEAK! client, you know that we run a debrief on every speaker’s session the week after the event.  This has been our practice from the very beginning and our ability to anticipate our client’s needs and deliver a fun, easy, and stress-free speaker experience is a direct result of the invaluable feedback we have received from our franchisor clients over the years.

During a SPEAK! debrief, we are likely to ask: 

1. What impact did the speaker have on you franchisees overall from your point of view?
2. What direct feedback from franchisees did you receive?
3. How well do you feel the speaker understood your brand, your culture and your learning objectives for the event? Did they do their homework and did they use their understanding to connect more directly and authentically with your franchisees?
4. How were they to work with logistically?  Were they open, available, communicative, flexible, prepared, and relaxed?
5. Was there anything that they could have done better from a preparedness, content, delivery or logistics standpoint?
6. On a scale of ‘1-10’, what score would you give this session/speaker?
7. How did SPEAK! serve you in the process of speaker selection and management?
8. Is there anything that SPEAK! could do to serve you better?
9. Would you recommend SPEAK! to franchise colleagues looking for outside talent? 

Taking advantage of the clarity and wisdom gleaned from a debrief makes it possible to identify: 

1. What worked and how to include those successes in future efforts
2. What didn’t work to be sure and not repeat those actions
3. Create systems, templates, protocols and checklists that will streamline the process the next time around 

The biggest challenge to executing an effective debrief?

Blocking the time to DO IT! 

Many people don”t do a debrief session because they are already busy working on the next project. The purpose of the debrief is to find better ways of doing things the next time by identifying mistakes and clarifying and documenting efficiencies.

In our office we call it ‘completing the cycle’. I can honestly say the practice of running a debreif, whether applied to an event that we are running, a client’s experience of a SPEAK! speaker, or an internal initiative, has been the foundation of our success. 

And by the way, in a Corps Groups facilitated training, franchisees will learn how to execute an effective debrief in a tactical, step-by-step process. 

Happy Debriefing!

More soon…

Katrina