The Debriefing Project

The Debriefing Project

While numerous practices exist for individual moments of reflection, there are still relatively few safe and respectful spaces for honest reflection in conversation with others.  This distinction is emphasized intentionally.  There are many spaces in which peacemaking practitioners are asked to speak about and reflect on their work in conversation with others: in reports to donors, at conferences or conventions, and during public presentations and press releases, among others.  However, none of these examples provides an an even moderately neutral space.  In most cases, practitioners in each of these settings feel pressure to articulate their work in the best way possible: reflecting on successes, difficulties that were overcome, moving stories, etc.  Although this is certainly not true of all individuals, many practitioners would hesitate to use any of these spaces to speak about ongoing problems they’ve been unable to solve, frustrations and fears, or past mistakes.  However, in order for deep and broad reflection to be possible, these mercurial elements must have a place to be considered.  While any conversational space may never be entirely neutral, one of the most significant qualities of a safe and confidential debriefing process is its openness.  It is a process that can serve as an open space for reflection on all aspects of practice, without threat or fear of direct negative repercussions.  

 

A process of peeling an onion

When all the layers are peeled apart, reflection helps to analyze each of them and internalize the knowledge behind them, thus turning passive knowledge into active knowledge. Open-ended debriefing styles can allow practitioners to penetrate deeper into their memory and experience and uncover previously untouched layers of knowledge.

While it may seem, after the session has ended, that the process of reflection has been completed, reflection in fact triggers continuous thinking, and oftentimes the brain continues to work on processing and internalizing information long after a particular debriefing session has concluded. Debriefing may focus on layers of experience that are typically under-addressed or examined

Reflective conversations can be used for a variety of purposes, including strategic planning, program innovation or evaluation, and increasing operational efficiency. The level of trust and respect that a debriefer can offer to the practitioner and bring to the process of debriefing, will directly determine the quality of the debriefing and how constructive it is.

Considering the many forms that debriefing can take, complexity can at times appear to compound complexity.  This is certainly true in the field of peacemaking, where conflict dynamics are more often than not extremely nuanced and intense, and often intransigent.  Within this context of complexity, an appropriate debriefing methodology to support peacemaking practice may often only be found with difficulty, with patience, and with trust.  In this way, debriefing often mirrors aspects of peacemaking practice itself, in that it is grounded in relationships, carried out over the long term, and based on trust.

 

Debriefing can:

Prioritize objectives

Sharpen program focus

Generate insights

Penetrate complex obstacles

Coordinate dynamic projects

Improve workflow

Leverage systems perspectives 

Methods

 

Emergent Debriefing

Structured debriefing processes, or semi-structured spaces for reflection, can provide opportunities and methodologies for analysis of this implicit knowing phenomenon.

an emergent process of inquiry that examines a wide range of factors, and has the potential to uncover previously hidden considerations

meta-analysis and introspection serve to elicit perspectives that were obscured by the patterns and inertia of daily life

reflection can assist in articulating that tacit knowledge

movement between coherence and complexity is one of the core elements of the debriefing process

The debriefer focuses on maximizing a reflective experience for the participant and eschews delivery of advice or recommendations based on content expertise.  This process facilitates self-directed learning and supports the participant as they address their current environment and their response to it.  The fluid protocol of emergent debriefing means that the debriefer may cycle through many of the steps of the debriefing process within a single session.  The dynamic, responsive nature of this type of debriefing protocol is designed to facilitate identification of core considerations of a situation or challenge, and to increase clarity about participants’ responses to their environment.

 

Facilitated Learning

provide practitioners a conversational space to vocalize implicit knowledge with a debriefer

This process ideally forces the practitioner to vocalize the implicit knowledge they’ve already gained from these experiences, and make it explicit.  Once the knowledge is explicit, it’s much easier to use in terms of future planning, processing, and understanding one’s own work.

There are several settings in which this form of debriefing may be particularly useful.  After a project is completed, a practitioner, or team of practitioners, may wish to process and understand the experience.  Alternatively, practitioners who have been working for many years may be interested in debriefing these multiple experiences, drawing out the implicit knowledge of their own methods, goals, and approaches.  This may be for the goal of bettering one’s work in the future, for conducting a thorough evaluation of past work, understanding the successes and failures of past experiences in order to adequately and ethically plan future work, or merely for the purpose of gaining a greater understanding of the multitude of processes that go into one’s peacemaking work.

 

Investigative Debriefing

an intelligence-gathering practice.  Within an investigative setting, a debriefer would engage with a practitioner in a series of pre-determined but open-ended questions designed to facilitate a reflective process that would elicit knowledge from the practitioner for the benefit of the conflict resolution field as a whole.

seeks to facilitate a synthesis of the core lessons and learnings from the session, potentially for the goal of wider sharing

 

Co-debriefing

conducted internally by a team itself, without an external facilitator

there are cases when co-debriefing becomes particularly important.  This includes situations that have clearly pronounced ethical questions, including those of safety; when there is a conflict in the team of facilitators; when the team includes new members; when the team is working in a new environment or a new conflict or in a violent conflict; or, when outside events have a direct impact on the facilitation process.  In other words, facilitator co-debriefing is particularly important when the team needs to attend to ethical or relational dynamics, or when the context they are working in is volatile and the facilitation process might benefit from on-going rethinking and adjustments.

A team of facilitators is likely to encounter methodological, power or personal differences or dynamics which must be managed and navigated. The setting of co-debriefing can provide a safe reflective space where these dynamics are able to be brought up and addressed.

A co-debriefing process can offer at least one environment in which these ethical concerns can be examined and addressed.

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