Facilitating a team debrief
This is for you if you're bringing together a team of four to twelve. They talk about what they do, never how they work. Tasks get handled, but the friction underneath never gets named, so it keeps coming back.
Before the session, everyone needs their own results open to Understanding Styles. It names their working style and how it meets the other three. You're giving a shared picture of how they work, not reviewing it.
The four working styles:
- Accelerator: pushes for pace, impatient to move.
- Analyst: wants to be sure, gathers evidence first.
- Harmonizer: reads the room, keeps people together.
- Pragmatist: wants to settle on what works.
Two frictions show up on almost every team. An Accelerator's pace grates on an Analyst's need to be sure; a Harmonizer smooths over what a Pragmatist would rather name. Read the real detail off each person's report; the labels are just shared words.
- Open on how, not what. Say it in the first minute: today is about how the team works, not the projects. Name friction as a difference in wiring, not a fault.
- Have each person place themselves. Everyone opens their Understanding Styles and names their style out loud. Put the four up where everyone sees who sits where.
- Work the pairings live. Skip the abstract tour of all four. Name the pairs where friction keeps repeating, have each read the other's style, and say what the other needs and rarely gets.
- Add the energy layer, briefly. Now bring in The Five Types of Work. Each person names which work gives them energy and which wears them down. It's why some handoffs feel heavy and others easy.
- Close on one change each. Before anyone leaves, each person names one thing they'll do differently with one named colleague this week. Make it small, observable, and cued to something they already do.
The team holds two things: a shared map of who works how, and one change each. That map is the work, so when the room can see itself, you can stop. You don't need to solve every pairing today.
Coaching questions
This isn't a worksheet to run in order; pull whatever fits the room and follow it.
Getting onto how, not what
- What is it like to talk about how we work, not what we're working on?
- When this team is at its best together, what is each of you doing?
- Where do things tend to get stuck between the two of you?
Naming a pairing without blame
- What might this person need from you that you tend not to give?
- Where might a strength of yours, turned up high, land hard on them?
- What have you been calling a personality clash that might be two styles meeting badly?
Turning it into a change
- What is one thing you could do differently with this person next week?
- How would you know it was starting to work?
- What does this team want to keep doing on purpose, now that you can see it?
