During debriefing time •
Organize the discussion in the best suitable setting; people are sitting (always avoid having a debriefing with people standing), they are in a circle, meaning everybody can see everybody, there is no noise or disruption of the discussion, so the focus and attention of the whole group will be entirely allocated to the discussion.
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Your voice and body language; Make sure you talk loudly enough for everybody to hear, that you have eye contact with the majority of people in the circle (meaning you don’t look only at one side of the group but at everyone) which will allow you to also see who wants to talk or not; generally try to be conscious of the message that your body sends to the group (including facial expressions), does it invite people to engage, does it show signs of tiredness, boredom or even emotional reactions you might have to people’s reactions, your face might be the most reactive part of you to people’s answers so try to control value reactions to what they say (maybe you do not say verbally that you like or not what you hear, but your face might show it);
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Managing replies and silence; give enough time for people to reply to your questions, don’t rush and panic; most likely the group will handle silence worse than you - there is always somebody who will reply; if you are not sure the question is clear, you can ask the group if it is and they will let you know; if too many people want to reply to your questions, remind them to come with additional points and not to repeat what others said and if needed do tell them you will move on to the following questions – you are not obliged to keep giving them the word; when you feel the question has been covered enough, move on; Skilful questioning needs to be matched by careful listening so that you understand
what people really mean with their answers. Don’t act like a robot that follows the question plans without adjusting and connecting them to the answers the participants provided previously. Take their answers into consideration, follow-up on them; combine your originally planned questions with the answers and the aspects they mention. It will lead to a smooth, natural, rich and fruitful discussion. •
Listen to your inner voice; you can name it intuition as well; while the discussion is going on, if you are relaxed enough you will also be able to detect inner signals that tell you what to focus on more or in which direction to go with your questions. Being spontaneous and improvising during a debriefing is strongly linked with working with your intuition very well. This intuition might tell you not to ask a certain question anymore, to ask another one, to delve deeper into certain issues, etc. which will contribute to deeper insights from your participants.
After debriefing •
Do your critical self- assessment of how you conducted the debriefing and what results it had. What went well? What went wrong? What was the biggest struggle? Analyse the plan you made and what happened in reality. What changed and why? How did you manage the group interventions and silences (if there were any), which questions proved to be more efficient and which ones did not? Did you notice any interesting dynamics during the debriefing? How much time did it take compared with what you planned? Did you need more time for it? etc.
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Take note of the things you want to do differently next time;
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Modify the debriefing plan or add alternative questions and keep it for the next time you conduct the same activity