MDTP #110: Team leaders debrief your people after their appointments.
Team Leaders: Debrief Your People After Their Appointments
Ask:
What was the goal?
Did you reach your goal?
What got in the way?
What are the next steps?
Learn from the SEALs
In the Navy SEALs, after every mission — no matter how successful — they run what’s called an AAR (After Action Review).
It’s a structured, no-ego conversation that dissects what happened, what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve next time.
In Extreme Ownership, former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink writes that “discipline equals freedom.”
The discipline of debriefing creates freedom in the field — because lessons learned are turned into repeatable systems that drive results. Without that discipline, teams repeat the same mistakes.
Business Lessons from the Battlefield
Business leaders, like military leaders, operate in dynamic, high-stakes environments.
Every appointment your agent runs — listing, buyer, or negotiation — is a mission.
And just like the SEALs, you must debrief every mission.
Why This Matters
Agents learn ideas in training, but they build skills in the field.
Those field reps are forming habits — good, neutral, or bad — based on what happens in real appointments.
Without debriefs, they’ll repeat actions that might feel productive but actually cost the company money again and again.
For Example:
- An agent skips the prequalification step “just this once.”
- Another fails to ask the seller to sign the agency agreement before pricing.
- Or a buyer’s agent skips the loyalty conversation and loses the client to another agent.
These aren’t isolated mistakes — they’re the start of negative skill-building.
Each repetition reinforces the wrong pattern.
Enter the Debrief: Your OODA Loop in Action
Air Force Colonel John Boyd created the OODA Loop — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — as a decision-making framework for fighter pilots.
The faster and more accurately you run your loop, the better you perform under pressure.
Debriefing your team is the Observe and Orient phase.
It’s where you slow down to see what actually happened, realign your approach, and sharpen execution for the next mission.
When done right, it builds muscle memory around winning behaviors.
How to Run a 5-Minute Debrief
After every appointment, ask:
- What was the goal?
(Clarity builds accountability. Was the goal to sign, to set a follow-up, to qualify?) - Did you reach your goal?
(Yes or no. This builds self-awareness, not excuses.) - What got in the way?
(Identify friction points in the process or mindset.) - What are the next steps?
(Turn learning into immediate action.)
If you want to level up your leadership, add one more:
- What did you learn that we can teach the team?
(This transforms individual experiences into organizational intelligence.)
The Principle
Don’t just train your team — coach them in real time.
Every appointment is a rep. Every debrief is the correction that makes the next rep count.
Your mission as a leader is to make sure your agents build positive, repeatable, profit-driving skills — not unexamined habits that erode performance.
