“In no other profession are the penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so irrevocable, as in the military.”
– General Douglas MacArthur, US Army

Do you want to improve your team’s performance? Reflective techniques that are action focussed can help you and your team continually get better. At the Combat Training Centre (CTC) we found that After Action Reviews (AARs) had become more like rituals – undertaken but with nobody really sure why they’re doing them. Dissatisfaction was consistently expressed by both the CTC facilitators and the combat unit participants. The process we were using, likely the best in Army, was often confusing and more instructional in nature, and the outputs were weak and ill-defined.

We’ve researched, analysed, adapted, and implemented a new feedback process that will help you and your team learn from your experiences to improve your future capability. By only ‘doing’ and not integrating targeted feedback, your training experiences will not be optimised and you could get very good at a bad golf swing. Here’s some areas to focus on:

1. EMPLOY TEAM FEEDBACK REGULARLY.  Make AARs a natural part of your activities: pre, during, and post. Allocate sufficient time to them. These team feedback activities make ‘concrete’ the individual learnings developed in-stride and help identify and implement effective changes.
2. ALIGN PROCESS AND GOAL. There are lots of ways to give orders, but Army has settled on SMEAC as the orders format. Having an agreed and understood format makes preparation simpler and more effectively primes the team – they all know what’s coming. At CTC we’re following the ER²TA process (see Figure 1 below). If you want to lecture, critique, or debrief your team, then go for it. Sometimes they are effective, but they are not optimised for team learning and they are not really team-centred feedback activities. Also, don’t confuse your solders (participants) with what term you use. To clarify the CTC change in ensuring our feedback is fully team-centred, CTC have changed the AAR terminology to Team Reflection Activities (TRA).
3. FOCUS ON THE OUTPUT.  The goal of an AAR is to develop a plan of action to improve your team performance for the next fight, not win the last one. Your task will likely be very different for your next mission and without doubt the environment and enemy will also change. The process is important, but without a useful output you have failed! Ensure the output – your plan and tasks to enact change – is focussed on what you can control, and not what your boss or higher headquarters needs to do.
4. ALLOCATE TIME FOR FEEDBACK. Ensure sufficient time in your exercises and training to undertake feedback activities. The emphasis placed at CTC on the final AAR was seen to be less than optimal as most members of the team were distracted at the end of an exercise. A key insight proposed that the major feedback activity for the team be conducted two thirds to three quarters of the way through an exercise, rather than at the end. This allows a deep review of performance, the ability to enact any changes and the opportunity to immediately bed them into normal operations. This works on activities or exercises designed for 3 hours, 3 days, or 3 weeks.
5. START WITH A BAR! Not starting at the pub, but with a Before Action Review (BAR) which sets the scene for your training activity and focusses the team on learning, not just doing. Split your thinking into planning the task and executing the task. Allocate time at the start to focus the team on what they’re about to do with a BAR. This priming will set you in good stead for learning from the start.
6. PLAN TO REVIEW.  It can be hard to enact the good ideas generated in your AAR once you get back to the base. Plan a time to review how effectively you have enacted your AAR action plan. For big exercises this can be 4-6 weeks after the final AAR and for smaller training activities it can be later the next week.

Figure 1: The ER²TA Post Experience Feedback Model (Click for larger image)

The ER²TA as a feedback model is situated in a learning and feedback continuum and uses previous experiences to scaffold learning from one team experience iteration to the next, rather than as a single activity. It’s an approach that prepares and aligns the team and scaffolds the experience to focus on the key learnings which will support improvement in future activities. The steps of the ER²TA are:

• E is for ENGAGE
  • There are three levels of engagement: the commander, the team or participants, and the learning space.
  • The first is the engagement of team commanders, through a pre- ER²TA discussion, to ensure that the facilitation is aligned with Commander’s intent.
  • The second is the design of the learning activity space to ensure freedom from distractions and including the use, or not, of technology support.
  • The third is the priming and preparation of learning of the participants on arrival at the feedback activity.
  • A focus on learning must be consistent throughout the exercise design and conduct. Learning can be encouraged by facilitators; however, only the participant team members, led by commanders, can truly engage in the learning process.
• R is for REVIEW
  • The Review aims to establish within the team a shared mental model of the previous experience.
  • This retrospective sensemaking pursues a broad understanding of what happened in the previous activity and seeks to align participants’ mental models or visualisations.
  • The Review is just enough to set the stage and bring everyone along and it doesn’t have to be an exact re-enactment.
• R is also for REFLECT
  • The ability to reflect upon team performance is a technique that can be developed. This internal metacognitive assessment of team performance seeks to identify critical areas that both supported effective performance and areas where improvement is required. Be aware that the temptation here is to jump to solutions rather than identify root causes.
  • The AAR research highlighted lived experiences where reflective activities required encouragement and guidance from commanders and facilitators to be effective.
  • To provide focus, a limit on reflective outcomes to three key SUSTAINS and three key IMPROVES appears to be optimal to support change and improve future performance.
• T is for TRANSITION
  • This deliberate change in the mental focus of the team can be a quick step but it acknowledges that cultures and individuals approach the concept of time differently.
  • This step supports participants in letting go of arguments about what happens, and what went right or wrong, and re-focussing them at what are they going to change to do better whatever happens next time.
  • It is a crucial cognitive step to develop future successful performances.
• A is for ACT
  • An agreed action to implement the learnings and change individual and team behaviours is the crucial output of the ER²TA process.
  • This step synthesises and confirms ways in which the IMPROVES will be enacted, by detailed specified FIXES, while maintaining the current team strengths. FIXES must be focussed on areas within the team’s control and always include timings and responsibilities.
  • Team leaders remain constantly responsible to guide the changes that will lead to performance improvement.

Pre- and post-exercise, future action-oriented, team feedback activities can be very effective in improving individual and team performance. These six tips, including the simplified feedback model called the ER²TA, can optimise processes for team learning and change implementation.