Why is it good to do the exercise?

After you’ve finished, say, a presentation, what sticks with you most—the things you did well, or that one small thing that went wrong? If you’re like most people, you’ll fixate on the little bits you could have done better. Maybe you overran the time, two slides had typos, or you seemed nervous. Of course, mistakes teach us a lot. But when shortcomings overshadow successes, it’s not only disheartening—we also miss a key learning opportunity. If we don’t actively surface what went well—like your engaging opening or how you tailored examples to the audience—it’s easy to lose those success factors when we step into the next project. Organizational researchers Scott Tannenbaum and Christopher Cerasoli have studied team debriefs, a method shown to boost team performance by 20–25 percent. Debriefs boil down to three questions: Did we meet the goal? What worked? What should we change next time? The third one usually hogs the airtime. This exercise helps your team notice and carry forward the wins.