I did a lot of facilitation in grad school, which basically means I created fun and challenging activities for groups to do together and guided a conversation about their experiences.
The What? So what? Now what? debriefing technique can be used in a variety of situations, but we’re going to approach it through the lens of art creation and art analysis. Not only is this technique easy for you to remember as a facilitator, teacher, therapist, or parent, but participants can learn how to use it themselves! We love empowering others to empower themselves. In a perfect world, they would have this conversation with each other, not with me, and would determine take-aways.
For the sake of learning, let’s apply the What? So What? Now What? debrief to this common team-building scenario: You are a facilitating an activity for a classroom of students. You ask them to construct a free-standing table out of newspaper and tape; the goal is for the table to be at least 10 inches high and strong enough to hold a heavy text book. They have five minutes to work. At the end of the five minutes, whether they’ve achieved their goal or not, you gather the students to reflect on the process and outcome.
Step 1 | What?
First, we need to work through the basics of what occurred during the situation. It’s essential to establish what happened so we can perform subsequent evaluation, understand each other, and make progress. At this stage, ask questions about what people experienced or witnessed. Try to keep your questions basic and surface level. Think: observational. I like to start with a simple question- “Can someone describe what just happened?“- and go from there, following their lead and the natural flow of conversation.
These are some questions to ask in response (notice the word “what” is sometimes replaced with the word “how):
- What happened?
- How did you approach this task?
- What was the most important aspect of this process?
- What was your first instinct?
- What did you notice?
- What did you see?
- What did you hear?
- What changed?
- What strategy did you use?
- What surprised you?
- What helped you be successful?
So What?
Ok, now we know what happened. SO WHAT? Why do we care? This is notoriously the most challenging part of the debrief and the easiest to skip. However, if you don’t properly cover the “so what?”, you won’t be able to fully answer the “now what?” question. “So what?” tells us why what happened matters.
Back to our example about the newspaper towers, the group has discussed what they experienced, and now it’s time to explore why the experience matters.
Here are some questions to dig deeper:
- What difference did this make?
- What does this mean?
- What was the consequence of that choice?
- What does this represent?
- What can you learn from this?
- Why did that strategy work?
- Why didn’t that strategy work?
- How did your approach affect the outcome?
- What would you do differently?
Now What?
Hurray! We’ve narrowed down what happened and what it means. Solid work. Ok, now what? What are you going to do with this information? How can we use this experience in our lives?
The group made their newspaper towers, talked about what they did, and examined why it was important.
Questions for taking your new knowledge out into the world:
- How can you apply this information to your relationships?
- How will you use this information at work?
- What will you do to integrate this experience into your life?
- How will you remember this experience after you leave this space?
- What is the most meaningful lesson you learned?
- What will be helpful for you in the future?
- How can you use this information to make changes?
- How is this relevant?