Facilitating LOS Debriefings: A Training Manual - Phoenix Aviation

Levels of Facilitation
✓ Use the highest level of
facilitation possible.
✓ Adapt the level to
accommodate varying
needs throughout the
session.
014 - LOS Debriefing Guide
Your role as the instructor in the debriefing session will vary as
a function of the level of facilitation needed for each crew. Ideally,
the crew will be able to analyze and evaluate their own performance
and you will need to give only minimal guidance, thus utilizing
high-level facilitation. Unfortunately, this rarely happens in the
current training environment. Most crews lack the experience to
participate at this level. Thus, you must adapt to the capabilities of
each crew. Currently, most debriefing sessions are conducted at an
intermediate level of facilitation. These sessions are largely driven
by the instructor, who leads the crew to important topics and utilizes
questions to evoke in-depth analysis and evaluation by the crew.
The level at which facilitation is conducted is a broad continuum
from high (most desirable) to low (least desirable). To illustrate this,
we will discuss the high, intermediate, and low ranges in detail. Be
aware that you may need to adjust the level of facilitation to whatever
level is appropriate throughout the session. You should always
strive to work at the highest level of facilitation (i.e., the least interference
on your part) at which each crew is able to respond. If you
facilitate at too low of a level (i.e. more interference from you), the
crew will be prevented from participating to their full capability. A
sign of skillful facilitation is being able to recognize what level is
appropriate for each crew, as well as being able to adapt to the varying
needs of individual crewmembers as the debriefing discussion
shifts from one topic to another.
If you consistently use facilitation to generate crew-centered
debriefings, crews will gain experience as they go through recurrent
LOS and they will participate at increasingly higher levels each year.
High-Level Facilitation
High-level facilitation is possible when the crew discovers and
discusses important issues on their own with little guidance.
Debriefing at this level provides the deepest and most enduring
learning because the crewmembers guide their own self-discovery.
For facilitating at this level, the crewmembers must be able to
identify important topics and issues that arose during the LOS, set
an agenda for discussing these issues, and critically analyze the
situation they faced and evaluate how well they performed.
At this level of facilitation, your role as the instructor is to
inform the crew of the objectives for the debriefing, outline the
debriefing process, and assist in guiding the discussion only when
necessary. As the instructor, from your advantaged position as an
experienced observer, you serve as a resource for the crew to help
reinforce crew observations and supplement their perceptions.
Although you retain responsibility for ensuring that the debriefing
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