An after-action review (AAR) is one of the best ways to grow your team. It can help those in your department learn critical operational lessons without having the specific lived experience attached to those lessons.
Ideally, we would perform a thorough and probing AAR on all our significant incidents, with tailboard discussions immediately after the call being the first step in that process. While this is the gold standard, you might share my reality where calls for service keep coming, and daily shift needs combine with vacation leave to create challenges in getting the same team back together down the road. If we cannot perform the AAR the same day, it is important we continue to be creative with how to capture the lessons we learned in the field, utilizing virtual platforms and video options to connect responders after they have returned to quarters.
AARs can also be applied in non-operational settings to help supervisors reflect on interactions with their teams, especially after an employee counseling or disciplinary session resulted in a difficult conversation.
Personal AAR for scene operations
It has been my experience that fire service personnel enjoy discussing emergency incidents, and I’ve found crews to be largely responsive to the AAR process when it is administered well. To capitalize on this intrinsic motivation, the incident commander (IC), senior advisor on scene or company officer in a growth role can enhance the group AAR by preparing themselves beforehand using a “personal AAR.” When the IC or supervisor on scene examines their actions first, it allows them to both improve their own skillset and facilitate a more thoughtful approach at the group/team level. Coming to the larger group ready with specific thoughts, observations, reflections and questions is a great springboard for the more formal AAR. Start to finish, the personal AAR can be achieved in 45 minutes or less, with the potential to deliver specific, actionable take home points. Here’s how to break down the steps:
Tailboard and informal conversations (10 minutes): The first place to start is by having a brief tailboard discussion and/or informal conversation after the incident is placed under control. This does not need to be comprehensive; simply gathering some initial perspectives will help you make sense of what occurred on scene and fill in any gaps in your own timeline. What was the physical location of E9 when you gave the order to advance a hoseline through the alpha side? Which hydrant did E15 take? More conversation here is certainly better, but I am acknowledging the realities of units out of service, area coverage and crews returning to the station for cancer prevention measures.
Audio and tactical worksheet capture (5 minutes): The next step is to capture your tactical worksheet (actual worksheet, screenshot or photograph) and obtain the audio recording for the call. Our 911 communication center (Central Lane Communications, Eugene, Oregon) has fantastic turnaround emailing audio recordings of the incident based on your specific needs. I typically ask for the first 20 minutes of the recording and specify whether I would like it in compressed timeframe (audio without breaks) or as it naturally occurred. While audio without breaks is superior, allowing for full understanding of the scene and how long tasks took to complete, the compressed form speeds up the process to hear radio transmissions.
Audio review (25 minutes): Audio review is an important piece to ground the AAR in what actually happened, not simply relying on our fading recollection. Gaining insights from specific, recorded points in the incident can help push the conversation to get to a more meaningful place. As Peter Senge writes in “The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization,” when everyone is working with the facts and the facilitator has established safety to speak freely, we can avoid an AAR pitfall of “people reducing the living practice of AARs to a sterile technique,” something I have certainly been guilty of.
A caution when reviewing audio: It can be difficult to listen to yourself talk on the radio. You might not love hearing your imperfections, use of filler words like “uh,” and assignments you made that were unclear. Push through and understand this process is both an essential part of your own growth and important to achieve an accurate portrayal of what happened. In short, while people are often complimentary after an incident, listening to the recording is the best way to know exactly how it went and what you might want to focus on in the future.
I sit down with pen and paper and typically listen to the first 20 minutes or so of the incident, giving myself a few minutes to pause for review and notetaking. I am focusing on several areas of radio traffic with an emphasis on my own performance. You may want to consider different points based on your SOPs/SOGs and operational priorities. My review often includes the following:
- Size-up: Was my size-up clear and concise? Did I hit my benchmarks? Did I declare an appropriate strategy and designate the alpha side of the structure? If I performed a command transfer, did it follow predetermined tenets?
- Incident action plan: Did I declare an incident action plan that was well understood by incoming crews?
- 360 survey: Did I complete or assign a 360 scene survey of the incident early?
- Task/location/objective: Did I use the task/location/objective (or comparable) communication model? Did it translate to crew comprehension of their role in the operation?
- Airtime: Did I take tactical pauses and allow for units with priority traffic to break through? Was I efficient in my use of airtime? This can only be assessed if you obtain the audio in its entirety.
- Positive takeaways: What went smoothly? Did someone make a great catch on a scene hazard (recognized and took proactive action on an electrical drop line before it burned through and fell onto responders) or execute a difficult assignment? These are things we want to promote as our best practices moving forward.
- Gaps and issues: Were there any obvious gaps or issues that stood out? Did I miss radio traffic? Did a crew misunderstand an assignment, and was there an impact to the operation? Was there uncertainty because of my own communication failures? These are things we must discuss in the group AAR.
- Focal points: I usually have one skill I am working on personally, and I listen specifically for that in my review. Recently, it has been a focus on appropriate and efficient use of airtime drive incident communications (see above). My focal points can change from incident to incident.
Recap and lead-in to AAR (5 minutes): After my review, I take five minutes to recap my notes and make sure I have my talking points aligned for the group AAR. As you move through the group AAR, you will be better prepared to lead a meaningful conversation because you will have an idea which areas to focus on and which questions to ask. Helpful AAR methods have been previously outlined in some of the additional resources below.
Personal AAR for employee interactions
As supervisors, we have almost daily opportunities to connect with our teams. If we are honest and caring leaders focused on employee growth, some of these interactions are going to result in difficult conversations. Whether coaching, counseling or, in some cases, administering discipline, it is vital that we perform a look back on our own actions to make sure we gave our teams every opportunity to succeed. Just like the operational AAR, the specific points you review from your personnel interactions will change based on the circumstances surrounding the event:
- Background: Did I do my homework before I sat down with this employee? Did I know what I wanted to accomplish? Were my emotions in check? Did I have my facts straight? Did I come in with curiosity (when appropriate) so I could better understand the context around the decision or action in question?
- Expectations: Were my expectations clear? How were they initially communicated to the employee? Could a misunderstanding have occurred based on this communication (or lack thereof)?
- Connection: Did I feel like we connected, or was it a one-sided conversation? In other words, was there buy-in or was this a transactional conversation?
- Resolution: Did the resolution leave the employee with a clear path forward? If discipline was administered, did I choose a path based on the principle of disciplining to the lowest level that changes behavior (if possible)?
- Integrity: Did I demonstrate an honest, transparent and consistent approach?
- Empathy: Did I consider or ask about all the factors leading to the conversation? If there was a problem at home or the employee has consistently struggled at work, did I discover and acknowledge those factors in my decision matrix?
Final thoughts
Whether conducting a review of our operational decisions or evaluating challenging employee interactions, assessing our performance as supervisors and acting on the information we gain is crucial for several reasons. First, it helps us grow in our role as an incident commander, which provides safer, more effective scene operations for our personnel and the public. Second, we are modeling growth mindset and vulnerability from the front and rejecting the notion leaders are perfect and cannot be questioned. If we are going to ask crews to be high performers in all aspects of this work, we must model what growth and improvement looks and feels like from our position as fire service mentors, supervisors and leaders.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
I encourage you to review these fantastic articles and podcasts about the value of AARs in the fire service:
● After-action reviews: Because the ‘perfect fire’ doesn’t exist
● After-action reviews: A shift to the positive
● Firefighter After Action Review Podcast
● A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews
● Foundations of the After Action Review Process
● Improving performance through after-action reporting
