# Rotate the Lead — Debrief

> Nine questions, three failure modes of the debrief itself, one rule: name the move, not the person.
> Use with `rotate-the-lead-guide.md`. The debrief runs the last five minutes of the twenty-five.

## How to run this debrief

- Put the filled worksheet on the table first. The four rounds are the evidence; nobody has to recall them from memory.
- Let people note their answers for a minute before anyone speaks — the quietest reader of the room has the best material and gets talked over first.
- Hold a pen over the team's handover pattern: a move that can't be written as an instruction for the next handover hasn't been debriefed yet.

## Read the rotations

- Look over the four rounds without talking. Where did the thread get carried cleanly, and where did somebody have to pick it up off the floor?
- Notice whose round produced the most work — that is data, not a verdict.

## The nine debrief questions

**1. The clean handovers.**
"Which handovers landed cleanly, and which made the team lose a beat?"
→ What was different about the restatement — it is the one skill that transfers.

**2. Directing before restating.**
"Did any lead direct before restating goal / done / next? What did the team do — follow, correct, or quietly stall?"
→ Whether the rule actually holds the room, or just decorates the poster.

**3. The surprises.**
"Who surprised you — someone you didn't expect to hold the thread well, or badly?"
→ The team's unstated map of who can lead; today redrew part of it.

**4. The minimum handover kit.**
"What's the minimum the next lead needs to take over without losing progress? Name it in your own words."
→ The team's own handover pattern — the artifact this whole folder builds toward.

**5. Visible and owned.**
"When a call was made, was it visible and owned? Or did it evaporate because no one knew who was doing it?"
→ The difference between a decision and a mood.

**6. What the rule prevented.**
"What did the one-visible-call rule prevent from being decided by drift or silence?"
→ The hidden decisions the room was already making by default — the exercise just forced them into the open.

**7. Where it really rotates.**
"Where does the lead genuinely rotate in your real work — standups, incidents, reviews? Should the handover pattern apply there too?"
→ Transfer. The pattern earns its keep after the room empties.

**8. The one move you keep.**
"Which single handover move from today will you keep doing when you're not in an exercise?"
→ Commitment — small enough to survive Monday.

**9. If the real leader is always in the room.**
"If the real leader is always in the room, what does this exercise reveal about what others *could* carry if asked?"
→ Latent capacity — the reason to run this again on a different task.

## Failure modes of the debrief

1. **It turns into a coronation.** The room praises the best lead of the afternoon instead of naming moves. Rescue: ask what they *did*, not who they *are* — the move is what generalizes; the person isn't.
2. **The room edits the truth.** Everyone reports handovers that went "great." Rescue: go back to the worksheet gaps — the restatement nobody finished, the call with no owner. The sheet argues with polite memory.
3. **The pattern gets written and orphaned.** The handover pattern fills its box, the team leaves, and next week the thread drops in the same place. Rescue: before anyone stands, name who owns the pattern and which real doc it lives in.