Project debriefing: biting your tongue

A debriefing session with the donor on the results of the project is an exercise of talking and especially listening. The client I am working for just had such a debriefing. I had proposed to do it this time differently from his normal routine of giving a long presentation and answer questions. So we started with shortly reformulating the objectives of the project. Then we showed a short video with the highlights of the process and products. Afterwards we asked questions: what was most meaningful for them, what questions the images triggered, to what extent the project met their expectations, how it added value to their policy and what next steps they would advise us. We had to bite our tongue, not to start giving more information, just listen and recapitulate. This way we collected useful feedback and building bricks for a follow-up, partly 'owned' now by the donor.