Imagine your team just wrapped a major initiative—a curriculum overhaul, a parent engagement evening, or a campus-wide PD day. Before the dust settles, everyone is already on to the next thing. No time to pause. No time to learn.

Now, imagine your team prompting you as their leader to improve what just happened, but not knowing where to start. There’s a shared sense that things could’ve gone better, but no framework to name the issues or shape the next steps.

Planning isn’t the problem—learning from the plan is. In the high-speed world of school life, teams leap from one initiative to the next with barely a pause. And somewhere in that momentum, the chance to reflect, refine, and improve quietly disappears.

Enter the After-Action Review (AAR).

This humble four-question tool might just be the most under-utilised and high-leverage habit available to middle leaders. Done well, AARs not only sharpen execution—they elevate the team.

What is an After-Action Review?

An AAR is a structured but simple debrief conducted after a task, event, or term. It asks:

1. What was supposed to happen?
2. What actually happened?
3. Why was there a difference?
4. What will we do differently next time?

Born in the military, adopted by global businesses, and surprisingly rare in schools, this format invites reflection without blame and replaces vague feelings with actionable insight.

Why Middle Leaders Should Care

Middle leaders live at the junction of strategy and delivery. They translate bold school priorities into real-world programs, practices, and timelines. AARs let them close the loop:

• They provide a structured space to assess how plans played out.
• They reveal what slowed momentum—and what accelerated it.
• They model professional reflection without paralysis.

Perhaps most importantly, they turn middle leaders into capability-builders, not just task-jugglers.

The AAR Ritual: Make it Routine, Not Rare

Reactive reflection often looks like a rushed, vague conversation at the end of a meeting—"That could've gone better"—followed by silence. It's a surface-level nod to improvement with no real follow-through. Over time, this breeds cynicism: team members feel unheard, mistakes repeat, and the gap between intention and execution widens.

To move beyond reactive reflection, AARs need to become a rhythm. Here’s how:

• Start small: Run one after a faculty meeting, PD session, or school event.
• Build the habit: Schedule AARs into your term planner like any other priority—ideally right after the event or once team performance scoreboards have been updated. Timing is key: the closer the review is to the experience, the sharper the insights and the stronger the team’s sense of relevance and momentum.
• Keep it fast: 20–30 minutes is plenty. The goal is insight, not another meeting.
• Document outcomes: Log learnings using a one-page summary or shared doc. Consider creating a dedicated AAR section in OneNote where reflections can be catalogued by term, topic, or team. It’s searchable, accessible, and builds a powerful archive of improvement over time. 

The best AARs don’t become data collections—they become cultural habits.

Case Study - Turning a Misfire into Momentum

Emma, the Director of Teaching and Learning at a large independent school, had just led a cross-campus professional development day. Despite strong planning, the afternoon workshops ran over time, the keynote felt misaligned, and staff feedback was muted at best.

Instead of brushing it off, Emma invited her organising team into a quick AAR the next morning. They asked the four questions:

• What was supposed to happen? A streamlined day with three energising, practical workshops.
• What actually happened? The first workshop ran 20 minutes over, pushing everything behind. The keynote speaker didn’t tailor content to the audience. Engagement waned by 2 pm.
• Why was there a difference? They hadn’t built in buffer time. The speaker was briefed via email only. No dry-run or rehearsal.
• What will we do differently? Next time: cap sessions at 40 minutes, rehearse transitions, provide speaker briefing templates, and assign one floating facilitator to monitor timing.

The outcome? Not just a better PD format for next term, but clearer team roles, stronger ownership, and a sense of shared pride in iterating quickly. Emma now runs 15-minute AARs after every significant initiative—and her team is more cohesive and confident as a result.

 Three Ways to Use AARs to Grow a High-Performing Team

1. Spot patterns early: If a similar roadblock appears in multiple AARs, you’ve found a systemic issue, not just a one-off error.
2. Celebrate the right things: AARs allow you to name and repeat high-performance behaviours, not just outcomes.
3. Distribute leadership: AARs invite every team member to contribute insights, reducing over-reliance on the leader’s interpretation. This also nurtures future leaders—developing their strategic thinking, reflective capacity, and ownership of outcomes. Whether they stay in your school or move on to lead elsewhere, you’re equipping them to grow not just your team, but the broader system.

As the habit deepens, your team becomes more agile, self-aware, and resilient.

When Things Go Right—Do an AAR Anyway

One of the biggest mistakes? Only reflecting when things go wrong.

Outstanding performance isn’t a mystery—it’s a clue. You gain clarity about what’s worth repeating by unpacking why something succeeded. And you strengthen the team’s belief that improvement isn’t a punishment—it’s the path to mastery.

Take Emma, for example. A term later, she ran another PD day—this time, everything clicked. Staff were energised, transitions were smooth, and the keynote landed perfectly. But Emma didn’t skip the AAR. Instead, her team dissected what worked: clear roles, time buffers, speaker rehearsals, and early staff input on session topics. This review not only affirmed their efforts, it locked in the recipe for future success. The team left feeling proud—and prepared to replicate the win.

You Don’t Need Permission

You don’t need a new role, a new policy, or a new strategy to start doing this. Just choose one thing this week to debrief, and invite your team into the process.

Ask the four questions. Listen hard. And record what you learn.

In time, this habit will quietly but powerfully shape your culture because a team that reflects together performs better consistently.

Middle leadership isn’t just about delivering outcomes. It’s about developing people. And After-Action Reviews are one of the best tools you’re not using—yet.