The Small Teams Experience
Try Flawless Leadership on one team before you commit to a rollout
The Small Teams Experience is Afterburner℠’s introductory Flawless Leadership℠ program: a single-team engagement where your intact team learns the Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief method from an Afterburner facilitator and applies it to a live piece of work you already own. No org-wide commitment, no enterprise procurement. You decide on a rollout after you have evidence, not before.
Fit calls run 20 minutes. We scope fit before we scope pricing.
Why start with one team before a full program?
Most leadership training is heard, not used. A team comes back from an offsite energized, and the old habits are back by the following week. The real cost is not the day you spent. It is the rollout you green-light on a method your people never actually practiced on their own work.
For the leader who has to defend that spend, a comprehensive program is a large line item to justify on a method the organization has not yet seen in action. The Small Teams Experience changes the order of operations. You run the method once, with one team, on a real initiative, and you see whether it holds before you scale it. The decision to go wider becomes a decision backed by something your own people did.
It also keeps the team intact. You are not pulling individuals into a generic class and hoping the lessons travel back. The same team that owns the work learns the method together, in the same room, so the shared language and the new habit belong to the team rather than to a handful of attendees.
A full program asks the organization to commit before it has proof. The Small Teams Experience inverts that. It is sized so a single team can run the whole method end to end, on work that already matters to them, and produce the evidence the larger decision needs.
How does the Small Teams Experience work?
Three engagements, one bundle: the Top Gun Experience℠, a Debriefing Workshop, and a Planning Workshop. In sequence, your team feels the method, installs it on past work, and applies it to what’s next.
A humanitarian mission run under real pressure, a clock, a result on the line. The method stops being a slide and becomes something your team did.
Your team debriefs its own recent work using ORCA: Objective, Result, Cause, Action. No case studies. They leave with concrete actions for the next mission.
The same discipline, pointed at a live initiative your team owns. The plan gets built in the room. The method has now touched past work and future work, that’s what makes it stick.
Full details on both workshops
The debrief is nameless and rankless. Rank stays at the door, so the most junior person in the room can name what went wrong without consequence.
Underneath all three engagements sits the Three Ms architecture: Mindset, Method, and Moments. The Method is FLEX℠ (Flawless Execution℠), the four-phase Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief cycle. The full system is laid out on the Flawless Leadership methodology page.
Fit calls run 20 minutes. We scope fit before we scope pricing.
What changes after the Small Teams Experience?
Leaders leave the Small Teams Experience 75% more likely to debrief with their teams.
The habit outlives the facilitator
The debrief that felt like an event the first time becomes the cadence the team reaches for on its own. That shift, from prompted exercise to default habit, is the difference between a one-time lift and a capability the organization keeps.
You get your own proof case
When you take the rollout decision upstairs, you’re not citing a vendor’s numbers. You’re pointing to a team in your own organization that plans and reviews its work differently than it did a month earlier.
The gains stack
Run the discipline on the next initiative and the compounding starts. Because the program runs on one intact team and its own work, the change shows up where you can see it, in how that team handles what’s next, not in a satisfaction score.
It’s the same discipline behind 2.2M leaders trained across 3,500+ organizations. Read what teams say on the testimonials page.
Is the Small Teams Experience right for your team?
It fits leaders who want evidence before investment, and teams that need to get better at the work they already own. Three people usually sponsor it.
You own leadership development
You’re asked to justify what you fund. The Small Teams Experience validates the methodology on real work before you propose a rollout, so you walk into the budget conversation with a team that has used the system, not a pitch deck.
You run the team
You don’t have time for theory. One engagement installs the method across the people who actually do the work, applied to a live initiative you already care about, not a hypothetical.
You sign off the spend
The appeal is the risk profile. Prove the method on one team and one initiative before committing the organization, so the decision to scale rests on results you can point to rather than a forecast.
Decide on the rollout after you have evidence.
When the team is ready for more, the Small Teams Experience leads directly into the rest of the ladder. It opens into Flawless Execution Coaching, the Flawless Leadership Program, the 90-Day Accelerator, and 1:1 Flawless Leadership Coaching. Each step deepens the same Three Ms architecture, so the method your team installs at the entry point carries all the way up.
Fit calls run 20 minutes. We scope fit before we scope pricing.
Small Teams Experience FAQs
What is the Small Teams Experience and what’s included?
The Small Teams Experience is Afterburner’s introductory Flawless Leadership program. It bundles three engagements into one: a Top Gun Experience, a Debriefing Workshop that installs the ORCA debrief, and a Planning Workshop that applies the discipline to a live initiative. One intact team runs all three on its own real work.
Who is the Small Teams Experience built for?
It is built for two leaders. The capability builder who wants to validate the methodology before a full rollout, and the operator who wants a fast, shared experience that installs the belief system across an intact team. One team and one piece of live work is enough to start.
How is it different from a one-off team-building event?
A team-building event ends when the day does. The Small Teams Experience installs a repeatable discipline on your team’s own work, and leaders leave 75% more likely to debrief with their teams. It is the entry point to a system you can scale, not a standalone event you run once and remember fondly.
What is the Top Gun Experience and how does it fit?
The Top Gun Experience is a humanitarian mission run under real pressure, where your team applies the method and debriefs it live. Inside the Small Teams Experience it is the “feel it” step. It turns the belief system into something the team experiences directly before they install it on their own work in the two workshops that follow.
What do the Debriefing and Planning Workshops install?
The Debriefing Workshop installs ORCA, the four-step debrief discipline, run against work your team is doing now. The Planning Workshop applies the same discipline forward, building the plan for a live initiative in the room. Both run on the Flawless Leadership methodology and leave the team with actions, not notes.
What results should we expect from the Small Teams Experience?
Leaders leave 75% more likely to debrief with their teams, the habit the rest of the program is built on. It is the same methodology behind 2.2 million leaders trained over 30 years. Because you start with one team on real work, you see the change in how that team plans and reviews before you scale it.
How does the Small Teams Experience lead into other programs?
It is the entry point. From there, teams move into Flawless Execution Coaching, the Flawless Leadership Program, the 90-Day Accelerator, and 1:1 coaching. Each step deepens the same Three Ms architecture, so the method a team installs in the Small Teams Experience carries straight up the ladder without relearning the basics.
How does Flawless Leadership compare to other leadership development methodologies?
Flawless Leadership is built on FLEX, the four-phase cycle of Plan, Brief, Execute, and Debrief, drawn from high-stakes aviation and proven across 3,500+ organizations. Its difference is installation. Teams apply the method to real work in the room through a Teach-Demo-Do model, rather than learning concepts they have to translate on their own later.