wow, public thanks to Mark for such a thought provoking post.

One of the harder things for this civilian to learn in formation flying
classes taught by USAF IPs is the post flight briefing, they
are brutly honest and direct. hard to  swallow if one isn't use
to it, but once one realizes they are directed at actions and not
personal one can get over it.

But there was one I never figured out. One social
skill to help others see something they might be missing
is to phrase it in a question such that the other party must
think about it to answer the question. On a pre brief for a
13 aircraft flight, I asked how flights 2 and 3 were to rejoin
after a kinda strange looking formation (for cameras) was done.
I was told not to worry, and it would work out fine.

as element lead in flight 2 he was right, it would be easy for me
but I wasn't  entirely sure how lead was going to do it and I wanted
to know he knew it would be alittle tricky. Immediately after the pre-brief
the lead IP (not lead of the flight) came over to me and asked if I
really caired or was trying to make lead think (the social skill from above)
When I explained the social skill, I got the post flight yelling for
unnecessary question in the pre-brief.

How can there be no dumb questions and no unneccessary
questions in a briefing?