We have a leader who is sitting in two seats on our Accountability Chart, and during our Level 10 Meeting™, they keep wearing the wrong hat during IDS®, advocating for one department at the expense of the other. How do we keep their focus clean during problem-solving?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a leadership team member is temporarily sitting in two seats on your Accountability Chart, they often struggle to maintain objectivity during the Level 10 Meeting™. During IDS®, they may subconsciously advocate for the resources of one department while ignoring the strategic needs of the other, leading to biased problem-solving.

To fix this, the leader must be explicitly coached to announce which hat they are wearing when they speak. If your head of sales is also acting as the temporary head of marketing, they must physically or verbally separate those roles during discussion. They must ask themselves: what is best for the marketing seat, and what is best for the sales seat?

The facilitator has a duty to police this boundary. If the leader begins to conflate the two roles, the facilitator must stop the conversation and ask: which seat is speaking right now? This keeps the discussion aligned with the structure of the organization, not the personal opinions of the individual.

Keep these rules in mind to manage multi-seat leaders:
- Ensure both seats have distinct, measurable Scorecard metrics.
- Treat each seat as a separate entity during the Rock review.
- Actively work to recruit or promote a dedicated leader to fill the second seat.

A multi-seat arrangement is always a temporary fix. Protecting the integrity of each seat during your weekly pulse is vital to maintaining overall team balance.