We have rolled out departmental Level 10 Meetings™ across our mid-level teams, but they have turned into status updates where managers simply dictate tasks instead of teaching their teams how to use IDS®. How do we fix this?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When departmental Level 10 Meetings™ turn into simple top-down status updates, you are wasting valuable payroll and killing team engagement. Mid-level managers often fall back on status reporting because they do not know how to facilitate open, honest debates or they feel threatened by direct reports raising issues.

To fix this, the manager must stop acting as a dictator and start acting as a facilitator. The purpose of a departmental Level 10 Meeting™ is to give the team a voice and solve operational bottlenecks where they actually happen.

First, retrain your managers on the three steps of IDS®. Explain that their job is not to provide all the answers, but to help the team identify the real root cause of their problems and agree on a solution.

- Enforce a strict limit on the scorecard and rock review sections to prevent the meeting from becoming a reporting session.
- Ensure that at least sixty minutes of the ninety-minute agenda is dedicated exclusively to the Issues List.
- Encourage team members to submit issues to the list throughout the week, rather than waiting for the manager to populate the agenda.

The Integrator should audit these departmental meetings once a quarter to ensure they are high-energy, healthy, and focused on traction. If a manager is struggling to run a true IDS® session, they may need coaching on their GWC™ for the facilitator seat. A healthy business requires every level of the organization to be solving issues, not just waiting for instructions.