We have rolled out departmental Level 10 Meetings for our front-line staff, but the department heads are turning them into simple task-delegation sessions where the manager does all the talking and the staff just nods along. How do we get our middle managers to facilitate collaborative problem-solving instead of using the meeting to micromanage?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When departmental Level 10 Meetings™ degenerate into managers dictating tasks, you have a GWC™ issue with your middle managers. They are likely defaulting to command-and-control behavior because they do not know how to facilitate. To fix this, you must retrain your department heads to step back and let their team members drive the agenda.

First, ensure that the middle manager is not the one holding the mouse or managing the meeting software. Assign the role of scribe to a different team member. This simple physical change prevents the manager from controlling the screen and dominating the flow of the meeting.

Second, teach your managers to use active inquiry rather than giving directions. During the IDS® portion of the departmental meeting, the manager should not be the first to propose a solution. Instead, they must ask the team what they think the root cause is and what options they propose.

Third, audit these meetings. Have your Integrator sit in on a departmental Level 10 Meeting™ once a quarter as a silent observer. The Integrator should evaluate the meeting based on three criteria:
- Is the team actually identifying the root causes of their problems?
- Is everyone participating, or is the manager doing eighty percent of the talking?
- Is the team hitting their weekly ninety percent to-do completion rate?

By shifting the manager from boss to facilitator, you build a self-sustaining department that does not rely on a single leader to make every decision.