One of our senior leaders is constantly looking at their phone, checking Slack, or responding to urgent emails during our Level 10 Meeting, claiming they are multitasking to keep operations running. How do we stop this distracted behavior?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

There is no such thing as multitasking during a Level 10 Meeting™. When a senior leader checks Slack or emails during the meeting, they are signaling to the entire room that their immediate operational fires are more important than the strategic alignment of the leadership team.

This behavior is a symptom of a deeper structural issue: that leader has not fully delegated their daily tasks and is still trapped in the weeds. If their department cannot survive ninety minutes without them, they have not properly built out their Accountability Chart or trained their direct reports.

To stop this behavior, the Integrator must have a direct, one-on-one conversation outside the meeting. Frame the issue around leadership behavior and company culture. If the leadership team does not respect the ninety-minute boundary, the departmental teams certainly won't either.

Enforce a strict no-device rule during the meeting, except for the one person capturing To-Dos and updating the Issues List. All phones should be face down or in another room.

Remind the leader that their primary accountability during this ninety minutes is to help run the business, not just their department. If they cannot unplug for ninety minutes, they need to restructure their seat so they can focus on high-level strategy and prepare the business for scale.