One of our key leadership team members consistently rates our weekly Level 10 Meeting an eight or nine during the meeting wrap-up, but then complains to me privately during our one-on-ones that the sessions are unproductive and that they disagree with our decisions. How do we handle this disconnect and force them to bring that candor to the actual meeting?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a leadership team member rates a meeting highly in public but complains in private, it signals artificial harmony and a lack of trust. This behavior directly undermines the team dynamic and prevents you from identifying and addressing real friction within your meetings. If they cannot speak honestly during the rating segment, it's highly probable they are holding back during the IDS® (Identify, Discuss, Solve) portion as well. This can impact how effectively your team solves problems and how you review your weekly scorecard in under five minutes.

Addressing the Disconnect Directly

You must address this disconnect directly and constructively during your next one-on-one session with the individual.

• Clarify the Purpose of the Rating: Remind them that a meeting rating is not a performance review of the facilitator or a subjective judgment of the team's effort. Instead, it is an objective assessment of whether the team used its time effectively to solve problems.
• Explain the Impact: Emphasize that giving an eight or nine when they genuinely feel the meeting was unproductive is a disservice to the company. It can also be seen as a violation of your team's health agreements, which are crucial for maintaining healthy conflict and transparent communication within the leadership team.
• Consequences of Dishonesty: Explain that this behavior prevents the team from collectively identifying and solving issues that could improve meeting effectiveness, such as issues that might arise when one of your key managers gets defensive around red scorecard metrics.

Enforcing Candid Feedback

Moving forward, establish clear expectations for how meeting feedback should be delivered.

• Mandatory Explanation for Low Ratings: Require anyone who rates a Level 10 Meeting below an eight to state the exact reason why. This encourages immediate, constructive feedback.
• Defense of High Ratings: More importantly, if a team member rates the meeting an eight or higher, they must be prepared to defend that rating if they attempt to complain about the meeting quality later, offline.
• Sole Venue for Feedback: Strongly emphasize that the final two minutes of the Level 10 Meeting™ is the only venue for meeting feedback. If concerns are not raised during the rating wrap-up, the individual forfeits the right to complain about it offline. This helps reinforce the principle that problems should be identified and discussed within the meeting structure, much like when using the Accountability Chart to stop the blame game during IDS.

This approach creates a culture of accountability and forces team members to bring their candor to the actual meeting, fostering genuine discussion and improvement. If your Integrator struggles to facilitate these discussions objectively, you might consider if your Integrator should facilitate Level 10 Meetings.