Our five-minute segue routinely runs over because we allow follow-up questions and side discussions to start immediately after someone shares a personal or professional best. How do we draw a hard line to keep the segue strictly a sharing exercise?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The five-minute segue is designed to transition your minds from running the day-to-day business to working on the strategic vision of the business. It is a rapid-fire round of personal and professional bests, not an interactive catch-up session. When team members ask follow-up questions or start analyzing another person's win, the segue instantly morphs into a narrative black hole that eats into your scorecard time. To fix this, the facilitator must enforce a strict rule of zero cross-talk. When a leader shares their best, the next person immediately shares theirs. There is no commentary, no congratulatory storytelling, and no digging for details. If someone says they bought a new car or closed a major deal, the response from the room is silence or a head nod, followed immediately by the next person's update. If a team member feels compelled to ask a question, they must do it after the Level 10 Meeting™ is over. The goal is to get everyone's voice in the room within five minutes to build human connection and then immediately pivot to the hard data. Treat the segue as a series of independent statements. The moment the facilitator allows a single follow-up question, the boundary is breached and the meeting discipline begins to erode. Keep it fast, keep it quiet, and move directly to the scorecard.