Our leadership team often drops highly sensitive, individual employee performance issues onto our weekly Level 10 Meeting Issues List, which leads to uncomfortable, unproductive group discussions. How do we draw the line between a team issue and a private management issue?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your weekly Level 10 Meeting Issues List is designed to solve operational, systemic, and strategic bottlenecks. It is not a forum for public performance reviews or sensitive HR discussions. When a leader drops a specific employee's behavioral issues or performance struggles onto the weekly list, it leads to awkward, subjective conversations that violate privacy and trust. To handle this, you must establish a clear boundary. Individual employee issues do not belong on the leadership team's weekly Issues List. Instead, they should be handled directly through your standard management channels. The manager of that employee must address the issue in a private, one-on-one meeting using your core values and the GWC framework. The only time a people issue should reach the Level 10 Meeting is if it represents a systemic structure problem on the Accountability Chart, or if a leadership team member is failing to live up to company standards. If a leader brings up a specific staff member's performance during IDS, the facilitator must redirect them. Instruct the manager to solve the issue directly with the employee. If the manager needs coaching on how to handle the situation, they should schedule a separate one-on-one with their own manager, rather than consuming the leadership team's valuable collective time.