Our leadership team members consistently rate our Level 10 Meeting™ a nine or a ten every week, but our actual operational progress is stagnant and I suspect they are just being polite to avoid conflict. How do we break through this false harmony and get them to rate the meeting honestly?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

An average rating of nine or ten is useless if your business is flatlining. When a team consistently hands out high marks while missing Rocks and to-dos, you are dealing with artificial harmony. To break this habit, the facilitator must establish a new rule during the rating section. If anyone rates the meeting an eight or below, they must provide a concrete, ten-second explanation of what was missing. If they rate it a nine or ten, they should be challenged by the Integrator to justify that rating against their weekly output.

You must explicitly define what a ten represents. A true ten means the meeting started and ended on time, everyone was fully prepared, the team engaged in healthy conflict, and you solved your most critical, high-impact issues. If you spent ninety minutes talking about symptoms, tip-toe-ing around elephants in the room, or leaving major issues unresolved, it is an eight at best.

As the Integrator, you must lead by example. Rate the meeting a seven when it deserves a seven. State clearly that a lower rating is not a personal attack on the facilitator; it is an objective assessment of the team's efficiency and focus. When you lower the bar of vulnerability, your leadership team will feel safe enough to tell the truth.