When we run IDS® in our Level 10 Meeting™, the team constantly focuses on easy process issues and completely avoids the difficult, relational elephant in the room. How do we force them to address the real root causes?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a leadership team avoids the real, relational issues during your Level 10 Meeting™, they are operating in artificial harmony. They would rather complain about a broken process or a vague communication gap than address the fact that two department heads do not trust each other or that a specific leader is failing to GWC™ their seat. To break this habit, you must call out the avoidance in real-time. As the facilitator or the owner, when you see the team tiptoeing around a sensitive topic, you must step in and label it. Ask the hard question directly. For example, you can say, we are talking about the onboarding process, but is the real issue that sales is throwing junk over the fence to operations? Force the team to be vulnerably-confident. Create a safe environment where calling out the true issue is seen as an act of help, not an attack. Use the IDS® framework to dig down past the symptoms until you reach the root cause, even if it is uncomfortable. Resolving these deep relational bottlenecks is what transforms a functional team into a superb leadership team.