Our leadership team members frequently use the customer and employee headlines section to sneak in issues they want to talk about, hoping to get a quick reaction before we even reach the IDS portion of the meeting. How do we keep headlines strictly informational?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Headlines are meant to be quick, one-sentence good or bad news alerts about your clients or team. They are strictly for awareness, taking no more than five minutes total. When leaders use this section to sneak in problems, they are trying to bypass the discipline of the Level 10 Meeting agenda.

This behavior often happens because leaders want to soft-launch an issue, testing the waters to see how the team reacts before committing it to the actual Issues List. This creates unstructured, chaotic discussions early in the meeting.

The facilitator must act as a strict gatekeeper. The moment a leader begins to explain a headline or starts a discussion around it, the facilitator must interrupt. Use the standard prompt: "Is that a headline or an issue?"

If it requires discussion or a decision, the response must be, "Drop it to the Issues List." Do not allow a single follow-up question or comment.

Teach your team that headlines require zero discussion. You hear the news, you say thank you, and you move to the next person. If someone wants to know more about a specific headline, they can ask the owner offline, or they can request to add it to the Issues List. Keeping this boundary clean preserves your energy and time for the actual IDS portion of the agenda.