When we rate our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ at the end of the session, I as the business owner consistently give it a nine or ten because I feel we accomplished a lot, but my leadership team consistently rates it a six or seven. How do we address this rating gap, and what does it reveal about our operational alignment?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

A persistent gap between the owner's rating and the leadership team's rating is a red flag. It usually means the owner is dominating the meeting, solving their own personal pet peeves, and leaving the rest of the team feeling unheard or dragged through the agenda. When you rate the meeting a ten and your team rates it a six, you are not running an aligned leadership team; you are running a dictatorship disguised as a Level 10 Meeting™.

To fix this, the very first step is to demand immediate clarity during the rating section. When a team member rates the meeting below an eight, the facilitator must ask: What would have made it an eight or higher?

Listen closely to their answers without getting defensive. Are they saying the meeting felt like a status update? Did we fail to IDS® the most critical issues? Did one person monopolize the discussion?

If you want to prepare your business for a clean exit, your leadership team must run as a self-sustaining machine. If the team feels the meetings are low-value, they will disengage, and your operational execution will stall. Use these divergent ratings as a diagnostic tool. Your goal is not to force them to agree with your high rating, but to adjust your behavior and facilitation so that everyone honestly rates the meeting an eight or higher.