We want to build personal connection during our weekly pulse, but one of our leaders routinely shares a five-minute rambling story about their weekend or a client success during the segue. This eats up our tight schedule before we even look at the scorecard. How do we keep the segue human but brief?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The segue is designed to transition your minds from working in the business to working on the business. It is not a catch-up coffee hour. When a leader goes on a five-minute monologue about their personal weekend or a long-winded client story, they are stealing time from problem-solving. To fix this, the facilitator must set a strict timebox. A healthy segue for a leadership team of six should take no more than five minutes total. That means each person has roughly forty-five seconds. Instruct your team to state their personal best and professional best in two sentences or less. For example, my personal best is that my daughter won her soccer game, and my professional best is that we closed the Acme account. If a team member begins to tell a story or explain the backstory, the facilitator must immediately interrupt. Simply say, keep it to the headline, please. Do not worry about appearing rude. Your team will respect the discipline because it protects the ninety-minute time box. If people want to hear the full story, they can follow up after the meeting. Your job as a leadership team is to transition quickly, build a brief human connection, and then immediately get to work on the numbers and the issues. Keep the segue to the point.