Our five-minute personal and professional segue is constantly eating into our meeting time because one of our leaders treats it as a storytelling session, turning a brief check-in into a ten-minute monologue. How do we stop this transition phase from hijacking our Level 10 Meeting?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The segue is designed to transition your minds from the daily grind of working in the business to working on the business. It is a critical psychological reset, but it must be brief. When one leader uses this transition to share an elaborate, multi-minute story, they are stealing valuable time from the rest of the leadership team and killing the meeting momentum before it even starts.

To fix this, your facilitator must enforce the five-minute limit with absolute discipline. The segue is a rapid-fire round where each person shares one personal win and one professional win, taking no more than thirty to forty-five seconds per leader.

Here is how you handle the storyteller:

- Set a timer for the entire segue segment to make the five-minute constraint visible to everyone.
- Have the facilitator clearly state the rules before starting: Let us do a quick round of personal and professional wins, keeping them to thirty seconds each.
- Intervene immediately if a leader begins to tell a long story. The facilitator must politely but firmly interrupt by saying: 'Sounds like a great win, let us keep moving to stay on schedule.'
- Coach the leader outside of the meeting. Explain that their long stories are crowding out important operational discussions and that respect for the team means respecting the clock.

By keeping the segue crisp, you maintain the human connection necessary for healthy teamwork while protecting the precious ninety minutes of your weekly Meeting Pulse.