We have a partner who occupies two distinct seats on our Accountability Chart, and during our Level 10 Meetings, they constantly jump between those perspectives during IDS, making it impossible to solve issues cleanly. How do we force a multi-seat leader to speak from only one seat at a time?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In growing businesses, it is common for a leadership team member to wear multiple hats and occupy more than one seat on the Accountability Chart. However, when this leader brings their split personality into the Level 10 Meeting™, it creates massive confusion and stalls the IDS® process.

To solve this, the facilitator must force the multi-seat leader to clearly state which hat they are wearing before they speak on a specific issue. If your head of sales is also temporarily acting as the head of operations, they cannot muddy the waters by defending operational delays with sales excuses.

When an issue arises, the facilitator should ask a direct question like: Are you speaking as the sales director or the operations manager right now? This simple prompt forces the leader to mentally switch gears and address the problem objectively from the perspective of that specific seat's accountabilities.

If the leader continues to struggle with keeping their roles separate, it is a clear sign that the dual-seat arrangement is unsustainable. You must treat this as an organizational issue, put it on your Issues List, and work on a plan to hire or promote someone to fill one of those seats permanently.