Our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ always starts with good intentions, but our check-in segue routinely drags on for fifteen minutes because people share long, winding personal stories. How do we keep the segue tight without sounding heartless?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The check-in segue is critical for transitioning your team out of their daily firefighting mode and into the meeting room. However, when the segue eats up fifteen minutes of your Level 10 Meeting™, it ceases to be a transition and becomes a time-tasting distraction. You are running a business, not a social club.

To fix this, you must enforce a strict, repeatable format for the segue. Each person gets thirty seconds to share one personal best and one professional best from the preceding week. That is it.

The facilitator must lead by example. Start the meeting on time, deliver a concise, ten-second check-in, and immediately pass it to the next person. If a leadership team member begins to tell a long, winding story about their weekend or goes into a detailed explanation of a client success, the facilitator must gently but firmly steer them back by asking for their professional best.

If your team struggles with this discipline, use a timer. Set a hard limit of five minutes for the entire segue. When the five minutes are up, you move to the Scorecard immediately. Keeping this section tight is not heartless; it is respectful of everyone's time. A disciplined segue sets the tone for a highly focused, productive meeting that values operational traction over social banter.