Several members of our leadership team also run departmental Level 10 Meetings, meaning they spend three to four hours a week in meetings. How do we protect them from meeting fatigue while maintaining the integrity of our weekly meeting pulse?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In growing businesses, leadership team members often wear multiple hats, which means they participate in both the leadership Level 10 Meeting™ and one or more departmental Level 10 Meetings™. When leaders are spending four or more hours a week in meetings, they suffer from meeting fatigue, and the quality of their engagement drops.

To protect your leaders while maintaining a strong meeting pulse, you must first ensure that all meetings are run with extreme discipline. A Level 10 Meeting™ should never run over ninety minutes, and departmental meetings can often be shortened to sixty minutes if the team is small and focused.

Second, review your Accountability Chart. If a leader is sitting in multiple meetings, it may be a sign that you have not successfully delegated departmental seats. Work to elevate and delegate so that middle managers can take over the departmental meetings, allowing the leadership team member to step back into an oversight role.

Finally, ensure there is no duplication of issues. If an issue is being discussed at the leadership level, it should not be on the departmental list, and vice versa. Keep the departmental meetings focused purely on local execution and scorecard metrics, while the leadership meeting handles company-wide strategic challenges. This clarity of focus prevents the feeling of repeating the same conversations and keeps the energy high across all pulses.