Our leadership team members are giving our Level 10 Meetings low ratings simply because the business had a bad week or we missed our targets, rather than rating the actual efficiency of the meeting itself. How do we correct this rating bias?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

It is common for leadership teams to give a Level 10 Meeting a low rating simply because the business is having a tough week or because multiple scorecard metrics are red. This is a critical mistake. You must separate the state of the business from the effectiveness of the meeting.

The rating at the end of the Level 10 Meeting is a diagnostic tool for the meeting itself. It measures whether you followed the agenda, started and ended on time, kept the reporting binary, and solved your most important issues during IDS.

If the business had a terrible week but the leadership team came together, identified the root causes of the problems, and agreed on clear, actionable To-Dos to fix them, that meeting is a ten. It did exactly what it was designed to do.

Conversely, if the business is thriving but your meeting ran fifteen minutes late, people multitasked, and you avoided discussing a hard issue, that meeting is a five, even if everyone is happy.

The facilitator must clarify this distinction during the rating section. If a team member gives a low rating, ask, 'Was that because of how we ran the meeting, or because of the news we discussed?' By keeping the rating focused strictly on meeting execution, you preserve the tool's ability to help you maintain a sharp operational pulse.