Our leadership team ratings are consistently high, but when we have a genuinely tense and highly argumentative IDS® session that yields a great solution, the team rates the meeting a 5 or 6 because they hate the conflict. How do we recalibrate their understanding of a good meeting rating?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Many leadership teams confuse a comfortable meeting with a productive one. If your team rates a meeting poorly simply because the discussion was tense or argumentative, they are likely exhibiting a fear of conflict. True traction and breakthroughs often require a healthy dose of constructive friction.

Recalibrating Meeting Rating Criteria

You must recalibrate what an eight, nine, or ten rating actually means for your team. A great Level 10 Meeting™ is characterized by several key elements:

• The team was open and honest.
• The agenda was followed effectively.
• The most critical issues were solved permanently.
• Everyone left on the same page.

If your team spends ninety minutes politely agreeing with each other and solving nothing, that is a failed meeting, even if everyone felt comfortable. This is a common pitfall that can lead to a lack of progress, as seen when leaders struggle to move from [lagging results to weekly leading indicators](/qa/leading-vs-lagging-scorecard-metrics).

Embracing Healthy Conflict

To fix this perception, actively redefine the rating criteria. Instruct your team that a high score requires healthy debate and a willingness to [resolve leadership turf wars](/qa/resolving-leadership-turf-wars-accountability-chart). If they rate a meeting lower because of tension, initiate a discussion:

• Ask if the issue was solved.
• If the root cause was identified, discussed, and solved, explain that the tension was necessary and healthy for achieving a permanent solution.
• Remind them that this approach prevents the team from just [pointing fingers at other departments rather than taking ownership](/qa/using-accountability-chart-to-stop-blame-in-ids).

Encourage the team to embrace conflict as a tool for progress. Remind them of your operational charter, which values solving issues completely over maintaining artificial comfort.

Once the team understands that healthy debate is the only way to protect the business and prepare it for an exit, they will begin rating the effectiveness of the solutions rather than the comfort of the conversation. This shift in perspective is crucial for building [vulnerability and safety in leadership](/qa/building-vulnerability-and-safety-in-leadership) and fostering an environment where challenging discussions are seen as valuable.