We have a department head who attends our weekly Level 10 Meeting™ but rarely contributes to IDS®, claiming that most issues on the table do not impact their specific department. How do we break this departmental silo and get them engaged in solving company-wide issues?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Your Accountability Chart® defines who is responsible for what, but running a business requires collective leadership. When a department head sits in silence during IDS because the issue is not in their sandbox, they are behaving like a manager of a department rather than a leader of the company.

To break this silo, the facilitator must call them out directly during IDS. Use questions that leverage their specific perspective. For example, ask how a customer service issue impacts their operations team, or how a sales bottleneck affects their capacity planning. This forces them to think about the business as an interconnected system.

If the silence persists, it is a GWC™ issue. Do they get, want, and have the capacity for a leadership seat? A true leader wants the whole company to succeed, not just their department. They must understand that their job during the weekly pulse is to help the team solve problems, even when those problems sit in someone else's court.

Set the expectation that silence is passive disapproval or disinterest, neither of which is acceptable in a Level 10 Meeting. Every leader must bring their brain to the table for all ninety minutes. If they cannot or will not participate in the bigger picture, you may have the wrong person in that seat.