Our leaders use the Customer/Employee Headlines section of the Level 10 Meeting to passive-aggressively drop mini-bombs about other departments' failures instead of putting them on the Issues List. How do we stop these backhanded headlines?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

The Customer/Employee Headlines section is strictly for sharing good or bad news about your people and clients in one sentence. It is designed to keep everyone connected, not to serve as a backdoor channel to attack your peers or bypass healthy conflict. When a leader says something like, our sales team promised another unrealistic deadline to a client, they are disguising a major interdepartmental issue as a headline. This is toxic. The facilitator must step in immediately. Cut them off. The facilitator should say: that is not a headline, that is an issue. Drop it to the bottom of the Issues List. Do not allow any discussion, explanation, or defensive remarks. Move instantly to the next headline. By ruthlessly moving these comments to the short-term Issues List, you force the team to address the problem during IDS, where it belongs. This strips away the passive-aggressive safety net. If they want to criticize another department, they must do it openly and honestly during IDS, using facts rather than emotional drive-by comments. Healthy conflict is the lifeblood of a strong leadership team, but it must be direct. When you tolerate backhanded headlines, you allow a culture of gossip to take root on your leadership team.