Some Level 10 Meetings® are difficult because people argue too much. Others have the opposite problem. Everyone is pleasant, people agree quickly, nobody challenges anyone too hard, the meeting finishes on time & everyone walks out feeling reasonably good about it.
On the surface, that can look like a healthy leadership team.
Sometimes it is.
But sometimes the team is not healthy at all. It is simply polite.
There is a big difference between a team that genuinely trusts one another & a team that has learnt how to avoid discomfort. A healthy leadership team can disagree, challenge assumptions, raise difficult Issues & still leave the room with trust intact. An overly polite team often looks aligned in the room while the real conversations happen afterwards.
That is where things start to go wrong.
Healthy Does Not Mean Comfortable
One of the biggest misconceptions about team health is that a healthy team should get along all the time.
I do not agree.
If you have several experienced leaders sitting around the table, they should occasionally see things differently. Sales may challenge Operations. Finance may question whether the numbers stack up. The Visionary may bring an idea that others do not immediately support. Someone may believe a Rock is unrealistic. Someone else may think the team is avoiding a people Issue.
That is not dysfunction. That is leadership.
The problem is not disagreement. The problem is when people stop saying what they really think because they do not want to upset someone, create tension or be seen as difficult.
That is when a leadership team can start looking calm while becoming less effective.
The Real Conversation Often Happens After the Meeting
One of the clearest signs of this is what happens once the meeting ends.
Someone catches another leader afterwards & says, “I did not really agree with that.” Someone sends a message later saying they do not think the decision will work. A department quietly does something different because its leader never genuinely bought into what was agreed.
Sometimes the founder later hears, “Well, nobody asked what I thought.”
Except they were sitting in the room when the decision was made.
If the honest conversation consistently happens outside the Level 10 Meeting, the team has a problem. The meeting should be the safest place to raise concerns, challenge assumptions & say what needs to be said.
If people are editing themselves in the room, the quality of the decisions will suffer.
Your Issues List Can Be Too Safe
You can often see artificial harmony in the Issues List too.
There is nothing wrong with solving process problems, missed numbers, customer concerns or operational obstacles. They all matter.
But if a leadership team has been together for months & the Issues List never includes anything around behaviour, accountability, structure, trust or people, I become curious.
Where are the more difficult Issues?
The senior leader who regularly misses commitments. The founder who keeps overriding decisions. The person everyone knows is in the wrong seat. The tension between two functions that is slowing the business down. The leader who agrees in the meeting but does something different afterwards.
Those sorts of Issues exist in most businesses.
If they never make it onto the Issues List, that may not mean the team is unusually healthy. It may mean nobody wants to be the person who raises them.
IDS® Only Works When You Identify the Real Issue
This is where IDS can become very revealing.
The first step is Identify, but overly polite teams often identify the safest version of the problem rather than the real one.
Instead of saying, “James is not holding his team accountable,” the Issue becomes, “We need better communication.”
Instead of saying, “The founder keeps stepping over the leadership team,” it becomes, “We need clearer decision-making.”
Instead of saying, “We do not believe Sarah is right for this seat anymore,” it becomes, “We should review the structure.”
Sometimes those descriptions are accurate. Sometimes they are simply softer language that allows everyone to avoid the real conversation.
You cannot solve an Issue properly if everyone is carefully talking around it.
At some point, somebody needs to say the sentence the room has been avoiding.
That is often when the useful conversation finally begins.
Nice Is Not Always Kind
This is an important distinction.
Being nice can mean avoiding a difficult conversation because you do not want somebody to feel uncomfortable.
Being kind can mean having that conversation because allowing the situation to continue will ultimately hurt the person, the team or the business.
That is why I use the term carefrontational.
The caring part matters. So does the confrontation.
Care without honesty can become avoidance. Confrontation without care can become destructive. Strong leadership requires both.
If somebody is struggling, pretending everything is fine is not kind. If two leaders are frustrating one another, allowing resentment to build for six months is not kind either. If someone repeatedly breaks commitments & everyone quietly compensates for them, the team is not helping that person by staying silent.
Sometimes respect looks like telling the truth earlier.
Challenge the Idea, Not the Person
Healthy disagreement does not mean turning the meeting into an argument.
You can challenge somebody’s thinking without attacking them personally.
You can say, “I see that differently,” or “I do not think we have identified the real Issue yet.” You can question whether a Rock is achievable, push back on an assumption or say you believe the team is avoiding the real people problem underneath the discussion.
Those conversations do not need aggression.
They need trust.
The strongest leadership teams I work with are able to challenge each other directly because everybody understands they are trying to get to the best decision for the business, not win an argument.
That changes the tone completely.
Leaders Need to Make Disagreement Safe
This is particularly important for the person with the most power in the room.
If the owner, founder, Visionary or CEO reacts badly when challenged, the team will learn very quickly not to challenge them.
People may still contribute, but they will start editing what they say.
If every alternative view is met with defensiveness, a long explanation or an immediate shutdown, eventually people stop bothering.
Then the leader wonders why nobody speaks up.
If you want honest meetings, you have to make disagreement safe. That means listening properly, asking questions before defending your position & being willing to change your mind when somebody else has a better point.
A simple “You are right, I had not seen it that way” can do an enormous amount for team health.
Agreement Is Not the Same as Commitment
Healthy teams also understand that consensus is not always the goal.
People should be heard. Different perspectives should be considered. The Issue should be discussed properly.
But eventually, a decision needs to be made.
Not everyone has to love the decision. They do need to support it once it has been made.
There is a big difference between healthy disagreement before a decision & quietly undermining the decision afterwards.
One strengthens trust.
The other destroys it.
If your leadership team repeatedly reopens decisions, questions them outside the room or allows departments to ignore what was agreed, the Issue is probably not the decision itself.
It is the level of commitment behind it.
Pay Attention to the Meeting Rating
Even the meeting rating at the end of a Level 10 Meeting can tell you something.
If everyone automatically says eight or nine every week, ask whether they are genuinely rating the meeting or simply being polite.
A lower score is not a failure. It is information.
If someone gives the meeting a six, ask what would have made it an eight. Maybe the team avoided an Issue. Maybe one person dominated the discussion. Maybe a decision was rushed. Maybe everyone talked around the real problem.
That feedback is useful because the aim is not to protect the score.
The aim is to improve the meeting.
The Real Test Is Whether the Important Things Get Said
A strong Level 10 Meeting does not need to feel tense or combative.
It does need to be honest.
People should be able to raise concerns without worrying about political consequences. Leaders should challenge assumptions. Difficult Issues should make it onto the Issues List. IDS should get underneath symptoms & reach the real problem. Once a decision is made, the team should leave the room aligned enough to support it.
If everyone is pleasant but the real conversations happen elsewhere, the meeting is not as healthy as it looks.
At your next Level 10 Meeting, pay attention to what is not being said.
- Are people genuiney aligned, or are they simply agreeing?
- Which Issue keeps getting described in softer language?
- What conversation is everyone hoping somebody else will start?
- And are the people around the table confident enough to challenge one another?
Because sometimes the biggest danger to a leadership team is not conflict.
It is becoming too polite to solve the real Issues.