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The importance of executive leadership team meetings and how to run them

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ELTs Are Critical to Achieving Scale 

Executive Leadership Team meetings are critical to a business achieving scale. Even with infinite grit, determination, drive, and brilliance, leadership responsibilities must eventually be assigned such that a system to keep things coming together for collective leadership attention is required.

With scale comes the need for leaders to specialize and focus their span of control. ELT meetings are for leaders to connect and align across their areas of specialization. Even the best run $20M business will plateau on the path to $50M if leaders stick with an ad hoc approach to operations and governance.

The objective of a well-executed ELT meeting is to keep leaders informed, in sync, and aligned. 

As a business succeeds and gets larger, so too will the ranks of its top leaders and of the next level of leaders to include junior partners who may be geographically remote. In the face of expansion, the leadership team needs a forum and orderly process for information to flow up to, and out from, the ELT. The insights, agreements and decisions of the ELT flow throughout the organization, and need to be based on accurate and relevant decision making information from across the organization.

Proper Planning, Having Discipline, and Respecting Each Other’s Time Goes a Long Way

Schedule ELT meetings at a regular time that will, more often than not, be safe from the myriad of possible interruptions. Early Monday mornings is usually a good choice because there are usually few distractions at the beginning of the day and the week and it gives the rest of the week to follow up on meeting assignments. Monday mornings also give team members the weekend to reflect and to contemplate agenda items.

During meetings, it is critical to be disciplined. It is especially important for every member, especially the CEO, to make a firm commitment to stay mentally and physically present. That is: show-up and do not allow emails, texts, calls or any other interruptions during the meeting. Respecting each other’s time will go a long way towards building a high-performance leadership team.

Create an Effective Agenda

The CEO owns the ELT agenda, but each ELT member is co-author in that each has the responsibility, opportunity, and the right to add items to the agenda. Consider these tips to running an effective ELT meeting:

  • Send out a draft agenda a few days ahead of the meeting and invite comment and drive preparation.

  • Schedule time in each meeting to discuss topics that come up on-the-fly.

  • Every ELT member should agree to do their best to make meetings effective and to not complain about meeting content or how it is run.

  • End each meeting with a draft agenda of next meeting and invite members to comment.

  • Keep a running list between meetings of potential topics for up-coming meetings. 

elt meeting infographic - intelliven

ELT Meeting Best Practices

Members must prepare for agenda items they are to lead. Submit materials in advance to someone assigned to gather and distribute two-days ahead of the meeting to allow time for members to read through and develop a point of view on each topic.

If it is unavoidable, reschedule or cancel a meeting, but do not make it a habit. Only the most urgent matters should disrupt the ELT process. For example, a pending merger or acquisition or an HR catastrophe might justify disruption, but not much else. 

Keep meetings to an agreed upon length; 1.5 – 2 hours is plenty of time for a well-run ELT meeting.  

Start and end meetings on time. Discipline is paramount, or chaos will reign.

Agenda topics are of two types: Routine and Non-routine.

  • Routine items: Things that are covered in every meeting with standard advance materials conveying the state of each compiled and distributed in advance:
    • Upcoming key events.

    • Metrics

    • Headcount

  • Non-routine: One to three of the most important things going on in the business should be discussed in each meeting. Those leading each discussion need to be notified well in advance and have taken the time to prepare and distribute supporting materials in advance. For example:

    • ELT member 1 – walk us through the LAP business plan.

    • ELT member 2 – walk us through the BD plan for 2020 and 2021.

    • ELT member 3 – walk us through the facilities plan.

Invite non-ELT guests to prepare and present to the ELT from time to time to give up-and-coming leaders a forum in which to shine and for them to get input directly from the top team. 

  • Examples:
    • Talent Management Program leader – walk us through the Talent Manager program and update us on how it is going relative to plans.

    • Researcher – walk us through the research unit’s scale model.

    • Project Manager – walk us through the implementation progress and update us on how it is going relative to plan.

  • Treat guests as guests (just because they are invited to one ELT does not qualify them to be ELT members). Coach them to prepare and to provide details on what they are doing and how it is going. This is a presentation and they need to take preparation and presentation seriously.

  • Once the organization sees how guests are involved, there will be a step-function increase in performance from the guests. It will be seen as important to be invited to present to the ELT.

Remember: discipline is paramount, or chaos will reign.

About the Author

Eric Palmer has 30+ years of outstanding success as a lead operating executive in private, public, private equity owned, and venture capital backed companies. He is particularly adept at strategy formulation, operational execution, International operations, M&A, leveraged debt, IPOs, and working with professional funders.

Other Posts by Eric Palmer

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Grow, People Matters

How to use meeting ground rules to shape behavior and improve performance.

High-performing leaders act intentionally. Meeting ground rules help a team consider and decide how they want to behave with each other in meetings and in general. Meetings become a place in which to establish and work on target behaviors.

Meeting Owners (see: How to Run a Great Meeting/) on their own, with their team (see: How to Form a Core Leadership Group), and with help from a trained facilitator if available, should agree on three to six ground rules.

Each rule is consistent with how the leader wants people to behave in meetings and in general. When introduced for the first time, walk through each rule and encourage discussion to be sure it, and the reason for it, are clear and to get buy-in. To encourage clarity and promote buy-in, a good approach is to tweak the rule as needed in response to team input.

Too many rules, or rules that are complex, can be confusing or overwhelming so keep the list short and the rules simple. Start with just a few that seem most appropriate and add others as needed and as the group becomes comfortable developing, managing, and using rules. Drop rules that become second nature and that no longer need to be called out in favor of those that need to be added to next shape behavior.

Ground rules persist from meeting to meeting so there is no need to develop new ground rules for each meeting. It is a good practice to have a few basic ground rules that are used at all meetings and it is fine to have a few that are specific to what a given group is working on next.

Review ground rules to open each meeting to remind attendees how they should work with each other. Meeting Owners should make it a point to walk through all ground rules for new attendees ahead of, or at the start of, their first meeting.

Ground rules to choose from:

  • Act as part of collective leadership vs. representative of a constituency
  • Everyone participates, no one dominates.
  • Stay mentally and physically present.
  • One person speaks at a time; no side conversations.
  • Start and end on time.
  • Work the point, not the person.
  • Commit random acts of kindness.
  • Stay on point; avoid long-winded stories and irrelevant detail.
  • Pay attention, show respect.
  • Say what is on your mind IN the meeting not afterward.
  • Seek first to understand.
  • Show up on time.
  • Come prepared.
  • Be insightful and supportive. Think before speaking.
  • Deal with the real issues; avoid seeing only what you want to see.
  • Summarize, consolidate, and crystallize key insights to share with others.
  • Recognize the positive and celebrate success.
  • Respect confidentiality; if sensitive matters are shared, they stay in the room.
  • No storytelling.
  • No grandstanding.
  • Stay until after the meeting ends.

Procedure:  On a whiteboard or on posted newsprint or poster paper, list ground rules in lettering large enough for everyone in the meeting to easily read. At the beginning of each meeting, until they are all second nature, the Meeting Owner or Facilitator, asks the group to agree on, and commit to following, posted ground rules. Add or adjust rules as appropriate to give power and ownership to the group and to accommodate special circumstances.

Appoint an attendee to monitor performance relative to the ground rules. If a rule violation occurs, work with the group to agree on whether and how the Monitor should intervene; e.g., by flashing a signal (for example, holding up a yellow card or making a specific gesture with their hand). A good strategy is to agree that if the Monitor fails to intervene when a violation occurs, any and all participants are to bring it to the Monitor’s attention and remind them to ask the offender to follow the rules or, if appropriate, work with the group to adjust the rule.

The scheme to use a Monitor works well because it is usually much easier for participants to address the Monitor for not jumping in than it is for them to give feedback directly to an offender when a rule is violated. In this way, the entire group efficiently works together to routinely follow the rules.

If the Monitor does not agree to take action in response to group prodding or if the Monitor consistently fails to perform the function, the role should be reassigned. If a single person gets more than three rule violations, they may be asked to leave the meeting. If a rule violator fails to leave, the meeting may be adjourned at the discretion of the group and or the meeting Owner.

See Also

How to run a great meeting.