Most teams I work with meet regularly. The routine is usually the same: the team leader calls the meeting, owns the agenda, chairs the discussion, and gets what they need from the interaction. Occasionally, the boss is away, ill, or otherwise occupied. The question inevitably becomes, “Do we cancel?” In my experience, the meetings that go ahead without the boss are different, valuable, and worth replicating. Here are six reasons to have routine meetings without your boss present.
Scenarios That Are Better Without the Boss
Reflect on the discussions you’ve had in your team meetings over the past couple of months. Can you think of any conversations that would have made more sense or been more effective if your team leader hadn’t been in the room? Here are some of the situations I see in team meetings and how they might be more efficient or more effective without the boss.
1. Get Traction on an Issue
The first and most innocuous reason to meet without your team leader is to do the heavy lifting to get an idea off the ground without using the leader’s time. You know how scattered an early phase meeting can be: people throwing out disparate ideas of differing relevance. Don’t get me wrong, that’s important work, and it’s hard to start a project off well without casting a wide net, but does the team leader really need to be there for the lot of it?
Instead, meet as a team to frame the concept, define your terms, gather evidence, identify options, and recommend the next steps. Bring your preliminary thinking to a full team meeting to get your leader’s perspectives and direction.
2. Work Through Contentious Conflict
Suppose your team is wrestling with issues that feel particularly personal or emotional or where getting to the root of the problem will require team members to be vulnerable. In that case, you might be better off meeting without your boss present. It’s hard enough to feel psychologically safe exposing your thoughts, feelings, and struggles in front of your colleagues, but adding the person who does your performance reviews might cause you to clam up.
Instead, meet as a team to share how you’re experiencing the situation, ask open-ended questions to understand the underlying issues, validate one another’s experiences, and come to a shared view on the best path forward. Bring any unresolved issues (along with the context and different positions) to the full team meeting to have your leader decide if the team cannot. For more on why you owe it to your teammates to disagree, check out this article.
3. Encourage Debate and Dissent
In a slight twist on #2, another great reason to meet without your team leader is to encourage more productive conflict than you’re getting with the boss in the room. I’ve heard several team members admit that they have an implicit “we won’t throw each other under the bus” agreement that seems to include not disagreeing with one another or doing anything that would risk making the person look bad. Foregoing debate and dissent is a risky way to go.
Instead, meet as a team where you agree not to tolerate unhealthy acquiescence. Take more risks in putting tension on one another’s ideas, offer up unpopular opinions, and take the time to test the limits on essential issues. Bring your deeper, more diverse thinking back to the full team, where it will support informed decision-making.
4. Problem Solve on What’s Not Working
Does it feel risky to admit in front of your boss that something you’re accountable for is not working? You try to put on a brave face, clarify all the steps you’re taking to right the ship, and generally act as if you’re fully in control because it seems like a career-limiting move to do any less. Do you suspect that your teammates are also not quite as “on it” as they want everyone to believe?
Instead of faking it ‘till you break it, get together without the boss in a meeting specially allocated for sharing emerging issues and helping each other identify potential solutions. Not only will you come away with ideas for how to get on the right track, but you’ll realize that being vulnerable with your teammates can encourage them to be vulnerable with you.
“Don’t fake it ‘til you break it. Create a safe place to talk about what’s not working.”
5. Prioritize What You Need from Your Leader
Sometimes, you might find that your leader isn’t giving you what you need. Leader letdown comes in many forms, such as when you have a leader who provides insufficient clarity on assignments, fails to make trade-offs and spreads everyone too thin, is indecisive, harsh, a flip-flopper, or completely disorganized. If you stay quiet about it, you and your colleagues will likely suffer in solitude.
Instead, meet with your teammates to share what you need from your boss to be more effective. Work through the long list, venting and then striking off the grumpy complaints until you get to a short list of the most important things you need from your leader to set you up for success. Then, decide whether you’re going to slowly introduce the ideas one at a time in your team meetings or whether you’re going to divide them up for individuals to discuss in their one-on-one meetings.
6. Provide Feedback to One Another
Returning to the “I won’t throw you under the bus if you don’t throw me under” pact, your team is likely not being candid with one another about the impact of your behaviors if the boss is always in the room. You bottle up your frustrations, let resentments fester, and give up on having a great team in favor of having a superficially harmonious one.
Instead, meet with your teammates to share examples of where you could improve alignment, reduce friction, and make the experience of teamwork and collaboration more positive. Make sure that what you’re sharing is feedback, not judgment; otherwise, the conversation might start to feel unsafe.
Your team leader has a vital role in helping you develop into a high-performing team, but that doesn’t mean they should be responsible for everything. Create opportunities to meet without your boss so your team can work on more candor, stronger alignment, and better problem-solving than possible with the boss present.
Additional Resources
Mistakes team leaders make: Culture of fear
Is it just a little too happy on your team?