7 Brutal Habits We Caught on Tape After a Year of Recording Leadership Meetings

We just spent the last year quietly recording leadership team meetings and then having the leaders themselves go back and watch the tape.

What we found with my team at Question First Group was, well, pretty brutal and eye opening.

And honestly… kind of embarrassing for the state of leadership teams (and meetings) today.

Call Recording Technology for Leadership Meetings

Before we share what we discovered, let me just say that although most organizations now are getting used to recording sales calls and using AI to “observe” the quality of those calls (our favorite tool is Ask Elephant btw), very few companies are recording their leadership team meetings.

You can likely guess why.

It’s really easy to judge your sales team.

It’s much harder to put yourself in the spotlight and find that you weren’t the effective leader you thought you were.

This has been a struggle for us at times with our clients at Question First Group, as a leader has to seriously swallow their pride to open themselves, and their leadership team meetings, to observation and judgement.

But when they do this, and even better, when they get passionate about it, the rate of improvement (for individual leaders and meetings alike) absolutely takes off, and it’s a beautiful thing to see.

The findings here are derived from multiple companies in multiple industries, most of which were small to medium sized businesses.

And with that, let’s look at what we found…

7 Disturbing Communication Habits from Leadership Team Meetings

Our biggest observation was simply this:

Most leaders have NO idea what they actually do in a room.

They think they ask great questions.

They think they’re building consensus.

They think they’re “giving people a voice.”

But the tape says something very, very different:

Here are 7 things leaders consistently realize the moment they stop talking and start watching themselves in action:

Most leaders talk wayyy more than they think. When we asked them what % of the time they believed they were speaking, most said around 30% or less. But once they started watching the film, the data said the average was closer to 60%-70%. (Turns out leaders are a lot like sales people when it comes to talk time.)
Most leaders have a terrible habit of asking a question…then answering it themselves a few seconds later. We see this habit again and again, and almost NO ONE realizes they do it until they watch it happen for themselves.
The same 2-3 voices dominate most meetings. Way too many team members live in the shadows because leaders don’t know how to effectively draw everyone into the conversation while stepping off of the stage themselves.
People are nodding “yes” with their mouths and screaming “no” with their faces. It’s clear compliance over commitment issue. Instead of only hearing “yes” leaders must learn to see the “no” — a great challenge for many.
A big issue that we saw dozens of times was the elephant in the room (problem, root cause, etc.) not getting named. Between a lack of team safety, candor, or incisiveness – a whole lot of time gets spent walking around the core problem at hand.
Decisions supposedly get “made” but ask three people 24 hours later what you decided an you’ll often get three different answers.
Many leaders suffer from a serious case of “resting executive face” – without ever knowing it. But their facial energy is creating a bad vibe, and they are the only one that doesn’t realize why. (Bottom Line: A leader’s face sets the energy for the entire room)

One final surprising finding:

Every single leader we showed the tape to thought they were the exception, at least at first.

Almost no one knew they were having these issues.

They thought that because they were “doing EOS” or because they weren’t hearing negatives from their team that their meetings were great.

Well, they weren’t.

A Powerful Solution: Become a Pathfinder

At Question First Group, we’re on a mission to help leaders and sales teams create true “connection” with the way they communicate.

And the way we do this is through a powerful framework we call The Pathfinder System.

At the core of the Pathfinder System is a pillar that teaches leaders how to become deeply curious and ask better questions – questions that lead to breakthroughs. This pillar is what we refer to as “Question First,” hence the name of the company.

If you’d like to learn how to become a Pathfinder yourself, we have a free book you can download right here. It’s short, it’s sweet, and it’s dang powerful when applied.

The Future of Effective Leadership

Here’s what I know to be true: In the coming years, the leaders who pull ahead likely won’t be the ones with the best strategies, the slickest decks, or the highest IQs.

They’ll be the ones brave enough to watch themselves on tape.

Brave enough to see what their team has been seeing all along.

And brave enough to do something about it.

That will be the new bar.

And it’s my hope you will join them.

To Your Success,

Marcus