How to Conduct a Skip-Level Meeting

November 24, 2020 Employee Performance and Coaching, The Manager's Resource Handbook

A Playbook for Skip-Level Meetings: Questions to Ask and How to Get Engagement

Skip-level meetings are an important component of managing a healthy organization. Alongside things like town hall discussions and employee surveys, regular skip-level meetings are an integral part of the standard feedback loop that helps leaders understand internal challenges and identify areas for improvement.

In particular, the skip-level meeting structure allows senior managers to get direct input from their extended teams and front-line workers. Additionally, these conversations enable employees to provide feedback on their manager and voice opinions directly to their boss’s boss in a private setting.

But how do you run an effective skip-level meeting? What questions should you ask employees? And, how can you make skip-level meetings engaging? Let’s review both a framework for making the discussion engaging as well as highlight some questions to ask employees during your skip-level meetings.

What Is a Skip-Level Meeting? A Quick Definition

A skip-level meeting is a meeting held with employees two (or more) levels below you. In other words, when your direct reports are people managers, a skip-level meeting would be a one-on-one or team discussion you hold with their employees.

However, skip-level meetings can also span multiple levels of your organization and include front-line workers and the division vice president, for example. Regardless of the setup, the intent is to give employees a direct line of communication to you that they do not regularly have.

Here’s a closer look at the what a skip-level meeting looks like, either as a one-on-one or team meeting:

Skip-Level Meetings Are:

A chance for you to get unfiltered information from front-line employees.
An opportunity to connect with extended parts of your organization.
A vehicle for you to get direct feedback on your employee’s (and their boss’s) leadership skills.
A chance to learn and assess how well your key messages and priorities are reaching the broader organization.

Skip-Level Meetings Are Not:

Time for you to redirect their priorities.
A conversation just about their boss (your employee).
An obligation or formality that you can cut short or avoid.

Now, let’s review a framework for hosting engaging skip-level meetings.

1. Before the Meeting, Do a Little Homework

Knowing every facet of what your extended organization is doing at any given time is tough. In many businesses, it’s likely impossible. The bigger your organization is, the harder it gets and there is nothing wrong with that. Before you meet with the team, though, it’s important you’re up to speed. Thus, the first part of making a skip-level meeting more engaging for employees is to do a little homework upfront.

Having basic awareness of their projects and knowing the status of internal initiatives will greatly improve the conversation for both you and the employees. Not only will this help you better talk to the issues and understand the context, but nothing is more dissatisfying for the employees than when their second level manager has no idea what they’re doing.

Here are some suggestions of the homework you should do before hosting a skip-level meeting:

Review the team’s metrics to understand how they are performing and where they may be struggling.
Review the org chart – learn their names and their titles, or roles.
Ask for a list of top-talent names on the team. They are the future leaders; spend a little extra time with them on the side, if you can.
Revisit the latest project status summaries to understand where key projects are as well any any current challenges.
If possible, have a look at the latest employee survey results to get a measure of morale.
Ask their manager (your employee) for any sensitive topics, issues or talking points you should be prepared for.

Having basic information and being up to speed is an important step hosting a productive and engaging skip-level meeting.

2. Put Employees at Ease

When it is time to sit down with the team, the very first thing you need to do is to put them at ease. In order to get the most out of the time you spend together during the skip-level meeting and to make it interactive, you need to ensure the employees are comfortable.

From the employee’s perspective, meeting with their boss’s boss – or higher – can be intimidating. In some cases, they may not even know you. However, their participation is essential in helping you understand the issues, so go out of your way to make them comfortable. Doing so will encourage a conversation in what can sometimes be an awkward setting.

Here are some simple tips for making employees more comfortable and willing to speak up during skip-level meetings:

Sit among them, not in front of them.
Tell a joke or a funny story to get the conversation started.
Talk about the game you saw on TV the night before.
Put your phone away so the team gets your undivided attention.
If it’s your first skip-level meeting, share a little bit of your background to let the audience get to know you.

An engaging skip-level meeting with your extended staff must be rooted in genuine conversation, so making an effort to create a relaxed environment shouldn’t be overlooked..

3. Prepare Your Opening Remarks

Keep in mind that when you are hosting a skip-level meeting, many of the participants may rarely – if ever – interact with you. Thus, after a casual start, kick off the discussion with some opening remarks and prepared comments. In addition to giving them a chance to hear from your directly, outline some introductory comments that encourage participation and engagement from the team.

Some examples of topics you may wish to cover include:

Important news and announcements that may not have filtered to the working level yet.
A business update including the latest market trends.
Present your view on the recent acquisition or the new factory that’s just been opened.
Share an outlook of new initiatives for the next year.
Your perspective on the organization’s recent accomplishments.

The purpose of the skip-level meetings to have a dialog, thus make your opening comments relevant but brief in order to get to the real discussion.

4. Ask What is Going Well

In order to drive engagement during skip-level meetings, ask open-ended questions, starting with positive and easy topics. Be patient and encourage them to participate. Additionally, avoid trying to fill the silence – the more you talk, they less they will!

You may just want to simply ask how they’re doing and to let you know what is going well. Here are some useful questions that will help get the conversation going:

What’s the biggest thing this team is working on right now?
How are things going and what are the highlights since the last we met?
How is the customer doing and how are we taking care of them?
I know we recently completed [X], I’m proud of that accomplishment. What is your assessment?

Beginning your skip-level with positive dialog is a useful way to get the conversation started before moving to more difficult or sensitive topics.

5. Discuss Their Development

As a senior leader, it’s important to foster an organizational culture that is grounded on professional development and learning. For this reason, a conversation to have when you get the chance to connect with your extended team is to talk about their development and professional growth.

Getting an unfiltered understanding of how employees feel about the opportunities that lay before them in the organization gives you insight into a part of your business culture. This type of feedback sheds light on how people are feeling about career growth and can identify potential triggers to turnover if employees express a lack of development opportunities.

When talking to your team about their development, here are some helpful questions:

Do you feel you have enough opportunities to pursue your career goals here?
Are you being given enough time to develop your skills through training or coaching?
What opportunities would you like to see in support of your professional growth?
How can we make professional development a bigger part of our culture?

RELATED: 29 Ways to Develop Your Staff

6. Ask for Input on Improving the Organization

The further business leaders get from the front-line staff the further removed they are from the inner workings of the organization. And, no organization is perfect.

Skip-level meetings, therefore, offer an excellent chance to get real, unfiltered feedback from front-line employees. It’s an opportunity for you to really dig into understanding road blocks and general barriers to success from the people who face them every day.

Seek ideas and suggestions for how you can make your organization more efficient and how you can create a better workplace – your front-line workers are in the best position to identify valuable improvements.

Here are some questions to help you uncover internal issues and opportunities for improvement.

What suggestions do you have for the organization in order to take us to the next level?
Is there something specific you feel we could be doing better?
How do you think we can build on the success we’ve already had?
Do you have enough support for doing your role?
Where are we inefficient and need to modernize?
What frustrates you and how do we address it?
Where are we falling short on the fundamentals?
What barriers do we need to remove?
What is holding us back?

When you are a few layers removed from working level employees, the information and issues you are exposed to are inevitably filtered through the organization. As a result, you will struggle to get a real glimpse of how the organization is really working.

Use your face time with your extended team to get some genuine input from your best players. Giving them a chance to help shape the organization’s future is another way to make skip-level meeting more engaging.

7. Ask for Feedback on Their Boss

While such meetings are certainly a time to connect with an extended layer of your organization, the reason they are skip-level is to get some time with your own employee’s staff. A delicate but important part of any skip-level meeting is to gather feedback on their boss, and your employee.

With their direct boss out of the room, his or her employees will be able to talk openly to you in a safe environment. The result of this, in turn, allows you to provide feedback to your employee – both constructive and positive.

Keep in mind that giving feedback or talking about your own boss to their boss can be a little awkward. Thus, as a best practice, be sure to remind the team that their comments are anonymous and any feedback they provide you is confidential.

Here are some probing questions to help drive this part of the skip-level meeting:

How is [Name] doing?
Do you feel you have enough interaction with [Name]?
Do you feel you are easily able to approach [Name] with questions or concerns?
Are you receiving enough coaching and feedback in a timely manner from [Name]?
What would you like to see more of from [Name]?
What do you feel you could use less of from [Name]?
What other feedback or things would you like me to pass on to [Name]?

Talking about their boss and asking for input can be a little uncomfortable, but is a necessary agenda item for any skip-level meeting.

REL:ATED: Best Practices In Giving Employees Feedback

8. Commit to Taking Action

At the end of the discussion, summarize your observations, your comments and the notes you’ve collected. From there, commit to taking action based the feedback and input you received from the team. Getting face time with you can be a big deal for your extended organization, so it’s important to reassure them that you’ll work on making improvements as a result of their comments.

Taking action is critical. When employees see you take action, it encourages them to provide feedback and input in the future. Additionally, your commitment to them and your follow through on actions will be reciprocated by their continued dedication to the job and the customer. Conversely, failing to take action is demotivating, and will deter them from sharing concerns or ideas with you in the future.

How to Hold a Skip-Level Meeting With Staff

Hosting skip-level meetings with your employee’s direct reports is a great way to get in touch with the true state of the organization. Through these conversations, managers can get a first-hand look at how things are going and understand if there are any issues that need to be addressed.

The skip-level meeting format also gives employees a chance to provide feedback on their boss in a safe way. Using the framework and questions we’ve outlined here will not only make the discussion more productive but will also make them more engaging for all participants.