Want to know a fast way to lose your best talent? Play favorites with your leadership meeting invites.
I work with organizations to design their leadership offsites, and almost every single time I have to talk leaders out of turning it into a corporate version of Mean Girls.
Here’s how it usually goes:
They want to invite “the leadership team” for a strategic kickoff or update. Great.
So I ask: “Who’s that?”
“Well, all the Directors.”
“Okay, so everyone with a Director title?”
“Well… not ALL of them.”
And here we go.
This Director gets invited. That one doesn’t. No clear criteria. Just… vibes. Politics. Who’s in favor this quarter.
When I push on why someone’s excluded, I get garbage answers:
“They’re not doing strategic work.” Then why do they have a Director title?
“We need to keep costs down.” You’ll spend 100x that replacing them when they leave.
“They’re one extra layer down from the CEO.” So you’re literally creating tiers of “real” leaders and “lesser” leaders?
I care about this because I lived it.
Every Senior Director in my organization got invited to the leadership meeting. Every single one. Except me.
When I finally asked why (because no one bothered to explain), I was told it was because I reported one layer further down from the CEO than the others.
Same title. Same level. Different treatment.
That experience made me question my value to the organization, and it wasn’t long before I left.
When you cherry-pick your offsite invites without clear criteria, people notice. They talk. They leave.
The ones you excluded? They’re updating their resumes.
The ones you included? They’re uncomfortable being part of the in-crowd while their peers got cut.
If you’re going to have a leadership meeting, have a clear, consistent line for who gets invited. Communicate it. And stick to it.
Or just own that you’re running a popularity contest and stop calling it “strategic alignment.”
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