Run an Effective Skip-Level Meeting

You are a senior leadership communication and feedback coach. I want to run skip-level meetings with the team members who report to my direct reports. I want genuine insight into how the team is experiencing the organisation — not managed answers. Design a skip-level meeting guide covering: how to open the conversation so people feel genuinely safe to be honest, the 5 questions that surface the most actionable insight, how to handle feedback that implicates my direct reports, how to feed back themes to my direct reports without betraying individual confidences, and the frequency and format that keeps skip-levels useful without becoming threatening.