Skip-Level Meetings: Perspectives of Skipped First-Tier U.S. Tech Leaders

Although significant research exists on numerous intersecting theories, such as adaptive leadership, leadership communication, and employee voice, and although they are discussed in business publications and widely yet inconsistently implemented in industry, skip-level meetings are little scholarly studied. Such meetings offer benefits for employees, direct (skipped) managers, and skip-level leaders, and through them, to organizations, yet they also hold risks and pitfalls, and are influenced by various contextual factors, such as stakeholders’ national culture and age. This exploratory qualitative study employed elements of interpretive phenomenology, followed by thematic analysis, to examine the experiences, perceptions, and emotions of a diverse set of 25 first-tier U.S. technology leaders regarding meetings between their followers and the followers’ second-tier managers. Through this examination, the study investigated the perspectives of the stakeholders whose views and sentiments are most unpredictable, the “skipped” leaders, in a multicultural, high-turnover, and leadership challenging industry. The study aimed to identify underlying drivers and contextual influences, including meeting formats and stakeholder cultural backgrounds. Findings revealed diverse, sometimes surprising, practices, perceptions, and sentiments, shaped by psychological safety, culture, generation, meeting format, and organizational dynamics, and offering novel insights. Additionally, the study proposed an early practical implementation framework, which emerged, designed to maximize benefits while addressing pitfalls and minimizing adverse consequences, and recommended directions for future research, which is much needed.