Joe Hudson Celebration at The Mindful CEO:
This month, I want to honor the work of a special voice in leadership coaching: Joe Hudson.
Joe is the “coach behind Silicon Valley’s unicorn CEOs”. He is one of the most sought-after teachers among the world’s top leaders at OpenAI, Alphabet, Apple, and numerous other companies (the list is endless).
I am deeply honored to have Joe as a guest expert on the faculty of my CEO Cohort program.
And to celebrate his contribution, the following weeks will be dedicated to some of his transformative ideas for leadership.
In a world that celebrates hustle, being harder on yourself, and pushing through, Joe offers a radically different approach to leading yourself and your organization.
His take is radical:
You will be a better leader if you are kinder to yourself.
Now, to reach that state, you will actually have to face yourself at a deeper level than ever before.
You will have to embrace emotions (even the ones you don't like).
And you will start to understand why some of your self-talk is toxic af.
This work is really hard.
However, it's one of the few ways that actually leads you to accept yourself, rather than running away from yourself.
If you'd like to read more from Joe himself or participate in his acclaimed AoA training programs, you can find the information here.
let the wild rumpus start:
The Five-Star Meeting Framework: A CEO's Guide to Thriving Cultures through Courageous Conversations
As a CEO, you know that meetings consume enormous resources, yet most are painfully ineffective.
Joe Hudson's Five-Star Meeting Framework offers a surprisingly simple diagnostic tool that reveals deep organizational issues while transforming your meeting culture.
Meetings are a Mirror of your companies health
Your meetings are a mirror of your company's health. Poor meetings don't just waste time; they signal dysfunction in decision-making, trust, and alignment. Hudson discovered that by treating meetings like customer experiences (rating them 1-5 stars), you unlock profound organizational insights.
How It Works
Step 1: Rate Every Meeting
After each meeting, participants rate it: Would you give this meeting 5 stars? 3 stars? 1 star? This takes seconds but creates invaluable data.
Step 2: Investigate Low Scores
A 2-star meeting isn't just boring; it's diagnostic gold.
Why did it fail?
Common patterns emerge:
Decisions made elsewhere, meeting is theater
Key voices missing or silenced
Unclear authority structures
Fear preventing honest discussion
Misaligned priorities masquerading as "collaboration"
Step 3: Address Root Causes
The magic happens here. That boring weekly sync?
It might reveal that your teams don't trust each other. The contentious budget review? Perhaps your strategic priorities aren't actually clear.
Fix the meeting, fix the company.
What You'll Discover
Hidden Power Dynamics
Low-rated meetings often expose shadow decision-making processes. If the real decisions happen in parking lot conversations, your formal structures are broken.
Cultural Truth
When people consistently rate meetings poorly but say nothing, you have a fear-based culture. When ratings improve after asking "What are you scared to say?" you know psychological safety was missing.
Operational Waste
Most companies can eliminate 30-50% of meetings once they start rating them. The data makes it impossible to ignore that many meetings exist for political rather than productive reasons.
Implementation Strategy
Start with Your Executive Team
Model the behavior. Rate your own meetings first. When the C-suite admits their meetings need work, it gives everyone permission to be honest.
Make It Safe, Not Punitive
Frame low ratings as opportunities, not failures. The leader whose meetings consistently get 2 stars needs support, not shame.
Act on the Data
Nothing kills this faster than collecting ratings without making changes. Pick one consistently low-rated meeting and transform it. Make it visible.
Enjoyment - The CEO's Secret Weapon
Here's what most frameworks miss: enjoyment matters.
A 5-star meeting isn't just efficient; people actually want to be there. When your team starts looking forward to meetings instead of dreading them, you've cracked the code on engagement.
Hudson's insight is that forced engagement never works.
But when meetings become genuinely energizing (clear purpose, real decisions, authentic dialogue), engagement happens naturally.
Red Flags to Watch For
Ratings clustered at 3 (polite mediocrity)
Wide rating disparities (some love it, others hate it)
Defensive reactions to low ratings
"This meeting would be 5 stars if [specific person] wasn't here"
Each pattern tells you something critical about your organization's real challenges.
“Within a month your goal is to have two weeks in a row where every meeting you attend, you consider it a five-star meeting. You rank your meetings one to five stars, and every one is a five-star meeting. That means you feel inspired, invigorated and energized by the meeting. You have to do whatever it takes to do that, whatever you need to do whether it is telling the chairman of the board you are not coming to a meeting or whether it means walking out of meetings or saying this meeting sucks. How do we fix it? Whatever you need to do to get to that place?”
Meetings as a diagnostic tool
This isn't about better agendas or shorter meetings. It's about using meetings as a diagnostic tool for organizational health.
When you commit to only having meetings that people would genuinely rate as 5-star experiences, you force yourself to confront every dysfunction in your company.
The question isn't whether you can afford to implement this. It's whether you can afford not to. Every low-rated meeting is a competitive disadvantage, a talent drain, and a missed opportunity for breakthrough thinking.
Start tomorrow. Pick three meetings. Rate them. Ask why they weren't 5 stars. Then fix what you find. The simplicity is deceptive, but the results are transformative.
Your meetings are your culture in action. Make them five-star, and watch your organization transform.
Yours,
P.S. Invitation for Founders and CEOs
If you want to practice this work in community, apply to my next CEO Cohort. Ten months, peer depth, and a silent retreat to lead from a deeper place. One cohort, limited seats. Write me here, for more information.
Three Pillars of Wise Leadership
P.P.S: And because you deserve it - here is your bonus.
My 10 “Most Popular Mini Leadership Guides”:
Enjoy the newsletter?
Please forward this to a pal. It only takes 18 seconds. And will hopefully help them to become the leader the world needs them to be.
See you next week,
