Tactical Leadership: Precision Punctuality

Arriving early to meetings is not always a best practice

I was always led to believe that arriving early for a meeting was important and vital to my success. 

For the most part, arriving early is a good tactic; however, there is a time when precise punctuality, that is, arriving exactly on time, is a leadership best practice. When you are the person for whom a meeting is being held, showing up exactly on time is ideal. There are several benefits to this conscientious, on time arrival, but organizational efficiency and respect for the workforce are the two most important.

I was once in a position where the boss would routinely show up extremely early (and late) for our weekly meeting where we would brief him on a variety of topics. He generally arrived five or ten minutes early (or late), but once he was thirty minutes early (for what was usually only a thirty minute meeting). Whenever he arrived, early, late or on time, he expected the meeting to commence.

The boss's early arrival resulted in many inefficiencies. First, the stress his extra-early arrival placed on the meeting's participants was enormous. Even when participants genuinely and properly arrived at the meeting earlier than the scheduled start time, but the boss arrived even earlier, they were effectively late. The "now late" participants had no time to take that last few seconds to gather their thoughts and organize their materials. The briefings that followed were never quite the same caliber as those with previous bosses when the meeting's initiation was always as scheduled. For those people that were really, really early for the meeting, they often had to try to fill time with delay tactics, unimportant banter or answer questions that weren't always in their scope of responsibility.

The most quantifiable inefficiency created was the lost work hours created when participants began arriving fifteen and thirty minutes early so they wouldn't get caught off guard. Collectively, this extra early arrival time effectively cost the organization about twenty-five lost work hours each week.

Most importantly for a leader, the employees' respect for this boss was diminished. His early arrival and desire to begin when he arrived delivered a few messages to the workforce. First, we all assessed that he lacked any self-awareness of the stress he was causing. The tension his random arrival created was so fierce, yet he had no idea (and that's even giving him credit.... maybe he DID know and just didn't care).

Next, we all assumed he poorly managed his own time. How could he have so much free time in his schedule when everyone else was fully occupied all day?

And, sadly, it conveyed to the workforce that he did not respect our time and therefore, us.