How I handle latecomers in meetings (and it's not how most people do it!)

Lateness is about social contracting (not rules) and that changes everything.

I asked one of my interviewees, Gareth, about lateness in an interview a few years back.

“Latecomers? Being late is disrespectful and we shouldn’t allow it. Simple as.”

The more people I talked to in that organisation, the more I realised how pervasive 'being a bit late' was and how much relationship and productivity damage it was causing.

Was Gareth right? Lateness is rudeness and totally avoidable, case closed. Let's create a new rule: 'Don't be late, ok?'

As I dug deeper, I spotted some deep rooted causes of lateness. It was rooted in over-collaboration, over-booking and overwhelm. Not quite so easy to fix with a rule.

And as I dug even deeper, I realised how much it was costing people to see lateness as disrespectful and fixable through a rule. Lateness might be costing 5 minutes in time, but seeing it as disrepectful was costing so much more in low trust and friction for the rest of the meeting.

 

Like many things in meetings, lateness is not easy to fix with a rule 

You may already know… I don’t like rules for meetings. 

I like norms.

I like habits.
I teach people how to set boundaries.

I help people build ways of working that suit their team

But I do not like rules. 

 

Why? 

 

Rules take us straight back to the command and control era.

They trigger a parent/child dynamic.

In fact, a lot of our beliefs about lateness come from childhood e.g. school. Being late to a lesson was disrespectful, against the rules and ‘wasting my time’. Fast forward to the work place, we have brought that with us: the idea that being late for a group event is inherently bad and rule-breaking.

 

A new lens on lateness - breaking a social contract

A much more helpful way to think about lateness is that it can break a social contract. 

In a ‘contract-contract’ everything is written down and once we’ve read it, we sign it to indicate we have agreed.

In a ‘social contact’, nothing is written down, everything is assumed - and we’ve signed it by default.

The big problem with lateness is that it’s a social contract everyone has mentally created and signed their own version of - but we assume we’ve signed the same one! 

And this matters because breaking a social contract creates relationship conflict. In turn, relationship conflict puts a massive downward pressure on performance (short and long term). 

It’s not the 5 minutes you lose when someone is late that’s the problem. It’s the emotional hangover their lateness brings to the meeting and your relationship.

First, come a bit closer - do we REALLY have such different expectations about lateness, and if so, why?

 

Lateness is cultural.

Different groups of people view time in different ways. Erin Meyer’s excellent Cultural Map, pinpoints time as one of eight key spectra along which different groups (e.g. countries) can vary. She shows how some cultures view time as linear (a resource to be maximised and controlled via scheduling) and others view time much more flexibly. Even within the same country, there are wide variations in how people see time and punctuality. 

Someone I met with almost every day for 3 years was 3 mins late to EVERY meeting she was in. To her, that was on time! 

Some people are ALWAYS early to everything. That’s how they avoid stress.

For some people, being religious about punctuality for every single meeting just isn't practical and is pedantic overkill in the face of the daily juggle of many complex tasks. All group sessions have time at the start to get everyone together, right?

Me? I find it stressful to be early - OR late 😂. I have clearly failed to optimise my journey if I arrive early and wait around. AND I hate being late in case it breaks a social contract (I know, I know - I’ll get some coaching for this horribly constraining mindset!)

 

Punctuality is a behaviour that has become conflated with a value

How we feel about lateness is rooted in our internal value system - things we feel are deeply important guide how we think and act. 

When we associate a behaviour with a value, this can kick up a lot of heat. 

People tell me that when someone is late, it’s disrespectful - and that’s because they have associated the behaviour (being late) with the value (respect) and so seeing that behaviour (lateness) amounts to that value being trampled on (i.e. being treated disrespectfully).

The thing about values is, we all hold a different collection of values as important - but they are so innate to us, they feel universal. 

Likewise, we all associate different behaviours with these values, muddying the water further. 

For example, you and your colleague BOTH have a value for respecting people, but you conflate lateness with respect and they don’t. You’ve signed a different social contract.

Yes, lateness can occasionally be a power play. But not nearly as often as we think. If you work for someone who is deliberately late as a power move, I suggest you use your two feet to take yourself off to work for someone less toxic.

 

Two more things to chew over as we break the link between lateness and disrespect and between lateness and disorganisation.

 

1. Lateness can be a systems problem 

If your company has a back to back meeting schedule and poor (or no) meeting design, you can expect lateness to be rife. Everyone spends the day making tradeoffs. Do I cut that person short and get to my next meeting on time? Or do I let this important conversation play out and arrive late to my next session?

Our brain only has so much capacity to handle these social contract trade offs in the day. Pack the diary full and you’ll be in cognitive overload.

 

2. Punctuality can be the privilege of the neurotypical

Some neuro-divergent people describe:

- Finding they consistently under or over estimate the amount of time needed to complete something or get somewhere

- Losing track of time

- Difficulty with the planning and organising skills needed to be in the right place at the right time

- Finding lack of time to complete a task very stressful

 

So when someone is late, can we open our minds to the possibility that being on time is harder and more costly for some people than for others? 

 

Are we just letting people off? Am I saying 'just accept people be late!"

No and no.

Big and important point coming up.

As we think about how lateness can mean different things to us all and can also have different root causes, I’m not asking you to do nothing about lateness. 

The opposite. 

I want to help you understand the concept more deeply and choose to something about it that is more effective. 

 

If someone else’s lateness is causing you a problem, what can you actually do about it? 

Time to get practical. Here’s how I handle lateness problematic lateness.

First, I ask myself: is this a meeting it’s crucial to be on time for? Yes or No?

There will be some meetings where the answer to this is… Yes. 

For example, a daily stand up. It’s not helpful if people trickle in over the first 10 minutes of a 15 meeting. This whole point of this meeting is to meet quickly and precisely to free up progress for that day. 

 

> If yes, you need to create a norm for being on time for this meeting 

 

Option 1: Raise it as a team norming discussion

“I’ve noticed that we are arriving at a variety of different times. Is that something that matters to us? Do we want to do something about it?

Create a social contract that works for you all.

 

Option 2: Set a boundary

If something REALLY matters to you, at any point at work, you are welcome to set a boundary around it.  You can do this by setting your own social contract terms.

“At our daily stand up, please come ready to start at 9.00am. I will make sure we are finished by 9.15am and my request is that we are dialled in and starting at 9 to make this possible.”

Now you have a boundary, you can reinforce it. “This weeks stand ups didn’t start until after 9. Next week, come ready to start at 9 and I will make sure we are finished by 9.15am”

Set an explicit social contract that works for you, if you cannot accept lateness.

 

There will also be meetings where it is not crucial that everyone is on time.

(And I appreciate that for some of you, there will be zero meetings that you feel this applies to - in which case, please go back to the beginning of this email and read it again. PS I accept you will hate me for saying this!)

 

> If no, here’s how I handle lateness.

I may not like it, but sometimes I accept there may be lateness (for my own sanity). I decouple lateness and disrepect (for my own sanity) as believing this is what creates more friction than the actual lateness itself. And I plan for how I will accommodate an element of lateness in my meeting design.

 

Option 1: Soft opener

Connection before content, trust before task. Open with a connecting activity that allows people to join in at any point in the first 5-8 minutes. 

You might provide a question for people to jot down thoughts on. 

You could do a simple round. 

You could pair people up with a question to answer.

 

Option 2: Start meet at 10 minutes past the hour

If back to back meeting are all over everyone’s diary, make it easy to handle run over but starting your meeting 10 minutes past the hour. 

 

Option 3: Have a plan for various scenarios

If A, I will X

If B, I will Y

If C, I will Z

For example, how will I proceed if Person A is late? Knowing what you will do depending on who is late takes the pressure off and avoids that thing where you limp through the first 10 minutes ‘starting but not actually starting’ the meeting.

 

Option 4: Use everything 

About 10 years ago, I was EIGHTEEN minutes late for a virtual meeting that I was running for some senior people I hadn’t met at a client organisation. I sweated through every single one of those eighteen long minutes and finally arrived on the call in a puddle of apologies. The three people in the room were relaxed and cheerful: “We had a conversation that needed to happen months ago - we’ve just never found the time to have it!” I hadn't disrepected them, I had helped them 😂.

There is a saying in improv: “use everything” or put another way “everything’s an offer”. Things that smash through our plans can create a detour in the right direction if we can open our minds to see it. 

What opportunity does this lateness create and how can I use it? 

Where is the universe helping me out today with this lateness?

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If you take one message away from this article, make it this:

Lateness means different things to different people. There are no hard and fast rules about what is acceptable. But breaking a social contract is damaging. So make a social contract that works for you and your team and your meetings - and let's throw out the idea that Being Late Is Always Disrepectful End Of. Even if you truly believe it, others don't and it serves no one to use it as law.