Getting Your Meetings Started on Time
By Michael Wilkinson, CMF
Managing Director, Leadership Strategies, Inc.
It’s 9:12. The meeting was supposed to start twelve minutes ago. As the project manager, you purposely had this monthly Senior Executive update scheduled for 9:00 – not too early so you could avoid hearing the “bad traffic” excuse, and not too late so you could avoid “the last meeting ran over” excuse.
Yet true to form, only a third of your audience is present – the ones who typically arrive on time. And the key person, the executive sponsor for the project, hasn’t arrived yet. She’s the one who will give the final sign-off on the status and you don’t want to start without her.
The room is quiet, save a few whispers at the table, and you are feeling embarrassed that you are wasting the time of those who had the courtesy to show up at the time requested. As the clock ticks off another minute, three more people show up, and you are wondering if next time you should tell those that are typically late that the meeting is scheduled to start at 8:45.
Mercifully, at 9:19, the executive sponsor appears. You put on your “game face,” greet her and get the meeting started. Fortunately, you had expected the meeting to start ten minutes late, so you don’t have to hurry through too much of the material. The meeting runs over, so you rush the close and at 10:08 the meeting abruptly ends because the executive has to run off to her 10:00 meeting in the next building.
Have you been there? Have you done that? Do you have the T-shirt? Getting a meeting started on time is a common challenge. It is especially difficult when you are the project manager or an outside consultant working with an organization.
Unfortunately, most meeting leaders “punish the punctual” by making those who arrive on time wait for those who are late. In some organizations, punishing the punctual is such a cultural norm that participants have learned to arrive late to avoid “being punished.”
Of course it is difficult to start a meeting when key participants are tardy. Consider these strategies from The Secrets to Masterful Meetings to develop a culture and a habit of starting meetings on time.
- Get permission in advance from all participants to start the meeting at the appointed time, regardless of who is present. Explain that sometimes arriving late is unavoidable, but that it is always important to respect people where possible.
- Make sure the meeting notice gives a gathering time and a start time. Most people pay attention to the first time they see.
- Consider setting the start time for meetings for five minutes after the hour or half-hour to allow time for people to leave one meeting and arrive at the next one. For the project manager’s meeting above, the meeting notice might say:
– 8:50 Gather
– 9:05 Start
- If someone else other than you will kick-off the meeting, make sure that person is aware of this role and that the two of you have agreed upon the time.
- Give a two-minute warning prior to the start to encourage people to take their seats.
- Consider gaining group agreement on a suitable penalty for arriving late such as a dollar donation to the party pool or responsibility for creating the meeting notes.
The lateness penalty was taken to an extreme on one project team I participated in. The penalty escalated each incident by a factor of two.
- The first time anyone was late for a meeting the penalty was $1.
- The next person who was late for any meeting, the penalty was $2.
- The next person late the penalty was $4 – and it could have been your first time being late. The next person, $8 and so on.
After someone paid $32, for the rest of the project, not a single person was late for a meeting. For this team, $64 was the threshold for behavioral change!
You can learn more about masterful meetings – the book and our training classes – at www.masterfulmeetings.com.
Michael Wilkinson is the Managing Director of Leadership Strategies – The Facilitation Company and author of The Secrets of Facilitation and The Secrets to Masterful Meetings. He is a Certified Master Facilitator and a much sought after trainer, facilitator, and speaker. He is also one of the instructors for our course, The Facilitative Consultant.
