Have you seen the movie "Sliding Doors?" The movie tells the story of two paths a woman's life could take based on one small decision, catching a train.
Have you ever thought about this? How one small tweak could change the course of your entire day. Let’s try it!
Scenario: You’re in the middle of a task and, ding, a reminder pops up notifying you of a meeting in 15 minutes.
Your Choices are:
Ignore it and go back to the task at hand
Stop what you're doing and prepare for the meeting
Path 1: Ignore it
You dismiss the warning and carryon with what you were doing. 15 minutes is an eternity. You also receive about 15 of these reminders a day and you've learned to tune this out.
The 5 minute reminder comes up.
You start racing through the task at hand and curse that there are never enough hours in the day.
You walk into the meeting late and misinformed. Everyone else was on time and they spend at least 5-10 minutes getting you up to speed.
Someone tries to hand out actions for the meeting but you're royally pissed off because they have yet to discuss points x, y and z.
The group quietly informs you that, yes, all of those topics were discussed before you got there.
You’ve just extended the meeting time by at least 15 minutes and are now late for a one on one with your employee.
Because you're running late and really need to talk to the last meeting's organizer you blow off your employee with a quick "can we cancel?" message.
Path 2: Stop and Prep
You stop what you're doing and open the meeting to see what it's about, who will be there and what is required of you.
You also evaluate exactly what you want to happen in the meeting.
You show up on time.
Because you've read through the last meeting's actions you know that x, y and z topics will be covered today and you have questions at the ready.
The meeting is shorter than expected and you are able to grab some coffee in the break room where you run into one of your employees.
The employee reminds you of the one on one meeting in 30 minutes.
Because you've gained extra time in your day you offer to take them to lunch where you discuss the items you wanted to address.
What just happened?
Let's talk about path 1 first. When someone is interrupted it takes 15 minutes to get back on task. Therefore you accomplish nothing in the 15 minutes that seemed like an eternity to you.
When you interrupt a meeting with your tardiness and questions its shows a lack of respect for the meeting attendees. You also hold this group hostage from their work by extending the meeting time.
Congratulations! You've just create a culture of resentment.
Could one meeting really do this? No, but you probably have 5 meetings and you continue this behavior all day, every day. You slowly eat away at people's time.
Now for path 2. You used the 15 minute reminder as a pencils down exercise. You stopped what you were doing and opened up the meeting to prepare. This shows you not only value your time but the time of others in your company.
By showing up on time and prepared you also make the meeting shorter, creating more time in your day for more meaningful work such as taking an employee to lunch and discussing their future.
Congratulations! You just created a culture of respect.
Caveat: I do realize you don't always have time to prep like this but what if you did it the night before?