Sound familiar? Have you heard them all before? Do you remember perhaps uttering any of these phrases once or twice? Maybe more than once or twice? O K so let’s face it, stuff happens right? Sometimes we do everything right, wake up when we are supposed to, get out the door on time, and travel the same path to our destination that we do successfully every single day, and despite our best intentions and efforts, fail to arrive on time. And sometimes, the power DOES go out in our building. And sometimes, we DO misplace our car keys. So for all of you who rarely show up late for anything, but from time to time find themselves a victim of Murphy's Law, read on only if you find my blogs so interesting you simply cannot close the page. For the rest of you, who find yourselves anywhere along the time continuum spectrum between "pushing the on time boundaries" to "She'll be late to her own funeral", please read on and I hope you find one or two takeaways that will help you in the future.
I had a business associate once named Ania. Ania was smart, she was talented and she could have been a valuable member of our business were it not for one issue. Ania was late for EVERYTHING. And it wasn’t 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there either. A typical 6 o’clock meeting would see her clumsily and loudly stumble into the room at 6:30 or even 7:00, huffing and puffing, claiming how horrible traffic was getting there, or how awful her day had been. And when the business was to open at 6pm, while people waited for the one with the keys to get there, Ania would often be anywhere from 1 to 2 hours late. It got to the point where it was comical and people would discuss which excuse she would use this time. It also got to the point where we started having meetings without her present and we had to give the keys to someone else. Imagine a business partner missing crucial meetings. I spoke with her several times about punctuality to no avail. It was simply hard wired into this girl’s brain to run behind schedule, and because of it, I shut down the partnership and closed the business. One can simply not run a business with a person who shows such little respect for others that they cannot be on time.
If you are like Ania, it’s important to determine why you a problem with being on time. Ask yourself "Why am I always late?" and you will likely find that it stems all the way back to the core beliefs and values you were given as a child. If your mother was always late for work or always rushing to get out the door and if your parents enabled you to always be late for school, you will quite likely carry these habits into adulthood. How we relate to time, is how we were taught to relate to time as children. But what we weren’t taught as children was exactly what it meant to be late for work, meetings or appointments. We weren’t taught by our parents that being late for something meant that we considered OUR TIME to be more valuable that THEIR TIME. We weren’t taught as children that for every meeting we are late to, someone is sitting somewhere waiting for us. For every time we are late for work, others are picking up our slack doing our jobs. For every time we are late for an appointment, a business is losing money and other clients are waiting unnecessarily. We weren’t taught that being late is a sign of disrespect. Yet it is. And our excuses, no matter how creative they may seem to us at the time, are more often than not completely transparent. They have been used before. Do you really believe your boss will believe that you live in the one part of town that sees record power outages? How long before he suggests you buy a new alarm clock, or a key hook for your front door? And people, traffic is not a new invention. It has been around for a couple of years, and if you live in a large city like Toronto, it is part of life. Showing up late for a meeting or an appointment and blaming traffic is laughable. Sure the person that waited for you might be courteous and nod their head and smile, but trust me, under that smile they are at the very least questioning your excuse and at worst already deciding to write you off and move on. It is no exaggeration to say that being late for a sales call or a job interview is the kiss of death. When I was interviewing potential sales representatives for my business, late candidates were told right away that they missed their interview time and would not be considered for this position.
So what can we do to change? Here are a couple tips:
1.
Aim to be early – If you aim to be 15 minutes early for
every appointment you will always be on time, even when small delays do occur.
2.
Call ahead – For those times when even 15 minutes
wasn’t enough, be respectful enough to phone ahead to advise the person that you
are being unexpectedly delayed.
3.
Start your day earlier – If you always find yourself
running out the door at the last minute, set your alarm 30 minutes earlier
every day.
4.
Use your cell phone alarm as a back-up - For the times that the power does go out,
have a contingency plan in place.
