Let's just all try to show up on time

Should we wait to start a meeting or an event until everyone has arrived? That’s kind of the question a reader we’re calling Petra asked after she recently found the ballet she had paid to watch start 15 minutes after the published performance time.

“What really got me is that they were still seating people who arrived even later,” wrote Petra, who noted that when someone arrived late, it often resulted in a whole row of people having to stand to let the person into their seat.

After the ballet performance, which Petra reported was exceptional, she considered whether she was overreacting. She remembered, however, that it’s not just ballet performances that seem to be interrupted by tardy attendees. More and more people seem to be showing up late to virtual or in-person meetings at work, Petra wrote.

What’s worse, she noted, was that they never seem to be called out on their lateness, nor do they offer an apology to the those who assembled on time. Most often Petra indicates the meetings start without the late attendees, but it particularly aggravates her when the convener says something like: “Why don’t we give people another few minutes to arrive before we get started?”

Why, wondered Petra, should those who were responsible enough to show up on time have to wait?

Petra has every right to be aggravated. There are occasions when people, even Petra, might be late for a meeting or an event because of unforeseen circumstances. But should they expect the meeting to wait for their arrival before it begins?

Employees of companies create the norms for acceptable behavior. If colleagues know that meetings never start on time, the message is likely to be received that showing up on time doesn’t matter. But if meetings were to start on time regardless of whether everyone had arrived on time, the message might be made clear that it was important to be there on time both out of an interest to accomplish whatever task is at hand and to show respect for colleagues’ time.

If an employee is perpetually late to a meeting, then the right thing is for that person’s manager to remind them of the importance of showing up. If the late arriver is the manager or boss, then the message is sent that lateness is OK. If lateness is the norm, employees like Petra will have to decide if the aggravation is offset by other positive aspects of working for this business.

As for the ballet or any other performance, the right thing is to make every effort to get people seated and to start on time. Once the performance starts, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consider reverting to the old tradition of only seating people during breaks in the performance. I am confident some places already do this. Sure, it might be frustrating to late arrivers to miss some minutes of the performance, but then the vast majority of the patrons who are already seated won’t have to be frustrated by waiting longer for the action to start or to have it interrupted once it does.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should I have told my accountant I was leaving him?

How much of an obligation do you have to a service provider to let them know you’re switching providers? Does it make any difference if you knew the provider as he was getting his start in the business?

Typically, changing service providers would seem like no big deal. It’s rare, for example, that an individual at your cable television service provider would take it personally if you decided to avail yourself of a better offer from a competitor. But a reader we’re calling Penny finds herself wondering if she did something wrong by switching accountants – mostly because the accountant got in touch with her after the move to let her know how disappointed he was she hadn’t given him a heads-up that she was making the move.

Penny had met her former accountant before he opened his own firm. He had audited the business where Penny worked. They didn’t become friends outside of the workplace, but they chatted occasionally while at the office. When the accountant left the large accounting firm he worked for to start his own business, he let Penny know. She was in the market for an accountant to do her annual income tax reports so she signed on with him.

“He did a good job on my taxes,” writes Penny. For the first two years, she met one-on-one with him to discuss her tax filing. She even recommended his firm to others in search of tax form preparation services.

As the accountant’s practice began to grow, he added more accountants to the company. Penny was pleased that he and his firm were doing so well.

She was surprised, however, when at her most recent meeting with her old accountant, she learned that her account had been transferred to somebody new to his office whom she had not met before.

“He never told me he wouldn’t be doing my taxes himself,” wrote Penny. It was then that she decided to find a new accountant. “I might have stayed with him if he’d told me I was being moved to someone else and why. But I’m not sure.”

After she’d found a new accountant and asked her former accountant’s office to send her old tax forms to the new person, she received an email from her former accountant to let her know he was disappointed that she hadn’t told him she was moving and that he wished she had said something if she had been dissatisfied with the service.

“I didn’t respond,” she writes. “Should I have?”

The right thing would have been for Penny’s old accountant to let her know she’d be meeting with someone new at his firm and why. As his firm grew, it might have been understandable that he needed to spread the work out among others. Sure, it would have been good for Penny to let him know why she had made the move, mostly as a courtesy so he might avoid making the same mistake with others. But Penny did nothing wrong. The choice was always hers about what service provider best met her needs.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

As deadlines loom and opinions fly, stay focused

     What is the appropriate response when all around you have an opinion on how something with which you are engaged should be done?

Must every piece of advice be acknowledged? Is it wrong to not show appreciation for the advice even if you believe it to be a piece of debilitating hogwash? Is it OK to ignore myriad pearls from those who believe to know best even if it’s clear to you they haven’t taken the time to understand neither the context of your endeavor nor the urgency you might have in tackling it head on?

A reader posed such questions to me recently after sitting through a series of planning meetings for a project whose deadline was rapidly approaching. What was clear from the planning meeting to the reader is that there was no shortage of opinions, but little understanding of what it would take to get things done and done on time.

Oftentimes, the reader noted, the desire to discuss a challenge in an effort to make sure it’s tackled in the best possible way seems to get in the way of actually taking action. In such cases, the well-trod dictum (attributed to Voltaire, Confucius and Shakespeare, among others) that we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good seems apt advice.

But how to handle those who seem determined to offer advice that seems likely to slow down a project without improving its chances of getting done?

Seeking advice and wisdom is a good thing. If you are ready to move on, however, move on. There’s no need to be dismissive of others’ opinions at that point. A simple, “Thank you for the input” can be far more constructive.

If after the project is completed it turns out that some of that untaken advice might have actually improved the outcome, that’s always a risk. Perhaps that’s the time to embrace Samuel Beckett’s line from his novella “Worstward Ho”: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Maybe it’s best to recognize that there may be no one perfect way to tackle a problem. As one of Tom Stoppard’s characters in his play “The Real Thing” says, “Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.”

Or perhaps it’s as I regularly tell my students agonizing over how to write that perfect piece for class before turning it in that their pieces can only be as good as they can be by the time they hit their deadline.

We might grow frustrated in meetings where everyone seems to have an opinion about how we should do something without having any real sense of what it takes to get that thing done. The temptation might be to try to assess if the motives of others are well-intentioned or if they are determined to derail a project by slowing it down.

Rather than allowing ourselves to get distracted by being agitated in response, however, we’d do well to recognize that ultimately the best thing is to do what needs to be done, as well as it can be done, with the knowledge and time we have to do it. As deadlines loom, that seems the right thing to do.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2022 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.