The sun is rising on the bus depot, and Drew, the Driver, arrives to find a crisis situation: four flat tires. Yikes! His strongest performer, Rufus, is away at a conference, so Drew knows he’ll have to tackle this calamity on his own. He rolls up his sleeves, gets out the jack, and then he hears, “Let me help you with that.” It’s Joan, arriving early, as she so often does, and she is ready and willing to pitch in. Drew is flooded with relief and immense gratitude. Joan may not be the fastest Runner on his team, or even the most adept at changing tires, but just the fact that she is there makes Drew feel indebted to her. Just by arriving early, Joan became the most valuable player on the team that day. By the time the others show up at 9:00 sharp, the crisis is solved and the day can begin. Whew!
When you are consistently at least a few minutes early to arrive at work and to meetings, you give your boss great peace of mind, and that elevates your status on the bus.
If you aren’t quite running at your job, then the last thing you want to do is to get in the way of those who are. Whenever there is a group meeting, you want to make sure you are among the first people there, because the Runners are almost always going to be early. You certainly don’t want to show up late, because they may have to wait for your arrival, and not only does that show that you don’t respect the purpose of the meeting, but it also shows that you don’t respect your colleagues’ time. A Runner’s time is valuable, and you don’t want to be the cause of wasting any of it.
At RCA, we always start our staff meetings promptly at 4:05 p.m., and we have expressed the importance of being on time repeatedly. The problem is, we dismiss an entire school filled with students at four, so there are always last-minute issues to deal with that will sometimes cause people to be a few minutes late. We have asked our staff that if something happens that keeps them a minute or two late, the second they walk into the staff meeting, they should be obviously moving quickly and that they should apologize to the group as they walk in, even if it interrupts the meeting. It works for us.
We used to have an employee who somehow managed to come in late to every meeting. Even after I had met with him and asked him to be on time or at least appear as if he were trying to get to the meeting quickly, he still entered the room so slowly, as if to let everyone know that he didn’t mind that he was late and he wasn’t about to walk quickly. It unnerved me to no end. Needless to say, he is no longer with RCA. I think he was trying to make a point that he wasn’t going to be made to hurry, but what he didn’t realize was that he was upsetting the entire team, because he didn’t value their time. It made him look foolish.
I am often astounded when I hear friends who work in the corporate world talk about the way people trickle in to meetings fifteen or even thirty minutes late. If you know the meeting won’t start until a quarter hour past the appointed time, you may be tempted to start showing up fifteen minutes late yourself, so you don’t waste that time just sitting around waiting. Don’t do it. Don’t become one of those people who are stealing valuable minutes from other team members. Instead, do your part to promote a culture of integrity and dependability. Show up to meetings a few minutes early, even if you have to bring work with you so you’re not sitting idle.
At RCA we have a different staff member do breakfast duty each morning at 7:10. There are some staff members who have never been late, not once. On the days they are scheduled, I rest easy, and that’s a great feeling. There are others whose performance is spotty, and when they have breakfast duty, I have a pit in my stomach worrying that they might not be there—even if they ultimately arrive on time. Even if the person has been on time four out of every five times, it’s that fifth time that gives me pause. You may think that since you were late just once or twice that it’s not a big deal, but it is the doubt in your performance that you put in the mind of your leader that causes the greater problem.
Now, let’s say you just are not a morning person and that you can’t get up any earlier. You manage to make it to work on time, but you simply can’t get there any earlier. Well, you have an obligation then to stay on past the time you were supposed to leave. You need to show that your work ethic is sound and that you are willing to put in the time to perform at a high level. After I made that point to a member of our team, I was happy to see that he was staying later each day. But when I went into his office to thank him, I saw that he was on Facebook. It ruined the moment. When I am saying stay later, what I am really saying is “work later.” Even if you can stay only thirty minutes past quitting time, do it. Remember: you want to be part of something great, and this is a small way to contribute to the greater whole.
While it’s obvious that school has to start on time, punctuality is a little less straightforward in the business world these days because so many corporations have flextime. Even so, whether you realize it or not, everyone you work with knows if you are consistently cutting your days short. It’s one of those things that everyone notices, even though no one ever mentions it. People want to know what the expectations are of everyone, so they are looking to see what everyone else is doing. They notice when your car is in the parking lot, and whether the lights in your office are on or off, and how long you stay gone for lunch. This is just something you can’t escape; it’s public knowledge.
Over time, when you develop a reputation for always being early and ready to hit the ground running when you arrive, you earn great respect. Your boss may never point out how wonderful it is that you are always there, but it increases your worth in her mind.