My Leaders Time is More Important Than Mine... Apparently!

They know I value them." Do they though? Because consistently showing up late to your one on ones is saying something, whether you mean it to or not. Today we're getting into what it costs your team, your culture, and your credibility as a leader.

Transcript

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Welcome back to We Lead Anyway. I'm Noelle, senior leader, career coach, and your host. I know some of you can relate to this. You have a one-on-one schedule with your manager. You've been looking forward to it, or at the very least, you've been prepared for it. You have things to discuss, updates to give, maybe a concern you've been working up the nerve to raise. And you show up on time. You open the calendar invite, and you sit there and you wait. And two minutes go by. Then five. Then eight eight minutes. Now you send a just checking we're still on message. Into the void, more than likely. No response. Ten minutes. You start wondering if you have the wrong time. So you check the invite again. You don't have the wrong time. 12 minutes, they join. No apology, no acknowledgement, just okay, where are we? What the what do you mean where are we? Where were you? I have a friend who experiences this regularly with the same leader every single week. And every time she tells me about it, my blood pressure does the macarena. Are the kids still doing the Dougie? I don't know. But this is not a small thing. This is not a quirk or a scheduling hiccup or just how some people are. This is a pattern. And patterns mean something. So today we're going to talk about leaders who are chronically late to one-on-ones, what it communicates, what it costs, and why, if you are doing this, you need to stop like yesterday. Okay? So let's just name the thing before we go any further. That way you know my angle right from the jump. When a leader is consistently late to a one-on-one, what they are communicating, whether they intend to or not, is this. My time is more valuable than yours. What I was doing before this was way more important. And you're not a priority. But I got to you eventually, you're welcome. Now I understand that leaders are busy. I understand that back-to-back meetings are a real thing, and that sometimes 9.45 runs long and suddenly it's 9.59 and everyone's scrambling and you still need to get some water. That happens. And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the leader whose direct reports have learned to just wait because that's how they are. The one who has never once opened a one-on-one by saying, I am so sorry. I know I kept you waiting. Let's just make sure we use the rest of this time well. All right. So, leaders, come here. Come here, honey. Let's talk about the damage this does to the team. Because I think some leaders genuinely do not understand this is damage. It's not just being impolite or having bad time management. It's actually harmful to what you're trying to build. So let me start with the first bit of damage. The first thing you're doing is you are eroding psychological safety. A one-on-one is supposed to be the safest space on the team, right? It's a place where a direct report can say, bruh, I'm struggling. I had a crap day. I need help with that. I have a concern that I don't feel comfortable raising in a group setting. And that kind of vulnerability requires a baseline of trust. And trust requires consistency. And when your leader can consistently show up on time for the one meeting that is specifically designed to support you, you stop bringing real stuff. You start giving the highlight real. You say everything is fine because everything being fine takes 12 minutes and you've only got eight left anyway. Being chronically late signals that you are an afterthought. And when your leader is late to your one-on-one, you notice who they're not late for. Those VP meetings be starting on time, don't they? So do the all hands. You notice that the meetings that matter to them, to their visibility, to their career, those meetings, they are there, front and center, at 859. And you're the meeting they get to when they get to it. And that's demoralizing. And it's not a sign of a great leader. So that's that on that. Also, it tanks engagement. Our ENPS scores are so important. And engaged employees are more productive, creative, they're loyal, significantly less likely to be updating their LinkedIn on company time. Disenged employees cost organizations an absolutely staggering amount of money every year. And engagement doesn't just vanish in dramatic moments. It leaks out slowly, like an air out of a balloon, quietly in accumulated small moments where someone felt like they didn't matter. A late one-on-one is one of those moments. Multiply it by every week for a year and tell me that doesn't add up. All right, moving on to the next little bit. It also sets a team culture. Because here's one thing about leaders: people are always watching us. Always. Your behavior is the bar. Your habits are the standard. And when you're chronically late and never address it, you are telling the team that punctuality is optional, that the time agreements are mere suggestions. And that how you treat people's time is how they should expect to be treated. But then you fix your face to coach them to SLAs and follow through and mad when they don't respond to your Slack message within three minutes. Now let me address the defenses because I know they're coming. Your leader might say, Well, I'm just really busy. Yeah. Yeah, you're at work. Everyone is really busy, including everyone on your team. Also, if you're not really busy leading your team and supporting them, what are you doing? If you're so busy that you can't show up for your team, consider being an individual contributor. Or talk to your own leader about being overworked. Now, another thing people say is, I lose track of time. Totally. Your phone has a clock on it. Your computer has a clock on it. The meeting invite has a reminder. You can put nine reminders if you really need to. There are approximately 47 ways to know what time it is at any given moment in the year of our Lord 2026. So losing track of time is a choice. The other thing I hear is my team knows I value them. Do they though? Because how? You're telling them something with your actions every single week. Whatever you feel internally about how much you value your team is completely irrelevant if your behavior communicates the opposite. Feeling it doesn't count. You gotta show it. Now the final thing that I'll mention that I usually hear is it's not a big deal. But it is. I promise you it is. You know how I know? Because my friend mentions it every single time, every week. It lives rip-free in her head because it keeps happening and it keeps landing the same way. Things that are not a big deal stop being mentioned. Things that accumulate become a big deal. This is a big deal, okay? Okay. Solutions. Because you know after my rants, a girl likes to be helpful. All right, so the first thing that you can do, and follow me here. End your previous meeting on time. Weird, right? Build the discipline of ending meetings at the meeting's end time. Don't one more thing until you're seven minutes late for your next meeting. It's 11:30. That's the meeting. Goodbye. This single habit will fix the cascading lateness problem for most people. The second thing you can do is just build a buffer. If you know, and we all know, that your 10 o'clock meeting always runs long, stop scheduling something at 10.30. Give yourself the transition time. Time is fake. You can do whatever you want with it anyway. Now, if you absolutely have to be late, just acknowledge it. This one costs you nothing. And it can mean everything. Walk in two minutes late and say, I am so sorry. I know I kept you waiting. What do you have for me? That's it. That's the whole thing. Acknowledgement matters more than most leaders realize. Protect the one-on-one, like it's your most important meeting because it is. The relationship between a leader and a direct report is the single most influential factor in that person's engagement, in their performance, and the decision about whether or not they're going to stay there. The one-on-one is where the relationship lives. You got to treat it like it matters. You got to ask yourself, what is your lateness really about? Because sometimes chronic lateness to one-on-ones is not actually a scheduling problem at all. Sometimes it's avoidance. One-on-ones require presence, attention, and the willingness to hear things that you might not want to hear. If you're always a little late and always a little distracted, or always wrapping up those one-on-ones early, what are you avoiding? Here's the bottom line. Your direct reports are paying attention to everything you do. Everything. The way you show up for them or the way you don't show up for them. It's writing a story about what kind of leader you are and what kind of team this is. And that story is being told in the smallest moments, not the big speeches or the off-site vision sessions or the Slack messages about how much you appreciate the team. It's being told and whether or not you showed up on time for the one meeting that is specifically, explicitly, entirely for them. So if you're the leader in this story, fix it. Because the person sitting in that waiting room, sitting there with their camera off, texting their homie, waiting for you to arrive yet again, deserves better. And if you're the direct report, always waiting on the boss to show up, give them that feedback. You can ask, hey, I notice you usually arrive five to ten minutes late to this meeting. I can be flexible if you need to change the time. Or you can say, hey, I really look forward to this hour or half hour every week. And when it gets cut short, I feel like I don't really get the most out of it. But I think it's important that you give that feedback so your leaders know that their actions impact you. Okay? All right. Direct reports, speak up. Leaders, do better. I'm out.