Koan #4: Late And Unprepared
We usually send the situation in one newsletter and results in a following newsletter. Here the situations and results are copied verbatim into one post. Hence, when it says 'you' - it means the subscribers who voted in newsletter, not readers of this archive.Situation
As a favour to another manager, you have offered to spend 3 hours one morning with a junior member of their team to try and mentor them on some relevant topics that they appear to be struggling with. Having sent the agenda a week in advance, the team member is subsequently 20 minutes late to your session and has done no preparation. How would you respond to this?
Option A - Explain that being late and unprepared is unacceptable, and that if they want to get the most of this session they must come prepared with questions etc. Reschedule the session for another day, and inform their line manager of the mishap.
Option B - Ignore the lateness and lack of preparation and continue as if everything is as you expected.
Option C - Check the reasons for them being late and unprepared. Continue with the session during the allocated time, giving them some time to do the preparation you suggested for them to do before the session.
Option D - Continue with the session after a brief reprimand. Inform their manager of this mishap after the session.
Results
Option A - Explain that being late and unprepared is unacceptable, and that if they want to get the most of this session they must come prepared with questions etc. Rearrange the session for another day, and inform their line manager of the mishap.
Option B - Ignore the lateness and lack of preparation and continue as if everything is as you expected.
Option C - Check the reasons for them being late and unprepared. Continue with the session during the allocated time, giving them some time to do the preparation you suggested for them to do before the session.
Option D - Continue with the session, after a brief reprimand. Feed back this mishap to their manager.
Options A, C and D acknowledge the lateness and lack of preparation and this is important, regardless of the next step taken. Option B, which in fact no one chose, is what would be categorised by Kim Scott in Radical Candor as ruinous empathy; trying to be ‘nice’ by not saying what needs to be said. This may be your priority, but the reason that you have offered to mentor the person is to help them improve and feeding back on their timekeeping and preparation skills, or lack of, is very important. It may also lead to other people being late for meetings with you in the future, which you want to avoid.
It is highly likely that the colleague knows that being late is not acceptable, and there may be a reason for this. It is also clear to them that you care about their development as you have offered three hours of your time to mentor them.
Option A involved rescheduling the session. You have offered our time generously and freely, and rescheduling will cause more work for you. It could also give you, and the mentee, a chance to reflect and improve for next time. If they had asked to reschedule that would be a different situation so we have included a few articles on how and when to cancel or reschedule, as we think it is a really important topic.
Option C included checking why they were late and unprepared. One additional point made by a member of the community this week was to “first, get all the facts”. We really liked their point that ‘it might be that tackling their problem would take precedence over having a session of the type envisaged by the person’s manager.’ This could be the key to supporting this person longer term. The role of mentors during your career can be vitally important, see the talk by Esther Perel below. Option D was similar but included reprimanding them for the lateness and passing this information to the mentee’s line manager. The way this is received will be highly dependent on how you deliver this and we would suggest that it is not you who reports this to the line manager, but that you suggest that they do. This fosters a culture of transparency, and also allows mistakes with a hope that either this will not happen again, or the root cause of the issue can be found. This also makes it likely that the mentee will know that they can come to you in the future if they are struggling.