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crumpets -> RE: How To Handle People Who Are Always Late? (9/21/2015 8:40:10 PM)
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None of the answers above are wrong, but my take is a little different than most of them.
I learned what I'm going to summarize below from a psychologist who analyzed our 30-odd person team after we took an hour-long Myers-Briggs-style personality test, and then who lined us up, in a U-shape, in the classroom, after discussing each and every one of our dozens of questions (yes, we were lining up constantly, and then sitting down, and then lining up again in the order of the strength of our responses).
What "evolved" (which was the point), over the length of the 8-hour day, was that the ENDS of the U-shaped line often had people facing each other from across the room who had difficulty UNDERSTANDING their working styles. I know many of you are jaded the moment you hear the Myers-Briggs abbreviations being spoken, but, what was painfully obvious was that people had different STYLES of the way they acted and the way they interacted.
It was ASTOUNDING to see that the people that I had difficulty with, whom I thought were just plain stupid, were, in reality, just of a different working style.
For example, I'm a strong extrovert, so, to get a complex task figured out, I'd barge uninvited into someone's office and start erasing their whiteboard to throw a few different scenarios out, to discuss the pros and cons of, and I'd grab anyone who walked by the open door to see what they thought about each solution, and I'd toy with crazy ideas, just to see if some stuck, etc. This tactic worked FINE with the people who were lined up with me on "my" side of the room; but, the approach utterly failed with the introverts on the other side of the room.
Lo and behold, ALL the people (three or four out of 30) whom I thought were as dumb as a steel weight, were not dumb at all; they were merely the OPPOSITE in personality traits! They were the ones who always asked for a written "spec". They needed "time" to analyze the issues alone, and with birdcalls or water gently running in the background.
When I barged into "their" offices, they couldn't handle the ideas flying about. When I discussed pros and cons, they couldn't handle the level of detail. They couldn't handle that I turned on the lights brightly, and spoke loudly. They thought I was too fast; I thought they were too slow.
But it was neither. We just had different ways of handling the same things.
Same thing happened when it came to the topic of how people handle schedules!
Invariably, the ones "always late" were on one side of the room, while the ones "always early" were on the other.
I remember one person in the always-early group shouting out that it's "wrong" to be always late - where the psychologist immediately admonished her that this is an incorrect assumption (the person he admonished was a strong "J" personality - which means they believe their way is the only way, fundamentally).
He said neither way was better nor worse. In fact, when we sat back down, he went through a huge list of previously prepared slides on the BENEFITS from the people who are "always late" and the DIFFERENT benefits from the people who are always on time.
I remember some of the details, but, the point was clearly made that TIME is an invariant "RULE" to some people, while time is merely a "SUGGESTION" to others. Mostly the punctual people seemed to be the "J" types, while the less-than-punctual folks were the "P" types, which fit into the discussion of whether or not it's actually IMPORTANT to be on time, or whether something ELSE is what's important.
Of course, if it's IMPORTANT to one person that she be on time, then this is where the issue of whether that's expressly what's important to the other person starts mattering. What the psychologist said was that these PREFERENCES we have are not inviolate; but they are preferences nonetheless.
I realize this description went on too long, so I'll cut to the chase.
There are huge factors involved when someone says someone else is always late. In general, it's a "J" type personality who BELIEVES that being on time is of CRITICAL IMPORTANCE, while the other probably isn't such a "J" type, and who probably thinks other things are of a greater importance. One thinks that the stated meeting time is an inviolate CRITICALLY IMPORTANT GOAL, while the other feels it's merely a stated SUGGESTED ARRIVAL time and, often feels that this seemingly arbitrary time point is not only not at all critical, but that it's not at all what's important.
So, what we have, almost always, is the "J" type complaining about the "P" type, just as I thought the "I" type was stupid compared to the "E" type. Point is, we're all different. Strong personality types treat TIME as either a suggestion or as an inviolate rule - and - weaker personality types treat time as everything in between (it's a spectrum, after all -which is why the psychologist lined us up in a U shape). The ones in teh middle had the weakest personality (Note: The classification of weak/strong is not pejorative; it's just a measure of preference.)
The weakest personalities were always the most balanced (e.g., not too strict on time constraints, but not too loose).
It's always the strong J's that have this problem.
Methinks the OP should take the Myers-Briggs test, and that the OP should note the strength of the last of the four components, and then perform a bit of self reflection.
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