Is a member of your faculty always late? Are they late for school at least once a week, late for faculty meetings, late for parent conferences….late, late, late! What is your opinion of that person? This month, we are going to take a brief look at what tardiness can do to a person’s career, and the dynamic of a team (for example…a school’s faculty!)
Before I get started, let me say that everyone is late at one time or another in their life. There is nothing wrong with being late if it is an isolated incident. The problem arises when someone is habitually late. Every organization has one (or more) people who fall into that category, and it can damage the organization’s morale if left unchecked.
Why is being a few minutes late so damaging? First of all, the perception is that the late person doesn’t value the time of the other people in the organization. The other people made sure to show up for the function on time, but the late person didn’t think that it was very important. This causes resentment in the minds of the “on time” people.
Tardiness also eats away at the group norms of an organization. If someone does a substandard job in another area of the team’s work, they can justify it in their mind by saying, “Janet doesn’t even show up on time, so my effort should be good enough to get by.” Lateness is often the first step in a downward spiral of reduced expectations and substandard effort.
Another problem is addressing the issue with the habitually tardy person. In their mind, being a few minutes late isn’t a big deal…so bringing the problem to their attention usually results in conflict. “What’s the big deal? So I’m a couple of minutes late? Everyone else in this room has been late, and nothing has been said to them! Why am I being singled out?” This conflict damages the relationship among team members even further.
The irony here is that the late person doesn’t show up on time because he/she thinks that showing up early is a waste of THEIR time! As a result, they try to arrive at the exact moment that the function is scheduled to begin. If you tell them that the function begins at 7:15 when it really is scheduled to begin at 7:30, they will be upset that they were tricked into showing up “early”. If a late person by some good fortune is running “early” to an event, they will take the opportunity to complete a few random tasks around the house they had been putting off.
Another uncomfortable phenomenon that the late person brings on is the list of excuses for being late. At first it is the “flat tire” or “accident on highway 41 that had traffic backed up”. Once these excuses have been exhausted, the late person has to come up with more urgent reasons for being late. They graduate to the “pulled over by the police”, the “sick child”, “babysitter was late showing up/didn’t show up”, or the popular “ran over an animal” excuse. If you took any one of these excuses individually, they are all perfectly acceptable reasons for being tardy. The problem is that one person who thinks they can use ALL of these reasons…and recycle them periodically!
So, how can you get the tardy person to change his/her ways? If there were a cure, I would be selling it right now and making millions of dollars! Many organizations just begin documenting the tardiness as a first step to termination. Once you start documenting one person’s tardies, you better make sure you document EVERYONE’S tardies. This makes all members of the organization uncomfortable.
My suggestion is just to sit down and talk out some solutions with the tardy person. Waking up 15 minutes earlier or telling yourself that the meeting is at 7:15 when it really is at 7:30 is the first strategy. Have an “on time” person partner with a tardy person to encourage them to get to the meeting on time. Training the person to be able to stop what they are doing and focus on getting to the meeting on time is another good technique. Have the person read this article if you are having trouble introducing the issue to a person who is unaware that their tardiness is causing a problem. They may not even realize that their habitual lateness is introducing friction into your organization. Realizing and admitting that a problem exists is the first step to correcting it.
This article was written from the point of view of the Principal dealing with late staff members, but it can also help the teacher with late students…or any team that is trying to accomplish tasks with (or in spite of) a habitually late person. If you have any great ideas to help us all deal with late people, leave your strategy on my “guestbook” page, or email me at newteacherhelp@yahoo.com
Good luck…and happy teaching!