Years back, I worked on a large, high-visibility program. My direct boss was generally well respected by senior leadership for his client management abilities and how well he communicated upward. He scheduled a weekly two-hour staff meeting with his direct reports.

Most times, my peers and I would sit in the meeting waiting for our boss to show up, with him either coming in more than an hour late or not at all. There was always some excuse as to why he couldn’t meet. We had a running joke about what time our boss would show. It was frustrating that we seemed to not matter much to him, particularly on such a high-visibility program.

This behavior was in direct contrast to our boss’s boss, the executive in charge of the entire program. If he made time for you to meet with him, he kept it. If you were late or didn’t show, he let you know about it. In the rare event that he did need to cancel, his assistant would contact you with not just a cancellation but alternate times that he was able to meet. He treated both his and others’ time with respect.

The experiences with my direct and skip-level bosses left a very significant impression on me. Both worked on the same program, yet the one who had the greater span of control also had a much better command of his calendar and demonstrated more respect for others than my direct boss did. Seeing how the two worked together showed me what I did not want to be known as:

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Some time back I was responsible for a portfolio of projects being done within the finance organization of my company.  One of the projects was outsourced to a large consulting firm who supplied the project management, analysis, and development resources to the project.  I would hold weekly meetings with the project manager who consistently gave me a "thumbs up" on the project up to the first key milestone being hit.  When the week of the first milestone approached, he announced that the milestone was going to have to slip by a week to ensure successful delivery.  The next week came along and again the project slipped a week.  This went on for two more weeks with the promise of "we'll for sure nail it next week."  I decided to do some crawling around the project to assess where the project was really at.  Turns out we were at least a month away from delivering to the milestone which was already a month late.

Excerpted from The Truth about Getting Your Point Across…and Nothing But the Truth

Unless you excused yourself for whatever reason you were there for at least fifteen minutes listening to his philosophy.  The problem was that Moe was friends with the person managing our contract so we had to put up with him. 

Excerpted from The Truth about Getting Your Point Across…and Nothing But the Truth

Excerpted from The Truth about Getting Your Point Across…and Nothing But the Truth