Remote Work Rants: Meeting Cancellations and Time Zone Troubles

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Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to Long-Distance Worklife where we help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams.

00:00:12:10 - 00:00:18:12
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm Marisa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert Wayne Turmel. Hi, Wayne!

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Wayne Turmel
Hello, Marisa. How are you?

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Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. Are you ready to tackle some more pet peeves today?

00:00:23:16 - 00:00:45:16
Wayne Turmel
I am. This is like my favorite thing is when I do training, I always tell people, don't be shy. This is your chance to vent. And just a little word about pet peeves in general. When we get them from readers, it very often starts with Maybe it's just me, and the answer is no. It is not just you.

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Wayne Turmel
That's the point.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. So if you've been thinking about sending us one for a while, do it. Because not only is there, it's not just you. There's probably also even us that feel the same way. So we're going to start tackling those. I've got two lined up for you and we're going to start with Michael's. And Michael told me on LinkedIn that for him, his pet peeve is meeting canceled meetings, canceled the day of and it's worse if it's an early meeting or the closer the cancellation is to the starting meeting time.

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Wayne Turmel
Yes, the answer is yes, right?

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I feel that, too.

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Wayne Turmel
It's interesting because what Michael didn't say is the momentary feeling of relief. And hallelujah, right goes when a meeting is canceled.

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Marisa Eikenberry
The introvert in me is like, Oh, thank God.

00:01:34:14 - 00:02:05:10
Wayne Turmel
What I suspect he's referring to is the sense that you have blocked out time on your calendar. And there is something presumably at least as important, likely, more important, that isn't getting done because you have blocked time for this meeting. There's prep time and then the meeting is simply and I think that there are a couple of things that need to go into this because what is it that peeves us off about that?

00:02:05:16 - 00:02:33:19
Wayne Turmel
It's seldom that the meeting is canceled, right? That's that in itself is often, oh, I get an hour of my life back or whatever. It's a couple of things. One is I've wasted all this time. Yeah, prepping or blocking it or not schedule ing something that I could be doing. So there's a productivity waste here. The second thing I think is it's just plain rude.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
Right, right. And depending on if you're crossing time zones and doing different things, it's an inconvenience. So I think there are some things. First of all, your mother probably raised you right. So if something is canceled, apologize, acknowledge the work that's gone into it and give a reason why it's canceled.

00:03:00:02 - 00:03:10:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah. I mean, this week that got moved a couple of times and every time it was crap. I didn't know about this thing. Here's why I need to move it. Okay, No problem.

00:03:10:07 - 00:03:36:01
Wayne Turmel
Most people are reasonable human beings. People will be reasonable about this, assuming two conditions. One is that it is acknowledged and you you don't have to grovel or anything like that. But a simple. I'm really sorry. I know that you prep this. I know that you blocked the other time out. Here's why we had to change or cancel the meeting.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

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Wayne Turmel
Because frankly, there's very often a good reason for that. If you are canceling the meeting, they're jolly well, better be a good reason for this.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:03:46:08 - 00:04:14:02
Wayne Turmel
And it has to do with a key stakeholder. Can't make it or we're missing certain information or the building caught fire or whatever it is When you cancel, do so with an explanation. As much explanation as you can give, because most people will go, Oh, that makes sense. So that's the first thing. The second thing is whatever business was supposed to be conducted in this meeting obviously did not take place.

00:04:14:04 - 00:04:33:14
Wayne Turmel
How are we going to handle that if it was important enough to hold a meeting? Obviously it's important. Are you going to send the information via an asynchronous form? Right. Are you going to send the PowerPoint or are you going to direct them to where they can get the information that would have been given out in the media?

00:04:33:16 - 00:04:48:14
Wayne Turmel
Right. So that people at least get the value of that. I think it's important that we know is this canceled or is it rescheduled? And approximately when will it be rescheduled? Tell us what the future holds.

00:04:48:16 - 00:04:50:19
Marisa Eikenberry
So we can block that time in our calendar and we.

00:04:50:19 - 00:05:17:01
Wayne Turmel
Can walk that unnecessarily. And I think that's and I know that that doesn't make up for the frustration, particularly, as I say, if you are readjusting your life, not just your your schedule, but your actual life. You know, when I have clients in Europe and I love my European clients very much, but I live on the west coast of the United States, there is no good time.

00:05:17:03 - 00:05:20:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, somebody is going to get inconvenienced either way.

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Wayne Turmel
Somebody is going to be inconvenienced and the customer being the customer, it's probably me as it should be now, depending on the time of day, can be a big deal because if I need to be on webcam, for example, I need to be showered and dressed from the waist up and, you know, look reasonable, lay awake and be properly caffeinated.

00:05:43:00 - 00:05:46:16
Wayne Turmel
Well, if I have done that at five in the morning.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And you've now canceled.

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Wayne Turmel
And it's happened, I mean, I've gotten up at 415 for 5:00 meeting only to check my email and they've canceled meeting. Oof! Congratulations. It's 415 and you're awake and the coffee's on. Well, you know my day. I'm a serious head.

00:06:07:08 - 00:06:27:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I know. For me, like, because the. The nature of what I do, like, I do so much deep work, and there are some times where it's like, I won't plan my deep work. I project work during certain times. This well, I'm going to have a meeting at 10:00 or I'm going to have me, so I'll just do this later and then when it gets canceled, it's just like crap.

00:06:27:17 - 00:06:38:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Like, that was time. I mean, yeah, I theoretically have it back now, but it's like, but now I've scheduled other other stuff around it, so it doesn't really feel like I got that time back, even though I theoretically did.

00:06:38:17 - 00:07:11:16
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And what you said is really important because you're not just losing the time of the meeting. I'm the same way. If I know, for example, we're recording this today and that's on my my schedule. Well, for the last half hour, I've been doing little things right, right. Deleting stuff from my inbox and, you know, updating some things, but little mindless tasks because I want my head in the game to do this and I don't want to get into something that requires deep thought and then have to stop.

00:07:11:17 - 00:07:14:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. That's that's where I'm at. Right?

00:07:14:12 - 00:07:29:11
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. So what happens is we not just lose call it an hour because that's an easy. Yeah. Framework we know lose that hour we probably misspent a half hour at least.

00:07:29:12 - 00:07:32:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Maybe depending on when the last thing that we got done. Got that.

00:07:32:23 - 00:07:41:11
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. Oh, I got off my call at 930 and the meeting is at ten. I'm not going to jump in and do something major.

00:07:41:12 - 00:07:55:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Oh, yeah. Like I've gotten off meetings. I mean, I end my day like 345. And so there are times that, you know, I'll get done with whatever task that I'm doing it like 330. And I go, Well, what am I to do for 15 minutes? I'm to be honest, I probably go on Facebook because it's like, what am I going to get done in 15 minutes?

00:07:55:06 - 00:07:56:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Not a whole heck of a lot.

00:07:56:08 - 00:08:27:18
Wayne Turmel
And so and here's the thing, though, you do that, nobody cares. The work got done. And this is the thing about remote work. The work the product for the day got done. The fact that you're 15 minutes late, early coming in, leaving, running to target, whatever you're doing is not as important as the fact that the work product, you got an acceptable amount of work product done for the day.

00:08:27:20 - 00:08:34:03
Wayne Turmel
The problem with canceled meetings is that you could have gotten more work product done right now.

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Marisa Eikenberry
You know, now those projects have been scheduled on other days because I thought I didn't have it in my calendar today.

00:08:39:01 - 00:09:15:17
Wayne Turmel
Exactly right. So I know, Michael, that this does not assuage the pain. Right. Because it is annoying. But I think if we apologize and recognize the inconvenience, give people some sense of what's next. Right. Are we going to reschedule it for Thursday? Are we going to send out the materials in advance? Tell us what's going to happen as a result of this so that whatever work we were supposed to get done still gets done because the meeting was supposed to accomplish work.

00:09:15:19 - 00:09:25:23
Wayne Turmel
Right. Give people a sense of what's next so that they can plan their life. I think, you know, stuff happens.

00:09:26:01 - 00:09:26:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

00:09:26:17 - 00:09:33:12
Wayne Turmel
And most people recognize that. But, you know, we can take the sting out of it a little bit.

00:09:33:14 - 00:09:51:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, and I think, too, because I have also heard this where, you know, you have a meeting that, well, maybe it might happen, but maybe it won't happen. But it's not like we're canceling it because, you know, that was caught on fire or something like that. It's just like, I don't know if I'm going to have it or not cancel it like earlier rather than later if the day before.

00:09:51:07 - 00:09:54:09
Marisa Eikenberry
You're like, I don't know if we need to have it, cancel it.

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Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I think periodically, you know, asking yourself, do we need to have this meeting at all?

00:10:00:17 - 00:10:02:03
Marisa Eikenberry
And that's an important question to ask.

00:10:02:08 - 00:10:13:01
Wayne Turmel
And can it be done in another fashion? If everybody comes in to the office Tuesdays and Wednesdays, maybe we'll just do a Wednesday when everybody's here.

00:10:13:03 - 00:10:18:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Or I don't really need a status update because we technically talked the other day like we can just cancel this meeting.

00:10:18:16 - 00:10:25:12
Wayne Turmel
And if you have a decent reporting system, status updates are largely unnecessary.

00:10:25:14 - 00:10:27:22
Marisa Eikenberry
That too.

00:10:28:00 - 00:10:29:00
Wayne Turmel
What's your next question?

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So our next one is from Lourdes. I'm hope I'm pronouncing that right.

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Wayne Turmel
Gorgeous.

00:10:34:17 - 00:10:55:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Thank you. And it says, if you're collaborating across time zones, global or country specific organizing meetings or expecting response, is it convenient times where headquarters are based with little regard of how late or early in the day it might be for other remote locations? Slack and Outlook have a send delay option for a good reason and she added a very nice little emoji.

00:10:55:04 - 00:11:11:11
Marisa Eikenberry
I did ask for a little bit more detail and I go, okay, what's the worst that you've ever seen for this? Like, what does that look like for you? And she said, the worst times that she's ever seen were 5 a.m. for a meeting or between 9 p.m. and midnight for time zones outside of headquarters.

00:11:11:13 - 00:11:19:06
Wayne Turmel
People who live in headquarters forget what they learned about eighth grade physics.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Okay?

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Wayne Turmel
And they don't realize that the sun does not revolve around their particular building.

00:11:27:14 - 00:11:28:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:11:28:23 - 00:11:33:11
Wayne Turmel
People on the east coast of the United States are particularly bad at this.

00:11:33:13 - 00:11:36:07
Marisa Eikenberry
I mean, we are particularly bad at this even as an organization.

00:11:36:10 - 00:11:38:17
Wayne Turmel
Well, but we're not. We're not. Here's the thing.

00:11:38:22 - 00:11:39:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00:11:39:15 - 00:11:44:21
Wayne Turmel
Indianapolis is on. Indy is in Indiana, which is in the Eastern.

00:11:44:21 - 00:11:45:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Time.

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Wayne Turmel
Zone. We have trucks in the Mountain Time zone, Arizona. Nobody knows what time it is in Arizona ever because of gas and switching. Right. And I'm on the West Coast. I'm an early bird when Kevin's schedule's like our team meetings first Friday of every month. It's 7:00 in the morning for me. But that was negotiated fair, right? That is the latest that I usually start my day.

00:12:12:04 - 00:12:19:01
Wayne Turmel
So, you know, I'll often have a t shirt and a baseball cap on because I won't have showered, but everybody knows me and that doesn't matter.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And it's a TV call in.

00:12:20:14 - 00:12:22:12
Wayne Turmel
The morning doesn't bother me.

00:12:22:15 - 00:12:22:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:12:23:04 - 00:12:58:02
Wayne Turmel
Now, as I say, if I'm talking to somebody in London. Right, that's a different that's a different animal. Or if you're talking to somebody in Asia-Pacific, that can get complicated. But the default very often is whatever time the headquarters is in, everybody synchronizes their clocks accordingly. And that shouldn't be necessarily the norm unless it's absolutely mandatory. You know, if you've got a call center in Manila, yeah, it probably used to be when your customers in the U.S. are awake.

00:12:58:04 - 00:12:59:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:12:59:03 - 00:13:19:21
Wayne Turmel
Right. There are some things that just make sense in terms of workflow. But there are two things I think. One is look for peak times, right? Hey, if I have to stay an hour later than usual to do a call, and that's not all the time. Yeah, I'll take one for the team. It's not a big deal.

00:13:19:23 - 00:13:21:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, once in a while it's.

00:13:21:00 - 00:13:41:07
Wayne Turmel
Fine if you feel like you are constantly being imposed upon and unnecessarily so, that can lead to disengagement and disgruntlement and all of that kind of negative stuff because it just feels like your needs are secondary to everybody else's.

00:13:41:13 - 00:14:01:19
Marisa Eikenberry
So when this happens, I mean, who needs to be the one to raise the flag? Is it the person who's being super inconvenienced needs to go talk to their manager, or does the leader need to realize, Hey, I might be in New York, but my team is in Spain and I'm asking them to be on a call at a time that's not great for them.

00:14:02:01 - 00:14:18:11
Wayne Turmel
Well, and that's the thing, right? I know that for me, when I led a team and it was an international team, I tended to take one for the team. Unless the majority of the people on the call were in a single time.

00:14:18:11 - 00:14:20:05
Marisa Eikenberry
So that makes sense to try to get as.

00:14:20:05 - 00:14:45:09
Wayne Turmel
Many of the person. If it's just me in that person, I will generally take one for the team and do it when it's convenient for them. That is one of those dark side of servant leadership things that we've talked about though, where if you've got five team members outside of your time zone and so you're starting at five in the morning and finishing at eight at night, that ain't good.

00:14:45:11 - 00:14:47:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, you need to take care of you too.

00:14:47:11 - 00:15:17:18
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. So everybody needs to communicate that. I think one of the things that is very helpful besides just asking people, when would you like to hold this meeting so that it's not killing you? That would be good, right? Just ask people what works Every once in a while, though. Toss them a bone. You know, maybe people in the New York office need to suck it up and, you know, take a morning call or stay a little bit later.

00:15:17:23 - 00:15:41:00
Wayne Turmel
And the thing is, the way that we work now, it's not like if I have an 8:00 call, I have to work every minute up till 8:00. We live in a time flexible world. If you're you know, if you work till 2:00 and you've got a call at 8:00 at night, go to the gym, have dinner with the family circle back and join when you when you need to.

00:15:41:02 - 00:16:06:16
Wayne Turmel
I think what Lord is, is addressing is this kind of home office bias, which literally leads to thoughtless behavior and thoughtless, not in the sense of you're a miserable, horrible human being. It's that you literally didn't think about it. So when you have people in different time zones confer with them, find out what works, Do they like early morning?

00:16:06:19 - 00:16:11:10
Wayne Turmel
Do they like evening? How does this impact their workday?

00:16:11:12 - 00:16:21:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and to your point, even just from the last question, does it need to be a meeting at all? Could this be done asynchronously, which would probably benefit all of them?

00:16:21:17 - 00:16:32:23
Wayne Turmel
And we're living in a world where literally with the push of a button, you are recording transcripts, ing and translating your meetings.

00:16:33:01 - 00:16:33:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:16:34:01 - 00:16:44:02
Wayne Turmel
So if it's an informational meeting where you're basically giving information, maybe somebody doesn't have to be up at midnight.

00:16:44:04 - 00:16:44:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, maybe.

00:16:44:20 - 00:16:45:09
Wayne Turmel
That be that.

00:16:45:11 - 00:17:02:06
Marisa Eikenberry
A meeting, it could be a video. If if it's truly just I'm going to give information and then people can ask questions. I've seen people use loom or other software to just record a video and then send it out and then, hey, watch this video. If you have questions, let me know.

00:17:02:08 - 00:17:15:12
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. So there are ways to do this. Technology allows us to do that, but have conversations with people. What works, what doesn't? Do they mind? You know, what is their body clock tell you?

00:17:15:14 - 00:17:16:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:17:16:02 - 00:17:37:20
Wayne Turmel
Somebody to attend those things. You should know that anyway if you're hiring people outside of your time's up. So you know, what is their preference? Can they be accommodated or are there alternatives to those meetings? And by the way, every once in a while toss them a bone and schedule when it's good for them and everybody else has to suck it up.

00:17:37:20 - 00:17:42:04
Wayne Turmel
And when they complain, you go, yes, that's the point.

00:17:42:06 - 00:17:51:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's always, always been, you know, missing dinner for this. You can miss dinner once a while.

00:17:51:04 - 00:17:52:19
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. Yeah.

00:17:52:21 - 00:18:10:07
Marisa Eikenberry
So I just want to thank both of our listeners for sending in these questions. I'm so excited that we got to tackle these today and we have a few more, but we would love to answer your questions too, so please make sure to send those to us. Thank you for listening to Log. This is work life for Shownotes transcripts and other resources.

00:18:10:07 - 00:18:31:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Make sure to visit longdistanceworklife.com if you haven't yet. Subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes while you're there. Be sure to like in review. This helps us know what you love about our show. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our Shownotes let us know you listen to this episode or even suggest a topic or pet peeve for Wayne and I to tackle on a future episode.

00:18:32:01 - 00:18:44:15
Marisa Eikenberry
And if you'd like to learn more about remote teams, order Wayne and Kevin Eikenberry’s new book, The Long-Distance Team, you can learn more about the book at Long Distance Team Book.com. Thanks for joining us. It is Wayne. Like say don't let the weasels get you down.

00:18:44:17 - 00:18:48:14
Wayne Turmel
Darn weasels.