When the Meeting Starts is About Culture, Not Time

I saw this image posted on LinkedIn last week and it really got me thinking:

Is that true?

Do we all have a drawer in our home like this?

I know we have one, and every 4-5 months, I try to clean it out and organize it, but it devolves into that same drawer all over again.

So I have to ask,?do you have a drawer like this in your house?

Is this the one "norm" we all share??

Because here's the thing about most norms: they are not universal.

Everyone has a different norm.?Just because someone may have always been in the majority, it doesn’t make their norm more accurate or better than anyone else’s.

Our “norm” is based on a whole slew of factors:

• how we were raised and educated
• experiences we’ve had – or never had – with people different from us
• laws, government policies, community standards
• media images that we’ve been fed our whole lives
• and so many more influences

Your brain releases all kinds of endorphins and other happy hormones?when you’re in the presence of what, for you, is normal. And it releases stress hormones when you’re not. Which means you automatically have a bias against anything (or anyone) unexpected, because your expectations automatically default to your own norms. And norms are not neutral, or to be more blunt -- all norms cause bias.

While training a group of executives from a major marketing firm on unconscious bias, I posed the following poll question:

If a meeting starts at 8:00 am, and one employee arrives at 7:55, and is seated with the laptop open and ready to go at 8:00 sharp, and another arrives between 8:05 and 8:10 and has a bagel and gets coffee and chats with co-workers to get caught up on everyone's weekends, then is seated and ready to go by 8:20, which one is performing their job better?

[A] The employee ready to go by 8:00 am sharp;

[B] The employee socializing with co-workers?for a few minutes before the meeting; or

[C] The employee whose behavior most closely aligns with the corporate culture in that workplace.?

Now, I hope the answer is obvious to you.?

(HINT: It's [C])

But here was the more interesting outcome of that event. Afterwards, the CEO told the HR person who had hired me that I was never to be brought back, because of that question.

Because I didn't say the correct answer was [A].

He thought it was setting a terrible precedent to even suggest that if a meeting started at 8:00 that it would be okay to arrive late, socialize, and not be ready to go until 8:20.

He could not see how [C] was the same as [A] in his company.

Or maybe he was afraid it wasn't, and he was reacting to that possibility.

Either way, he didn't want someone telling his leadership team that anything other than [A] was an acceptable way to behave.

Side note -- only one person chose [A] when I ran the poll, and I'm pretty sure I know who. Two people chose [B] and everyone else understood the question.

What time a meeting starts is a matter of culture.?And when people from different cultures come together, one is not "wrong" for wanting to start exactly on time, without any socializing, and another is not "wrong" for wanting to build rapport with others and create a collegial environment before getting down to business.

We can't penalize someone simply because they come from a different cultural tradition. It takes patience, education and adaptation to align cultures. The boss generally gets to set the tone, determine the culture and force everyone to fit into it, but make no mistake, there are others who are adapting, which may take time, because your culture, your norm, your values are not universal.

And don't be afraid to be open to the idea that there may be a better way of doing things based on a different norm.?

Because I can tell you, I've been to a lot of meetings. And the ones where you start with a bagel and coffee and some nice conversation really are quite wonderful.?

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Valerie Alexander is a renowned expert on Happiness & Inclusion and a globally recognized speaker on the topics of Happiness in the Workplace, Outsmarting Unconscious Bias, and the Advancement of Women.

To download a copy of "Five Ways to Outsmart Unconscious Bias in Your Company" or to join her Happiness & Inclusion mailing list, please go to SpeakHappiness.com/Inclusion.

To learn more about her work, visit SpeakHappiness.com