The Art of Leadership

Chapter 1. Assume They Have Something to Teach You

The daily morning calendar scrub before work goes like this:

1. Open the calendar and look at the entire day.

2. Note the number of meetings and the amount of unscheduled time. If unscheduled time is zero, die a little inside.

3. For each meeting, ask the internal question, “What do I need to do to be prepared for this meeting?” and act on the answer. Reread a spec? Glance at our Q2 goals? Make sure action items from the prior meeting are done, or just known? This is essential precaching that I don’t do in the meeting because it would mean I was wasting the other human’s time remembering why we’re having the meeting.

4. When step 3 is complete, I’m almost done. There is one final subjective assessment that I make for each meeting: how much value is it going to create? Based on this, I can make a super-subjective estimate of how productive the day will be. This aggregate assessment allows me to determine before the day starts whether it will be one of high-energy forward progress or a morass of marginally interesting minutes.

Marginal meetings are unavoidable, and identifying them ahead of time gives me a chance to figure out an angle to increase their value. I’ve got one small thing that works consistently: assume they have something to teach you.

It works like this. Hypothetical scenario: a recruiting meeting with someone who is interested in working at my company who is a referral from a human I trust. The problem is, they want ...