Are you looking to deal with someone’s lateness to a meeting you’ve previously arranged?

Do you want some tips to help you gracefully manage the delicate situation?

It’s a common scenario: you set up an appointment with a colleague, client, or friend.

You wake up early, travel, and arrive to your appointment meeting location with enough time to spare.

Then you wait. Finally, you receive a text message from your contact. They’re going to be a whopping thirty minutes late.

As annoying and frustrating as this situation may be, these things do happen from time to time.

In this post, you’ll find several practical tips to help you deal with someone who arrives late to a meeting.

The best way to deal with a lateness is to have a plan in place and stay calm.

Use the following tips the next time you find yourself waiting for someone to arrive to a scheduled meeting.

Take an active role in communication.

It’s ten minutes past your appointment time and there’s still no word from your contact. What should you do?

If this is the case for you, see if you can get in touch with them en route via cell phone, email, or text.

Should they be unavailable, leave a message with your location, the current time, and your next steps.

For example, you may attempt to contact them again via phone, stick around for a few minutes more, or cancel or reschedule the appointment.

No matter which decision you make, be crystal clear about your decision in your messages.

Make a decision about your meeting.

Your contact has finally arrived for your meeting. The only problem? It’s already forty minutes into your hour-long meeting. Fifteen minutes is not a lot of time to cover sixty minutes’ worth of material!

It’s important to have a brief discussion with your contact as soon as they arrive. You need to address exactly how you are going to make use of your remaining meeting time.

Are you going to cover one or two items on your agenda? How about agreeing to stay for another forty-five minutes to hold your meeting?

Will you cancel the meeting entirely? What about making arrangements for a new meeting in future?

If you decide to use the remaining time to hold an abbreviated meeting, then you’ll want to jot down the key points you’ll want to cover.

You should then set a timer with the remaining time so your meeting won’t run late.

Forgive…and forget.

Sometimes, you have to take a deep breath and forgive and forget an occasional lateness.

Cars, trains, planes, and buses break down, highways get congested, people fall ill, and so on. It’s just a fact of life.

Sure, you weren’t able to meet as scheduled, but that’s no reason to live in the past and harbor negative thoughts.

This isn’t a life or death situation. Take a deep, calming breath, and relax.

Again, the key here is to be flexible. There might be a chance you can make a slight adjustment to your schedule so you can hold your meeting.

Maybe you can hold a conference call instead of meeting in person or review information together via video conference?

Perhaps you can reschedule your meeting and chalk things up as being “just one of those days.”

How about you? What steps do you take to handle a lateness that is not your own? Join the conversation and leave a comment below!