Business Etiquette Update

Return to Article

How to Make the Most of Time While You Wait

Lisa Latham

Punctuality may be the soul of business for FedEx, UPS and trapeze artists, but on the inside of most businesses it feels like we wait and wait and hurry-up-and-wait.

We wait for an email response, then await return calls to arrange a meeting. We wait in the waiting room, then we wait in the meeting room, then wait for the deal to come through. The question is, how can you make all this waiting work for you?

The Benefits of Waiting

The short answer is indeed that good things come to those who wait.

The wise employee uses inevitable delays in deal-making or production to control emotions, to think a problem through with more clarity or to heighten the other guy's anticipation -- whether he works in a financial center or a French restaurant.

(Just recall the conventional wisdom of waiting three days between getting a new crush's phone number and calling -- it both cools the fire enough for you to be witty when you connect and it increases ardor in the meantime.)

Emotional cooling is one great side effect of waiting, but only if the wait is embraced with acceptance.

Fight the delay and you'll remain locked in conflict and frustration, groaning like Marge Simpson whenever Homer ruins her life again. At this point, you can outwait the frustration (after all, you've got the time!), or you can employ the wisdom of Bart Simpson and "Don't have a cow, man."

So how do you do it?

Just surrender and wait. Then and only then do the emotions cool and your thoughts open up to new possibilities, like Bart cooking up new mischief.

You might build your relationship with those on the other side of the table, to establish partnership in delay. You might enhance current work projects, using the time to brainstorm complementary outlets or dovetail deals.

Another benefit to waiting patiently is an ability to focus on the problem at your leisure.

Instead of racing to figure out the players and their motivations, a delay allows you to take the long view and consider the issue from many different perspectives. When our noses are pressed to the glass of a situation, our brains are binary enough that only two possibilities are apparent.

So let the problem sit, step back and like Lisa Simpson at a saxophone superstore, soon you'll see ins and outs, flaws and redesigns you hadn't had time to notice before. You may even decide that what you've already got is better than what you thought you wanted. You might do better without that new deal or partner you're waiting for after all.

Peter Sagal, host of NPR game show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," confesses to impatience, but recalls how his years-long wait for more radio stations to host the program refined it: "We started remaking the show, trying to shape it into something a little more palatable, a little more fun ... The public radio world does not move quickly, but that can be a blessing -- if it had the lightning reflexes of commercial radio, then we never would have had the chance to sit around for months, even years, recreating the radio show, waiting for it to become a going concern."

And possibly the most fun way to make use of delay is to heighten anticipation.

Teasing your customers with glimpses of what you have afoot keeps them coming back to find out more, if you parcel out details one by one.

On the Other Hand, Don't Delay

But that's all about when you have to wait. What about when you must make others wait for you?

Miss Conduct might lose her etiquette-expert-club jacket if she did not mention her disdain for an unfortunate (if popular) impulse to assert control by making others wait for you at appointments. Wise ones know that this only asserts the offender's immaturity; the most successful businesspeople avoid unnecessary delays.

With the above as a given, it's worth remembering that to wait knowing that one's presence and patience are enthusiastically appreciated is never hard. But having to cool our heels under the impression that no one cares if we live or die of old age always is.

Keeping that in mind, let those who wait for you receive good things in advance.

If you've had to delay someone beyond a few minutes, a sincere apology and picking up whatever tabs might have been generated in your absence usually dissolves the immediate rancor (unlike Bart Simpson's other tag line, "I didn't do it," because mature adults know that excuses don't work).

However, there's a topper that can resolidify the relationship at the next meeting. Scheduling the next rendezvous at the other party's convenience, arriving on time and thanking them once again for their previous patience work wonders to remove any lasting residue of your transgression.

In short, patience is not just a virtue -- it's money in the bank.

You can wait productively, wisely allowing time to give you its benefits, or you can impatiently salivate like Homer Simpson at a donut shop. Etiquette and good business dictate the former.