In our culture we tend to accept an invitation to any meeting without question. I would suggest to you that we need to change our response and ask questions for each request. For instance, a meeting without an agenda usually ends up being something between a social party and a bickering session. Neither you nor the organization is going to benefit from spending your time in that way.

One particularly bad example from early in my career comes to mind. The organization I worked for hired a new director for our department - a director who had something to prove. She could have earned respect by doing what was right for the company but instead she demanded it. She demonstrated that she had the power to insist on respect by throwing her political weight around.

Well, I had an interesting response to my big “whoops” last week... Anyway, people took it easy on me and were understanding when I explained what happened. I’m not surprised. The people I have been meeting since starting my newsletter have been terrific. One such person is Lee. Lee contacted me right after the whoops with this...