Friday Forward - Bad Misses (#482)
If you can show up, you really should
For over a decade, I’ve been part of several forums—groups of entrepreneurs or business leaders who meet monthly to discuss personal and professional challenges in a trusting, confidential setting. At its best, a forum serves as a personal board of directors that provides honest feedback and helps members navigate critical decisions.
These are incredibly busy people, so most forums set their meeting dates a year in advance and establish clear rules around attendance and when rescheduling is permitted. The most common rule is straightforward: you’re allowed to miss one meeting per year. If you miss two, you’re removed from the group and must be voted back in unless there are truly extenuating circumstances.
Over time, I’ve noticed a common pitfall, especially among newer members: falling into the trap of taking a bad miss. A bad miss is when a member makes a last-minute cancellation because they have a conflict that either isn’t truly urgent or could have been avoided with better planning.
A bad miss isn’t when a member misses because of something truly unavoidable, such as a family emergency or a business-critical meeting. Instead, it’s skipping when they probably could have made it work if they tried. It may have required shifting a flight, rescheduling a meeting, or asking someone to cover for them. In the worst cases, it may have just required pushing through a chaotic day to honor the commitment. In other words, a bad miss is an absence when attending the forum meeting is simply inconvenient or difficult, but not impossible.
The reason bad misses are so costly is that when a true emergency does arise—one that genuinely warrants missing a forum meeting—a bad misser has already used their one free pass. If a member is making their case after a second miss, their forum-mates are often ambivalent. Even if people are sympathetic to the current situation, attendance rules exist for a reason, and forum members may look back to that first bad miss when making their decision.
I’ve urged my kids to learn this bad miss lesson over the years—most recently with my youngest, who is still at home. On a few recent occasions he has taken some bad misses, only to have a meaningful reason for an absence soon after. Of course, at this point, both my wife and I are far less sympathetic or accommodating.
The lesson of the bad miss is simple but powerful: if you can show up, you should. If you only get a certain number of sick days, you should save them for when you are really sick, not when you have the sniffles and lack motivation to go to work. If your absence affects the experience for the rest of the group, or for your team, you should respect them with your presence. Because you never know when you’ll need the flexibility that only reliability can earn you.
Emergencies rarely come at a convenient time. That’s why protecting your credibility as someone who shows up is so important, you want the benefit of the doubt when you have to miss something.
This doesn’t mean ignoring your limits or pushing through at all costs. It means being honest with yourself about what’s truly immovable and what’s just uncomfortable or inconvenient. It’s important to ask yourself two questions:
Am I really unable to do this, or do I just not want to?
If someone else skipped a commitment to me for this same reason, would I feel let down?
Think of building a reputation for reliability as saving up goodwill. When you show up for the small stuff, people are far more likely to support you when something big gets in the way. But if you make a habit of opting out, people won’t be receptive to even the worthiest excuses. That’s the difference between building trust and slowly eroding it.
Whether it’s a forum, a team, or a family commitment, the principle is the same: small choices compound. If you want others to back you when it matters most, don’t use your “get out of jail free” card unless it’s truly necessary.
Show up when you can. Save the misses for when you really can’t.
Quote of The Week
“To stay on the map you’ve got to keep showing up.” – Peter Gallagher
Have a great weekend!
-Bob
robertglazer.com
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Reliability contributes greatly to confidence building.
A few things changed over the past few years, with the pandemic, lockdowns, the zoom society, normalized WFH, etc:
1. Time at home carries more value than it used to before. Fathers missing for months and years was almost a must in the 60s and 70s, with slower normalization with digital jobs in the 90s and 00s, and hit a reverse peak during the pandemic years. Spending time at home/with family/just looking into alternative opportunities not spending 4 days of travel to meet 5 people is going up.
2. More and more masterminds and groups. While I was attending 1 of these 15 years ago, I'm in 30 now. It's true that I discard or neglect the vast majority, and prioritizing just a couple seems like a missed opportunity today.
3. Other groups that are digital-first, or have regular events, or are larger - the Pavillions, or SaaS Rise, or a few others. Even YEC/EO/Forbes Councils have online forums and groups and one can 1:1 at scale from home.
4. Until about 18 months ago, digital was scaling well enough without face time. SEM, paid ads, sponsorships, outbound sales, partnership managers - original founders and executives were frequently out of the loop and not actively engaged. There's a very good reason we see Google's founders back in seat in the era of AI and innovation/disruption (whatever you want to call it), same for Bezos, and many other leaders back in seat. A 5-year gap prior is still one that's getting caught up, filtering all the noise and reducing the loud communities.
I agree with the overall thesis of skipping last minute more often than not - I see this with online meetings, calls, delays and being late to appointments, and other instances that are a definite no in my book.