Chapter 88. Add Value

Why bother to speak if you have nothing to add? And yet people do, all the time. They repeat what they said before. They rephrase earlier contributions. They say things that are completely meaningless. Why? How do they think this is helping? And why do they think they were asked to contribute if they have nothing useful to say?

Listen, if you want to be well respected, you should have listened to what was being said, read the information you were given, researched the background, thought about the issue—and formed an opinion that you can back up. On top of that, you should have come up with creative solutions, inventive suggestions, original approaches, and constructive ideas. Are you trying to impress people or aren’t you?

You might find it instructive to listen to what other people say in meetings and secretly grade them on a scale of 1–10 according to how useful they are to the discussion. It will tell you a lot about your co-managers, and you should find that the high scorers among them are also the high flyers.

The people who have nothing to contribute but find something pointless to say anyway are not simply failing to help. They are actively wasting everyone’s time. I’ve sat through meetings where if you cut out all the time-wasting ramblings from people with nothing better to say, you could slash hours off the duration of the meeting. This is not Rules behavior, and don’t ever catch yourself doing it. You must be the one to set the standard—regardless of whether other people rise to it. And you can be sure that while some of your colleagues may not seem to notice, your own managers will be well aware that you’re someone to listen to because your contributions add value.

And what if you really have nothing helpful to say, or you’ve already contributed your thoughts and are asked again for your input? Well in that case, decline to comment. Politely say that you have nothing—or nothing further—to add.