Your Job Includes Teaching Professionalism - Chapter 1 - Timeliness

Summary

Manager Tools Podcast Summary

Episode: Your Job Includes Teaching Professionalism – Chapter 1: Timeliness (Part 1 of 2)

Hosts: Sarah, Mark
Date: July 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Sarah and Mark launch a two-part series on the crucial role of managers in teaching core professional skills—beginning with "timeliness" as the first principle. Challenging the myth that workplace professionalism standards are outdated or that managers shouldn’t need to teach them, they argue that evolving organizational speed and complexity make professionalism, especially timeliness, more vital than ever. The episode addresses why these skills aren’t inherently “known,” the pitfalls of the so-called “curse of knowledge,” and how managers should proactively set clear expectations for new employees to foster an effective workplace culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Enduring Need for Professionalism

• Myth Busting: Despite claims that the new world of work has changed everything, basic standards—e.g., timeliness—are even more important given increased organizational speed and complexity.
  • "As the world becomes faster... those old rules of working together efficiently, effectively, they actually become even more important." — Sarah (01:23)
• Organizational Effectiveness: Professionalism is not just etiquette; it underpins culture and business outcomes. Failing in even "basic" skills (late deliveries, poor planning, missed communications) easily undermines organizational goals.

The Manager’s Responsibility to Teach Core Skills

• Explicit Teaching Required: Employees, especially those new to large or growing organizations, often lack inherent familiarity with professional standards like timeliness.
  • "A professional who isn't timely isn't a professional at all." — Sarah (01:59)
• Don’t Wait for Mistakes: Managers gain a competitive advantage by proactively setting expectations and guiding new team members, rather than waiting for errors to correct them.

The "Curse of Knowledge"

• Concept: Once someone learns something (like core professional behavior), they tend to forget not knowing it, and thus wrongly assume others also know.
  • "The curse of knowledge is once you learn something you forgot you ever didn't know it and you assume others know what you know and it shocks you when they don't." — Mark (22:06)
• Root of Frustration: Managers often blame new hires for lacking skills instead of recognizing their own failure to teach foundational behaviors.

Professionalism Is Contextual, But Core Principles Remain

• Evolving Standards: While minor aspects (like dress code) change, underlying principles (respect, integrity, timeliness) remain.
  • "Many professionals would have included attire [years ago]... those mores, those standards have changed as the culture has changed." — Mark (11:18)
• Adaptation Required: Not adhering to an organization’s culture, even if you dislike it, will limit success within it.

Culture and Success

• Behavioral Foundation: Culture is simply the sum of all organizational behaviors. Professionalism forms the bedrock for and ultimately determines organizational success.
  • "An organization's culture is nothing more than the sum of all its behaviors." — Sarah (09:43)
• Small Companies Need Professionalism, Too: It's a mistake for small organizations to think professional standards are only for large corporations. Growth and scalability depend on consistent professional behavior.

Institutions Rarely Teach Professionalism

• Gaps in Education: Schools and universities do not systematically teach professional conduct. Experiences differ widely depending on personal background, education, and even part-time work.
  • "Educational institutions, for the most part, don't teach professionalism." — Mark (13:28)
• Storytime Insight: Mark’s anecdote about visiting Northwestern illustrates students' lack of professional initiative—a microcosm for misaligned expectations between academia and professional workplaces.
  • "I stood there for probably two minutes, looking around... Hundreds of students walked by me, and not one of them said anything to me, hey, can I help you? That would have been the kind, polite, professional thing to do." — Mark (17:55)

Why Managers Don’t Teach Professionalism (Yet Should)

• Ego and Experience: Many managers believe since they “learned the hard way,” new employees should too—but this slows everyone’s development.
• Feedback vs. Prevention: Setting clear expectations upfront prevents the need for corrective feedback later.
  • "If you don't spend the time setting the expectation... You're just going to find yourself wanting to give negative feedback when you could have just reverse engineered it and prevented it ever being needed to begin with." — Sarah (20:22)

Pseudoscience of Generational Management

• Danger of Stereotyping: The idea that each new generation fundamentally differs in work attitude is debunked.
  • "Just because something is popular doesn't make it intelligent. And generation management is not intelligent." — Mark (25:21)
• Many so-called “distinctive” generational traits are recycled from previous generations’ descriptors.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On professional expectations:
  "A professional who isn't timely isn't a professional at all." — Sarah (01:59)
• On the curse of knowledge:
  "Once you learn something you forgot you ever didn't know it and you assume others know what you know and it shocks you when they don't." — Mark (22:06)
• On culture:
  "An organization's culture is nothing more than the sum of all its behaviors." — Sarah (09:43)
• On teaching, not assuming:
  "Don't ask the fish about the water. But they're new to it and they're going to have to be trained on how organizations work and what behaviors they expect." — Mark (19:38)
• On generational myths:
  "Generation management is not intelligent." — Mark (25:21)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:20] – Episode Theme: Why professionalism, especially timeliness, matters
• [02:27] – Managers’ frustration with new hires and generational myths
• [05:43] – Episode outline: professionalism, curse of knowledge, teaching timeliness
• [06:33] – Why teaching, not assuming, is necessary; importance of setting expectations
• [09:42] – Defining culture as organizational behavior; Drucker reference
• [14:47] – Anecdote: Mark’s university story on professional initiative
• [19:53] – New hires need explicit training in professional norms
• [22:06] – The curse of knowledge explained
• [25:21] – Critique of generational management and common stereotypes

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Tone and Language

The discussion is candid and practical, with a “tough love” style that matches longstanding Manager Tools traditions. The hosts neither sugarcoat their opinions nor engage in nostalgia; instead, they encourage managers to embrace their responsibility to explicitly guide team members into professional habits, especially around timeliness.

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In Summary

This episode is a compelling rallying call to managers: don’t fall victim to myths about a changing workplace or generational differences. Professional conduct—starting with timeliness—remains non-negotiable for organizational success, and it’s an explicit part of the manager’s role to teach these norms, never to merely assume them. If you desire a high-performing, professional team, proactive guidance and clear expectations are essential.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Manager Tools. This is Sarah and I'm Mark. Today's podcast, your job includes teaching professionalism. Chapter one, Timeliness, part one of two.

[B]

As always, our content has been crafted by humans and we're now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are, do I really have to teach basic professional skills? Yeah, you do. Why should I teach basic professional skills? Because your people don't know it and your organization needs it. Shouldn't employees know the basics? Doesn't matter whether they should or shouldn't. The question is, are you going to teach them?

[A]

Yeah, exactly. If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening.

[C]

A repeatable, structured hiring process is one of the highest leveraged investments a manager can make, and most managers don't have one. The Effective Hiring Manager conference teaches your whole team a consistent interview methodology. So every hire reflects your standards and your process, not just whoever was in the room that day. Join us in Ottawa on September 15th. Learn more at manager tools.comehmc all right,

[A]

Mark, we are here today and we're going to, I'm going to say myth bust. Maybe that's the wrong word. But folks, today we're, we're going to begin or we're going to talk about how we encourage you not to believe the news that organizations are changing so fundamentally that the core standards of professionalism that have long since existed in organizational life no longer apply as the world becomes faster. Actually, those old rules of working together efficiently, effectively, they actually become even more important because the speed of work has wildly increased. I mean, the speed of AI alone adds immense speed to our day to day organizations. And because of that, we all need to teach the basics to those new people within our organizations. And things like timeliness is something that we must as managers, as leaders, make sure that we instill into our directs. Because a professional who isn't timely isn't a professional at all.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. We hear constantly from frustrated managers about their dismay at their directs, especially new or younger directs, often egged on by the total scam of generational management. You know, the new. The new direction can't navigate common basic professional tasks, sending a group zoom invite, comparing two budgets for discrepancies, arranging an off site location for a drinks meetup, planning the next quarter's worth of deliverables on a process improvement effort. And this generational management thing has emboldened managers to say, yeah, yeah, I knew that, and we'll talk about that in the Curse of Knowledge. But it's wrong. It's just wrong. And companies and managers have always had to teach these skills. And unfortunately, people are acting like they shouldn't have to. And so if you don't teach these skills, and to be honest, the workplace skills we're going to be talking about Are not skills that are naturally taught. And you need to look no further than the fact that probably you, when you got promoted to manager, didn't get trained by your company, you didn't get taught by your company how to be a manager. You were just expected to learn it on the go, you know, on your. On the job. But look, if you want a competitive advantage, you shouldn't wait for people to mess up on these things. You should teach them. You should make it a core part of your relationship with your directs that you're going to help them learn how to be professionals.

[A]

Absolutely. I mean, I think, Mark, this is where me and some of our listeners shake our old angry fists in the air. Not in my day. Not in my day. I tell you, I didn't need to be taught by my manager to be on time. I just knew it. Right. And to your point, we didn't all just know it. And frankly, you, friend, probably didn't know it yourself. So one of the things that we're here to do today really is just talk about this idea that this has always been how it is, folks. And just because you didn't realize it, doesn't make it not true.

[B]

Well, I'm going to defend myself only slightly because as I've said a thousand times on cast over the last 21 years, I didn't know any of this stuff about managing and hiring and being executive when I was a manager. West Point didn't teach me, the army didn't teach me, Procter and Gamble didn't teach me, and so on. But I will say I did know timeliness because there's an old joke about West Point where Mike and I went to school. We were not educated. We were trained, which is sort of a snarky way to look down on West Point, Even though the academics are quite rigorous. But, yeah, you could not survive for a week at West Point if you did not embrace timeliness. In fact, the Naval Academy, when they call minutes, which I won't describe, to notify people about upcoming formations. The last thing they say is time, tide, and formation waits for no one. Right? So time is first on that list for a reason.

[A]

All right, so today's outline. First, we're going to start by talking about professionalism and the curse of knowledge. Then timeliness is a top 10 principle of professionalism followed by how to actually teach timeliness.

[B]

And let's be clear, the teach in the outline or in the show notes. If you're a licensee, you can download this and read it whenever you want. You can share with your directs as part of your license. Teach is in quotations, Joey quotes. Because you're not going to set up classes to teach this stuff. That's not what we're suggesting you're going to do. So please don't shut us down and say I'm not going to listen to that. I don't have time to teach my people timeliness. They should just know it. Because we're just going to talk about how to be a manager and train your people to be professionals in the area of timeliness.

[A]

Exactly, exactly. So first, professionalism and the curse of knowledge folks. The reasons we have to teach professionalism are twofold really. One, we need it for our organizations to be effective people. Being on time is important and not teaching it is silly. But also two, the other reason we need to teach it is because new employees don't understand it. They don't come pre programmed with professionalism. Something that I actually say a lot when I'm, I'm teaching folks, Mark, is this idea that common sense isn't that common. And we all come to the table in organizational life being programmed by someone for something. And some of us had West Point, some of us had really, really mean moms who were always insistent about timeliness.

[B]

Oh, I, I, I had that too.

[A]

You had both of them. But others didn't come pre programmed with those same no rules of order, standards of behavior. And, and again they're really, really important for organizational life. So if your direct didn't come pre programmed with that one, you're going to want to lean in.

[B]

A good example, although I wouldn't put it in the top 10 of professionalism, is recognition that you lose your freedom of speech internally in an organization. And so we've had cases where companies Microsoft's president's office was taken over by protesters, but disagreeing I think with Microsoft's political stand on the Mid east, which is a very touchy political subject, strong feelings on both sides and we encourage people to live a full life. And if you feel strongly about a political idea, we encourage you to stand up for it and vote for it or vote the right people in who are going to agree with you. But you don't get to do that at work. This is a standard of professionalism. Again, probably not in the top 10, but something that's fundamental to human organizations. Because human organizations, if they allow us to be the exact same at work than we are in our personal lives, they will be incredibly, massively ineffective. Yeah, I mean, look, we need professionalism for our orgs. And I know it's a word we. I feel strongly about the word, but I think some people roll their eyes at it and I understand why they think of it as an old fashioned thing like etiquette. We need professionalism for our orgs to be effective because professionalism is the accepted culture of large and actually many mid sized and small organizations. Now look, we, when we say large, we don't mean to insult small organizations. We're simply referencing that many smaller organizations think they don't quite need the same level of professionalism as larger corporations, which is a bad idea because most smaller companies do in fact want to get larger. And if they don't embrace professionalism when they're small, they will struggle to get to the next level and they end up failing. Yeah, so becoming larger is a metric of success for smaller companies. Maybe not in terms of number of employees, but in terms of revenue and profitability and so on.

[A]

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And folks, as we've said before, an organization's culture is nothing more than the sum of all its behaviors. In fact, we just recently recorded a podcast talking all about Drucker and culture of performance. Yeah, exactly, exactly. The idea that culture eats strategy for breakfast. That was a recent one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And folks, organizational cultural creation happens through thousands of interactions organically based on what works and what helps employees to be successful. So if you ask yourself what makes an organization successful, you're probably going to list all the basic tenets of professionalism. Integrity, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, communication, relationships. All of the, all the normal ones are going to show up in that list. That's what we want our culture to look like. News reports might focus on beautiful or fancy or high profit product lines. But if the company can't deliver on time or the product, they make breaks really easily, or they're unprofitable at their existing price, or the features in their product don't work, the company won't succeed. The basics matter.

[B]

Yes, exactly. By the way, we want to be clear about something here. We don't. Some of you are probably thinking, well, that's old. That's what people in the previous generation thought. But it's actually the previous all generations, at least since the advent of large organizations. That's not to say that professionalism is forever unchanging. Many professionals would have included attire as part of professionalism. Years ago, men had to wear suits and women had to wear skirts of a certain length and heels and all kinds of things. But those mores, those standards have changed as the culture has changed. Somebody said to me recently something to the effect of, oh, you're one of those guys that thinks we should all be in a suit. And I say, no, I think you should dress for work, showing respect for your colleagues. One of the ways you show respect for colleagues is dress in a way that shows you're serious about your work and it can't just be your personal comfort, especially if your personal comfort is not helpful to the work you're doing. And I, I think that it's, it's cool that the human beings are good at creating cultures that are successful, but also are constantly looking at how they can change. Now, look, if you're one of those people who says, yeah, I don't like any of the culture of modern large organizations, that's okay, it's fine. But you won't thrive in a large organization unless you agree to follow the moors of its culture. And these are timeliness, as the example in this chapter of this series is a core function, a core part of successful organizational culture.

[A]

Yeah, that's exactly it. And folks, we don't think anyone would argue that the basic tenets of professionalism aren't necessary for the vast majority of an organization's successes. But that's only half the battle, because employees new to large, growing organizations in the vast majority of cases don't know how to behave professionally.

[B]

And why would they? They've never been in a large organization.

[A]

Exactly. Why would they?

[B]

Yeah, Educational institutions, for the most part, don't teach professionalism. I've talked about this probably 10 times in the last 20 years. There's a famous movie, a comedy, I can't remember which one, which was set at a university. And in the first session of a class, they're in an amphitheater with maybe 200 kids in the class, and the teacher is giving a lecture, and there are 200 students in the class sitting there. Then they show that class throughout the semester, and in the next session, the teacher is teaching, maybe it's three, four weeks later and the teacher is teaching, and maybe only half the people are there, but there are a whole bunch of tape recorders down on the front row recording the lecture. So they don't have to be there at that time because perhaps they don't feel the need to be timely for an 8am class for instance. And so they ask someone else to take their tape recorder and tape it later. The class is empty and the professor is teaching, but there are hundreds of tape recorders at the very front of the room. And I know you're laughing at tape recorders, folks, but this movie was made 30 years ago. And in the final episode, the teacher. As I recall, the teacher walks in, starts a large tape reel thing of his presentation, and then leaves the room.

[A]

Leaves the room because why am I going to be here if you're not?

[B]

Right?

[A]

That's funny.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's okay. Most people would argue that school teaches you a lot. Whether you go just to high school or community college or a technical school or a college or university, or you get an advanced degree, there are some things that you can get away with not learning because they aren't explicitly taught. Now, I would argue that kids that show up, that students that show up on time to class overall do better than those that don't. But I don't have any data on that. And please don't send me your data if you disagree. If you've been on a college campus lately and you've seen student attire, it's very different from when I was there. I'll tell the story. At the time, it really sort of shocked me. I went to Northwestern for years to talk. My good friend Bill White, the head of the mechanical engineering department, asked me to come every year and address his students about their life after school. Usually seniors, but sometimes juniors came in. There's usually, I don't know, anywhere between 40 to 100 people in the session. And I was talking about how to get ahead after you got out and talked about interviewing as well, because it's a thing that kids are worried about. Students are worried about in their juniors and senior year. And I had been in Chicago for client work. And so I went to Northwestern, which is in the suburbs. It's in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago proper. And I walked in and I had on my Burberry trench coat. I had on a suit, and I was carrying my Louis Vuitton briefcase, my maybe my most treasured travel possession. And I walked into the building, but the building had been remodeled, and I wasn't sure how to get to Bill's office. And I stood there. I'm looking around. There are students streaming past me. And I'm looking around, looking for signs, signposts, something to tell me where to go. Not seeing anything at all. Just, you know, I'm. I'm. I'm lost. There's no question I'm lost. It's a lovely campus. Wonderful, wonderful university. And here comes a gentleman dressed like I am, and he says, can I help you, sir? I said, yes, hello. I'm Mark Horseman. He introduces himself. Unfortunately, his name is lost to memory. I said, I'm so sorry. I think there's some construction going on or whatever. But I'm here to speak to Bill White's class. And he says, oh, I know, Bill. I'll take you. And so we walked through, you know, several funny turns that I didn't remember. And we get to Bill's office, and he was astounded that this man was bringing me because this man was the president of the university. He was the president of the university.

[A]

One should have the president escort them to their speaking engagement.

[B]

Bill said to me, you know, you know how to get here, Mark? I said, yeah, Bill. But where I came in, there was some construction. I didn't know where to go. And we'll call him Joe. Joe here was kind enough to bring me by. And I said to Bill, because we were. I.

[A]

We.

[B]

He and I exchange emails regularly about how the students were doing and what my experience was with them and so on. And I said. And I was actually kind of disappointed because I stood there for probably two minutes, looking around, trying to find a waypoint, and hundreds of students walked by me, and not one of them said anything to me, hey, can I help you? And I thought, for all they know, I'm conducting interviews because it's interview sessions,

[A]

I might be hiring them.

[B]

Yeah, imagine that. One of them walked by, and I recognized them, and I said the first question would be, hey, you saw me in the lobby, and I was looking around, not knowing where to go. Why didn't you stop and offer to help me? That would have been the kind, polite, professional thing to do. And actually, the president of the university looked at me and says. I said, so I just have to say thank you. It's very kind of you. He says, oh, Mark, I help anybody who walks into my building with a Louis Vuitton briefcase. For all you know, I was a donor. I was on the board of regents or something.

[A]

Yeah, that's funny.

[B]

Yeah. I'll never forget that experience. And it reminded me again of, okay, fine, this is where these students are. These are very bright students. These are cream of the crop, very hard to get in. And my niece went there, and she's a genius. And I was disappointed. And then I realized, wait, wait, I can be disappointed or I can do something. About it. And so I've told managers for years, don't be surprised at what your students, what your fresh college graduates or your high school graduates or your tech school graduates or your non graduates come to you with you take for granted because you're swimming in the ocean all the time. Don't ask the fish about the water. But they're new to it and they're going to have to be trained on how organizations work and what behaviors they expect.

[A]

Yeah, that's exactly it. And folks, we can to mark's point, we can't assume that college graduates are pre trained on these professionalism behaviors. And certainly some professionalism things are picked up on in school. Certainly some part time jobs help people learn some of these basics. But folks, only a minority, minority of them and not completely in any way, by any means.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So if you're managing in a large corporate organization, relying on what they learned before they got here is just not enough. Even new employees need to be brought up to speed across the whole range of professional behaviors. Because I assure you, if you don't spend the time setting the expectation, I'm going to use the analogy here for teaching professionalism, setting the expectation of professional behaviors. You're just going to find yourself wanting to give negative feedback when you could have just reverse engineered it and prevented it ever being needed to begin with. That's the idea here.

[C]

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[B]

so then the question becomes, why then don't most managers do this when they bring someone new on board? Now, I would argue part of it, it is ego. I think that was probably true for me. It's true for most people. The sense that, well, I did it the hard way and apparently I succeeded. So maybe that's just the standard around here. But the actual answer, I believe, is what many of you, I'm sure listening, know is what is known as the curse of knowledge. We've talked about this for two decades now in all three of our podcasts, Career Tools, Manager Tools and Exec Tools. The curse of knowledge is once you learn something you forgot you ever didn't know it and you assume others know what you know and it shocks you when they don't. And unfortunately, In a class of cultures, someone new to your company and you, which you take for granted because you've already learned it. Their behavior looks unusual, but it's not for them. They've just never been taught it.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I'd go a step further, Mark, and say it's not their problem at all.

[B]

No, that's right.

[A]

The curse of knowledge is our problem. Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's the combination of our curse of knowledge combined with their lack of understanding of professional basics that robs individuals and therefore organizations, of the necessary abilities and effectiveness that they need to succeed. We don't think we should have to teach it, but then we realize they need to learn it. So because we haven't taught it, they haven't learned it. And here we are.

[B]

Yeah. And development is slowed.

[A]

And development is slowed. Exactly. Exactly. Managers are frustrated. Directs are taking too long to develop because we didn't take the time that we probably should have.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At the beginning.

[B]

Yeah. And that's part of the reason you said time. There's. That's part of the reason why I said at the outset that we're not going to have classes, we're not going to teach this stuff like the example I used in the movie about college. Okay, but look, we have to be honest about this. We managers often make fools of ourselves in this situation. We complain about young people, and it's not youth, actually. It's just newness to your organization. Having forgotten that we didn't know the same stuff that our new hires now don't know. We buy into the stupidity of generational management, which I talked about before. Oh, Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen A, Gen Nu, Gen zero, whatever. I tell the story often. Hey, when it comes to Gen Z, have you heard the. That they want more alignment between their work and their personal life in terms of their values? Oh, yes, definitely. Have you heard that they want more work, family, balance in life? Oh, yes, definitely do. Have you heard that they really want the work that their organization does to be aligned and to be serving society? Oh, definitely. And I say those three lines are from the Wikipedia page for the baby boom generation. And I was born in 1960. And I'm right at the end, actually, the baby boom goes to 1964. Yeah. So that's been true for a long, long time. There's nothing new about that for Gen Y or millennials or Gen Z or whatever. And unfortunately, generational management is popular, and it's popular because companies buy it. Okay. It wouldn't be popular if nobody bought it. They wouldn't there wouldn't be an industry for it. Okay. Just because something is popular doesn't make it intelligent. And generation management is not intelligent.

[A]

Yeah. You know, Mark, the one an analogy or maybe something that's similar that I kind of think about is happy people are more productive. We hear things like Gen Z's want more work, life balance or happy people are more productive. And it sounds right enough that immediately we believe it, like there's something there. We know there's something there. And because most, most of us haven't spent the time and energy that you and I have digging into this stuff, can't put our finger on the cause behind it, we feel like it must be right. So we buy in and it's lost endeavor. And we should have known that because millennials were the worst until they weren't anymore. It's all of that. Right? But it sounds right enough that we buy.

[B]

Yeah. And look folks, if you want a professional team, and you do, obviously. Yeah, I hope so, you're going to have to teach. And I say teach in Joey air quotes. Professionalism and its tenets. And this series of casts is designed to help you do so.

[A]

Thanks folks. Join us again next week as we continue this topic. Now help us help others and tell your friends. And of course, follow rate and review, view our podcast and remember, five stars only. Please.