Calendar stalking. What fresh hell is this and when did it become acceptable behaviour?
An assistant told me this week that she has joined a new organisation and discovered a culture of people trawling through calendars to see who is meeting who.
She forgot to make a meeting private and suddenly the attendee list became the office gossip.
Of course, occasionally a meeting will need to be private, but when this becomes the norm, it is a symptom of a culture that has allowed calendar access to become political.
Calendars are operational tools. They are meant to support execution. They help leaders focus. They help assistants plan. They help an organisation function smoothly. When they become a political playground, that’s a problem.
Because if colleagues are scanning calendars for leverage, it tells you something fundamental about the environment. It tells me information is not flowing properly. It tells me trust is low. It tells me people feel the need to look sideways instead of looking forward. These behaviours do not appear in high-performing organisations. They appear where clarity and communication are missing.
Leaders, please take this seriously.
If calendar snooping is happening in your teams, it is a direct signal that your culture needs attention. Fix the gaps. Build trust. Communicate clearly. Remove the incentive for people to go searching for information they should already understand.
And to my assistants, listen carefully. You are seeing behaviour that is not healthy, not professional and not something you should simply tolerate because “that’s how we do it here”.
A calendar is a tool, not a weapon, and professionalism should still be the baseline expectation.
