Is it acceptable to invite oneself to a meeting organized by someone else, without consulting the organizer?

Question

Suppose Alice is leading an activity and has organized a meeting with the technical staff that will be working on the activity. The purpose of the meeting is to parcel out tasks, determine schedules, and other technical stuff. Alice's coworker, Bob, gets wind of the meeting and wants to attend. Instead of asking Alice if he can attend the meeting, Bob goes to one of the other meeting attendees and asks them to forward the calendar appointment. Alice first learns of this when she gets an automated notice from the calendar program that another attendee has been added to the meeting.

Is Bob's behavior acceptable? Would any of the following additional circumstances make a difference to the answer?

1. Bob is the lead on project that is funding the activity (but has delegated leadership of the activity to Alice and has not otherwise been working on the activity).

2. Bob is Alice's line manager (but has explicitly appointed Alice the leader of the activity).

3. Bob has been on leave since the activity started and is not up to date on the technical details. Therefore, he wants the agenda to be amended to include a catch-up briefing.

I'm interested in this question primarily from a business etiquette perspective. Obviously it's a manager's prerogative to attend any meeting in their department that they want to, and probably any coworker could get away with it unless the meeting deals in restricted information. What I'm wondering is, is it reasonable for Alice to feel aggrieved that Bob did not consult her about attending the meeting? In the cases where Bob is an authority figure, is it reasonable for Alice to feel that her stature as the leader of the activity is being undermined (i.e, that Bob might be seen by the rest of the team as revoking the authority that he previously delegated to Alice)?

Clarification: I'm trying to describe several variations on the same scenario. In the base scenario Bob and Alice are strictly peers. In the first variant Bob has some authority, but is not technically Alice's boss. In the second variant, Bob is Alice's boss. The third variant could be added to any of the variants already discussed. (One answer below jumped straight to assuming variants 2 & 3 were both in effect, which is one possibility, but not the only one.)

Answer 1

Is it reasonable for Alice to feel aggrieved that Bob did not consult her about attending the meeting?

When they are peers, assuming there was nothing preventing Bob from just asking Alice if they could attend, then it's slightly rude IMHO. Not worth doing or saying anything unless it's oft repeated or egregious (such as inviting himself to meetings he has no business reason to be in)

Bob is the lead on project that is funding the activity (but has delegated leadership of the activity to Alice and has not otherwise been working on the activity).

Bob is Alice's line manager (but has explicitly appointed Alice the leader of the activity).

In both these cases Bob is entitled to be there.. But depending on the difference between the two in seniority it may give the image of undermining Alice, it's poor management on Bob's part not respect the channels he put In place.

Bob has been on leave since the activity started and is not up to date on the technical details. Therefore, he wants the agenda to be amended to include a catch-up briefing.

Flat out rude. If you want to change the agenda of someone's meeting, you talk to them first. Don't care if you're their boss or have been on leave or whatever.

Answer 2

Bob should have gone through Alice. Even if he wanted to pull rank if she tried to exclude him he should have done it privately so Alice could save face that he gave her by appointing her.

This is undermining, although I would assume unintentionally.

Answer 3

If Alice gets an attitude over this, she's out of line.

Bob's circus, Bob's monkeys.

• He's providing the money
• He's the boss
• He's been out.

Alice is in the wrong from the word go.

In fact, it was wrong of Alice not to invite him to begin with.

Answer 4

Labelling any of these as "rude" kind of puts the cart before the horse, imo. Bob may have a perfectly rational excuse as to why he wants to be in the meeting. Before Alice decides that Bob's behaviour is "rude", she should speak to Bob about why he wants to be in this meeting; after all, Alice is the project leader and decided that Bob doesn't need to be in the meeting (or else she would have invited him to begin with). It is rude for Bob to invite himself to the meeting without consulting Alice; it's likewise rude of Alice to take offence to Bob being in the meeting without consulting Bob first about why he wants to be there.

Chances are pretty good that Bob should not be in this meeting. Alice has a planned agenda that she wants to discuss with her team (and specifically not Bob's team; she's the project leader, it's her project, and therefore her team) and Bob is not part of the agenda. If Bob were to attend this meeting and participate in the discussion, he would likely derail Alice's agenda, since he has no relevance to the original agenda as planned. In order for Bob to attend, he should be "seen and not heard", so to speak, in which case why is he there anyway?

Bob is the lead on project that is funding the activity (but has delegated leadership of the activity to Alice and has not otherwise been working on the activity).

This is a reasonable request, to know how his money is being spent. If Bob is to attend in this case, he should be seen and not heard. He can ask followup questions to Alice after the meeting if he had any concerns about what he heard, but not participate in any discussions in the meeting directly.

Bob is Alice's line manager (but has explicitly appointed Alice the leader of the activity).

This is a reasonable request if and only if Bob is evaluating Alice's effectiveness as a leader. In this case also, Bob should be seen and not heard. Alice should be notified that Bob wants to evaluate her leadership; this is a perfectly valid request of a line manager, but also may be seen as micromanaging by Alice and she may not want him there. If Bob does not stick to being seen and not heard (in this case or the previous one), Alice feeling undermined would be a rational result.

Bob has been on leave since the activity started and is not up to date on the technical details. Therefore, he wants the agenda to be amended to include a catch-up briefing.

Unless Bob is part of Alice's team working on the project, Bob should not be part of this meeting in this case. It is rude for Bob to presume that he has the authority to amend (and, likely, derail) Alice's meeting for his own purposes. If he wants a catch-up briefing, he should schedule a separate, private meeting with Alice to discuss what he needs to discuss rather than hijacking Alice's existing meeting. Even if Bob is part of Alice's team, he should schedule a separate meeting for the catchup review, although he should still attend this meeting and participate as a team member.

Answer 5

Alice's coworker, Bob, gets wind of the meeting and wants to attend. Instead of asking Alice if he can attend the meeting, Bob goes to one of the other meeting attendees and asks them to forward the calendar appointment. Alice first learns of this when she gets an automated notice from the calendar program that another attendee has been added to the meeting.

This is a miscommunication between Bob and Alice. For me the very interesting questions here are:

• Why did Bob not ask Alice directly after he became aware of the meeting? Was it lack of time/did he just meet his co-worker at lunch, who to make sure not to forget did a forward on the phone?

• And did he potentially ask Alice to be invited to such meetings before? Is it conceivable that he explicatively asked Alice to be invited, but she did not?

• Is co-worker on a more informal basis with Bob and him/herself senior to Alice? E.g. is Alice a fresh project manager or technical lead for a project under Bobs supervision?

In the last year I observed several of such cases, and usually these don't end well for Alice. I would recommend her to swallow whatever she has to say and continue working.

Answer 6

In first and second situations, it is totally acceptable for Bob to attend the meeting and ak for it, but it could be interpreted as rude not to ask Alice but ask another colleague instead. For that, it is not about hierarchy, project leading or whatever: it is about informing Alice since she organized the meeting.

In third situation, besides the "being rude" there is the professionnal problem: Bob asked to change the meeting object and this could not be accepted by Alice. In fact, Alice should not accept it since if she does, it meant the reason she organized the meeting for in the first place is not treated.