Is your client trusted by their employees?

When you are talking to your clients about delegation they may say that “I don’t trust my employees”.  Usually that doesn't mean they think their staff are stealing each others’ sandwiches from the kitchen fridge, or selling company secrets online – it’s just that they don’t think they care enough or understand enough to be trusted with more responsibility.

This is a great opportunity to talk to them about the right culture for delegation.  If employees are overloaded, fed up with getting grief from unhappy customers, feeling unloved and underpaid, resentful towards management (that is, towards your client)…don’t try to delegate stuff to them.

If that is the situation in their business then chances are that your client is also feeling overloaded, fed up with getting grief from unhappy customers, unloved and underpaid…and resentful towards their staff.

This is a recipe for a downward spiral.

How then to break out of this situation?  And break out of it your client must, or things will just get worse and health, wealth and happiness will become a distant memory.

Taking a leaf from the AA handbook, the first thing to do is to get them to acknowledge the problem.  Now the AA have another eleven steps that aren’t as relevant so here is the delegation creed instead.  Suggest to your client they:

1. Acknowledge the problem to themselves.  Turn off their phone, shut down their email, switch off social media notifications – and spend five minutes writing down the things they are not happy about in their business and the impact they are having and will continue to have
2. Acknowledge the problem publicly – to their employees.  Stand up in front of them and explain how they feel about their business, their performance and the performance of their staff
3. Acknowledge publicly that it is their fault (because it is) and commit to doing things differently as a leader
4. State their faith in their combined ability to improve things and build a business that will make them all proud.  Admit that they don’t have all the answers, they can’t do it on their own and that they need the help of their staff
5. Commit to better communication on their side, which means blocking out diary time to communicate, listening, and respecting opinions
6. Ask employees to commit to better communication on their side, which means asking questions, giving opinions and speaking up when they see things going wrong;
7.  Explain that in future they will be asking people to take new things on and each time they do this they will expect them to ask them to change something or do something differently to benefit the business in return.

This creed doesn’t mention delegation – and only in the last point does it start to edge towards it.  The point is that the act of delegation is the last step, not the first.  Trying to delegate in a negative, suspicious, chaotic environment will be seen as an imposition and will simply contribute to more negativity, mistrust and chaos.  First you need to build the conditions for successful delegation – and the foundation for that is trust.  To gain trust you have to give it.

If you want to get more business coaching tips and tools to use to help your clients then try this website.

Based on an original post on my website www.nickbettes.co.uk