Two Steps Forward

16th February 2016

One of the biggest problems I find as a coach is getting the business owners to let go. This is perhaps hardest when I start working with a new client, because they are still set in their ways, and are largely at a stage when they are involved in huge parts of the business, and don’t trust others to do it for them.

However, once the initial break is made, there is a time where things get a lot better, until the business starts to grow at a good rate. When that point arises, I often find that we hit the same problem again, because the business owner starts to get pulled back into the day to day issues. The people they have entrusted to take tasks off their hands find they become overstretched and perhaps a little less sure of themselves once the pressure is on, and they often turn to the owner for advice and support.

This is when the owner must be strong, and continue to push their staff away, so they learn to stand on their two feet. It is all too tempting to accept the questions from their team, and give them the answers, but this simply leads to the owner becoming swamped and unable to take things further forward,

At this stage it is often a good plan to do a check on the way the top management are spending their time. Are they genuinely over-stretched so that they genuinely need help from the business owner, or are they short of time because they are being drawn into tasks which are not their responsibility? By checking this, you can quite quickly assess if you are at a stage where you may need to employ more support staff, or if it is more a case of good leadership and management.

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