When your team is in conflict with one of your clients
One of the most delicate situations our CEO clients struggle with is how to mediate an issue between one or more of your team members and one of your clients – especially if it’s a major client.
As the CEO, you’re focused on keeping your clients and customers happy, and what you want is for your team to deliver on that no matter what it takes.
But sometimes the team and the client get into conflict over a deliverable, or a product, and if they can’t resolve it, they escalate to you.
It’s easy in those moments to choose to try and placate the client by offering to change it, fix it, agree to do the thing your team was unwilling to do.
Here’s where I would caution you to not jump the gun. This is the kind of moment that either builds trust with your team, or breaks it. In a situation like this, the first thing I recommend is to do a postmortem with your team.
What happened
What went well
What went wrong
What are we responsible for?
If you’ve done a good job of creating a culture of accountability and trust, if you ask your team to evaluate the situation themselves when they are not in the heat of the moment with a client, they will answer you honestly and truthfully about how things got off the rails. This is important data for you to know. Maybe they made some bad decisions, or maybe the client is being unreasonable.
Either way, you can arrive at the next steps together, working on a good solution for everyone. It’s also a great way to teach your team how to navigate through a tough issue and build confidence in their ability to resolve the next one – without you.
In cultures of blame and low accountability, the CEO spends most of their time looking for who to blame or hold accountable for the issue, and less time working toward a viable solution.
This is the same kind of CEO that would immediately jump on the phone with the client and apologize for the incompetence of their team and promise the moon and the stars to the client to keep them happy. This is the fastest way to erode trust with your team.
Your team is an extension of you. If you think they’re not operating the way you want them to, show them what you’re expecting in very clear terms. Model it.
If you think they’re at fault, don’t crucify them for it – teach them the skills to fix it, so they know how to handle themselves with the next client. There are very few situations in business that are unrecoverable, especially if you’re approaching it with honestly, humility and accountability.
We have a few ways to work with you and your team in developing conflict resolution skills. Contact us for more information.