He’s always struggled to get his team members to hit their billing targets and keep things running at his firm when he wasn’t there.

For instance, billing clients and managing collections. The person in charge of this would do their job fairly well when he was present in their office or when they knew he was also working. But, as soon as he went on holiday, this person seemed to stop doing what was required of them, and the firm’s finances would soon be in chaos, and they needed an urgent shift of money to keep everything moving.

Whenever he went away on holiday, my client also noticed that other department heads seemed to let everything fall apart and simply wouldn’t rise up and take responsibility for what was agreed of them and their department members.

On this recent call, we discovered why this was happening.

Fundamentally, he was still avoiding making clear requests, agreeing on deadlines, and holding his team members to account.

He then said that he realised why he was still avoiding implementing these core leadership and management practices, and the cause was that he’d still been communicating with everyone in a way that he thought would have him be ‘liked’.

My client had always believed that to be an effective leader and manager of a firm, he had to be liked by everyone.

This meant he was often not direct with his team and his department heads when their team didn’t hit their billing targets or when they made mistakes.

Now, my client has discovered why.

It’s because he always feared not being liked by his team members.

So, he would avoid making clear requests with agreed deadlines out of fear that he’d cause them more stress and then not like him for doing so.

This meant many of his team members and department heads took my client for a ride.

They pretended to be busy, said what was needed to avoid being held accountable, and blamed something or someone else for their unreliability.

Today, this has come to an end for my client.

As he told me this, I felt a tear in the corner of my eye.

I was so happy for him.

My client had finally become free of worrying about what others thought of him. 

As he told me this, he said he felt a huge weight lift from his shoulders and expressed how he now felt so free.

Since then, he’s been able to speak openly with his team, make those vital clear requests, agree on deadlines, and hold them accountable.

As a result, he's already seen a substantial improvement in each department head's participation in ensuring that each team member hits their billing targets, which means that my client is now set to break through and will soon be enjoying whole new levels of profit.

Today, think about this; Is any of your business communication tainted by trying to be liked by your team members?

If so, come back to the numbers and facts and speak directly from and to those; otherwise, your feelings will always cause you to lead and manage ineffectively, which is nothing short of exhausting as you’ll always need to step in and put right the mistakes they make or do the work yourself.

Once you master direct communication with your team members while practising, leaving everyone feeling heard and respected, you’ll be astounded at the level of financial success and quality of lifestyle that becomes available to you.

So from now on, cut out the fluff, make clear requests and hold your team members accountable for what you’ve agreed.

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