When Clients Have Poisonous Peers
I am currently coaching a business owner who works hard in her business and has been successful in the past. She came to me because her business had started to decline and she wasn’t sure why. We explored a number of things and, in every case, she had been doing the right things for a while then everything went downhill at once: Her offerings dramatically diminished in quality. Her marketing diminished in effectiveness and quantity. Her service was no longer stellar. We slowly worked backwards from her current lack of success to where things started to fall off of the cliff. And I’m sorry to report that the reason stems from a single person.
This client has a friend who is pure poison. This friend means well. She is friendly to my client. They get along. They talk on the phone. They visit occasionally. But she has single-handedly decimated my client’s business.
My client trusts her friend and this friend is eager to give lots of advice. Unfortunately the advice isn’t very good. It’s not based on sound judgment or experience. (This friend owned 3 businesses and all 3 of them went bust for a variety of reasons). Worse yet, this friend actively (I’d say aggressively) follows up with my client to make sure that the advice given is being followed.
As you read this, you’re probably as galled as I am by writing it, but it’s been far more subtle and spread over a period of years. And, without a doubt, this friend is also a nice person and very loyal in many ways so the poisonous business advice is sporadic compared to the good times they have together doing other things.
This leaves me and my client in a conundrum. My advice is that my client have a serious talk with her friend. My client, obviously, doesn’t want to. And I don’t blame her. Those "tough talks" are NOT pleasant. (Been there, done that).
There is another option, of course, and that is that my client simply doesn’t follow the advice of her friend. But, in my opinion, this will still lead to the same conversation; it will just be delayed.
I realize this post is a bit of a rant – it’s one of those coaching situations where you’d love to wave your magic wand and fix the difficult situation – but I do have a point:
After talking to my client about her poisonous peer, I realized that I had one in my life, too. I simply didn’t see it before until we started to uncover some of my client’s friend’s tactics. Which means that I need to have a "tough talk" in my life shortly too.
The motivator I use in these situations is to remind myself that a few minutes of pain in the conversation will yield a far happier and brighter future afterward.
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