Find Your Authority and Take It Forward!

Lia is the receptionist at an accounting firm. Her role is to oversee and manage their busy reception area. The firm serves diverse customers that own small family businesses, with diverse language needs, which often means kids may be in tow. Needless to say, it’s a vibrant, busy environment where the term "the customer is always right" means thinking on your feet and being resourceful.

Lia's supervisor, Jennifer was responsible for the entire staff. Jennifer's goal was to be sure every employee’s performance reflected a high level of engagement with clients, and aligned with the company's strategic vision. It's a lot to take in.

One day, a client came in with a very unusual request. Kids were in tow, a baby was sleeping, and a simple request for private space to feed the baby was met with pushback. It was an uncommon, but not completely intrusive request. It was out of the ordinary, however.

Lia met the request with some sort of statement about the Company Policies - which was total bullshit. But why did she choose not to accommodate the client?

There's a line in most organizations that outlines an employee’s level of authority - especially for those people that have regular direct exchanges with clients or customers. They need to have the authority to make judgment calls.

In turn, that same person needs to understand the organization's cultural basis for those judgment calls, and where their own autonomy sits - without concern of reprimand. (Remember, How We Do Things 'Round Here?) 

When the receptionist declined the customer's request, and went on to make up why that request wasn't going to work, the customer asked to speak with the supervisor - Jenifer. When Jenifer stepped in, she was caught between supporting her staff and accommodating the customer. She was flummoxed.

So - to recap - busy office, kids, sleeping baby, simple request declined. In RightLife RuleBook, there's a whole segment about finding and taking up your personal authority - it's super empowering! But they key to this particular issue was that Lia made up a random reason for its decline.

If your employees don't own authority over their jobs, problems will constantly escalate. Two things will happen:

the employee will begin to simply do what they're told, surrender all decision-making capabilities and eventually become disengaged.

The supervisor will spend way too much time fixing problems and constantly micro-managing everyone.

In both cases anger, resentment, and disengagement are down the road.

There is an easy way to create a win-win here. What would you do?

Here's a great Bertrand Russell quote, from An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, that'll help: "As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon others' authority, there is no end to our troubles."

It’s easy to see how things can go from good to bad to worse so quickly, but they don’t have to. In your own role, do you understand where your authority begins and ends?