By Antoinette Rodriguez, MBA
So you heard from a practice management consultant (gratuitous plug here) that fostering workplace collaboration is a good way to scale your professional service practice. You crave more work and life balance. You enthusiastically tell your staff that you welcome their feedback and encourage them to act like "owners."
Alas, the markets get inevitably riled up, you become stressed and dictator boss reappears. Coincidentally, the staff doesn't seem to do anything right, on time or the way you would. You pull back their authority and wonder out loud why you have to do everything yourself?
Result? You have low-level tasks back on your to-do list. Your staff seems to be walking on eggshells around you. Trust is damaged for future initiatives.
Collaboration requires not only staff input, but faith in their abilities and desire to do a good job. Further, it requires cultural alignment and best practices' training. Collaboration training should first begin with you.
While you are trying to take your practice to the next level, remember that being a lone cowboy or cowgirl may have been effective in the early days, but not so much now.