We have all had bad clients that behave poorly.

What is bad client behaviour? The first few that come to mind would be undermining your efforts with sneaky behaviour, late payments, being disrespectful to your staff, hiring you but not trusting your expertise, the list goes on.

Some people say the customer is always right but I don’t believe in that. It’s important for the leader to draw the line so that the client knows what the boundaries are; it’s also up to the leader (YOU) to protect what’s important in your business by standing by your values.

Your team looks to you to set what the acceptable standards are for client behaviour. If you act like it’s okay for a client to make late payments, or for clients to call and yell at your staff and attack them personally, then without a doubt they will feel disheartened about the company.

I’m not saying you should fire a client immediately upon the first sign of bad behaviour because sometimes they are actually having a bad day. If it continues, just like in any other relationship, the common sense decision would be to put an end to it.

But you say: “this client is a great source of revenue!”

Who cares? When your staff all leave the company because they can’t even feel safe in their workplace. I have always viewed a team as a cohesive unit. If there is anyone on the team who is experiencing negative energy in the form of stress and anxiety, you can be sure that all that negativity is spilling over onto everyone they are in contact with. Again, if you think of anyone or anything that starts out seeming pretty harmless and then quickly goes downhill to turn into a toxic thing or event in your life, you need to develop your ability to recognize these events in your business and nip it in the bud. Don’t let it grow and fester — bad clients fall into this category of toxic events.

I am 100% sure that if I had kept this client on our roster or even allowed my staff to endure another round of verbal abuse from the client I would lose a valuable member of my team. Even if they do not leave the company, their confidence in me as their leader would waver. I know if I saw someone in my position not doing anything about a bad client I would label them as an incompetent leader.

The moral of the story is to define the boundaries with your client. This is actually something I could have done better, by calling the client to set them straight the first time they used abusive language towards my team. Even though I was not present in the meeting, my team had told me about the client’s bad behaviour. It wasn’t until I actually heard the follow-up phone call weeks later that I knew how bad it was. When I realized the severity of the situation I did not hesitate.

I have a hierarchy of what’s important in the business, and my team comes before revenue. There will always be another client, but a great team that gels, bonds and supports each other is a very, very rare gem. I would highly recommend that if you find such valuable members to agree to be a part of your team to always put them first. Let them know they are a priority by walking the talk. You can only prove your values by taking action.

If you are ever faced with a difficult decision (and I have to admit that I find almost every human resources-related situation a difficult situation), having a very clearly defined hierarchy of your business values will help you make snap decisions.

Everyone values something different. You may value efficiency over quality. You may value quality over profits. Or team cohesiveness over profits. Whatever it may be, having a set of ranked values will let you know when you need to act to protect the things important to you and your business.