She Let Her Team Handle a Client Crisis While She Stayed on the Beach

Chelsea Ryckis saw the email arrive while she was sitting on a beach in Italy with her husband, during a couple of days off on a trip to visit a client. She told herself not to read it, not to read it, not to read it. Then she read it anyway.

It was a problem with a new, incoming client, caused by something outside her control and involving the client's prior representative. Ryckis is the co-founder and president of Ethos Benefits, which works with employers on health benefits. She said handling hard conversations with finesse is her "superpower," and she felt she could convince everybody in the situation that it was not a big deal and they would get through it together.

She had to decide whether to step back and trust her team. She said she had spent seven or eight years sacrificing her health, her time, her weekends, and everything to build a business she was proud of.

Every part of her body told her to fix it, or at least to make everyone feel better about it. She wanted to leave the beach, return to her room, and handle the conversation herself, while trying to enjoy time with her husband.

Her husband stopped her. Do not do it, he said. Give it to someone else. So she passed the problem to a teammate and stayed on the beach.

Ryckis said the teammate "took it 90% of the way," better than she had expected, and did "an absolutely incredible job." The next morning, the remaining 10% came back as what she called an "emergent call," and Ryckis joined for an hour, made everybody happy, and got through it.

She stayed beside her husband on the sand for the rest of the afternoon. Looking back, she said she would not do it differently, even though the handoff did not work perfectly.