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(Only a 3-minute read)

I’ll put money on that there's a conversation sitting in your calendar that you keep moving. And you keep shifting it forward not because you don't know it needs to happen but you know exactly what it'll feel like when it does.

You know, that queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach that sits there like a crappy holiday cocktail. Discomfort. Tension. The risk that it goes sideways.

So you push it to next week. Then the week after.

Meanwhile, the situation you're avoiding isn't staying still but getting worse. Maybe it’s the team member who needed feedback three weeks ago is now causing problems for others. Or the decision you know you got wrong is costing more every day you don't acknowledge it. Or, a popular one, the performance conversation you've been rehearsing in your head is still just in your head.

But if you’ve committed to being a leader who’s more effective than your peers, then don’t conflate being better at having difficult conversations with being worse at avoiding them.

The gap between knowing a conversation needs to happen and actually having it is where leadership credibility rolls over and dies.

Silent erosion rather than dramatic failure.

But enough talking about the issue. Below are three real-world conversations and you're avoiding at least one of them right now.

It’s probably not fatal but each one costs more than you think. Each one has a way through that's simpler than the version you're rehearsing in your head.

"You're Excellent at Your Job But You're Killing Team Morale"

Why You Avoid It:

Picture your top performer. Best numbers on the team. Deliver consistently. You need them.

The said, everyone else is miserable working with them. There are eye rolls in team meetings. There’s complaints that come to you privately. And there’s the way people avoid collaborating with them if they can.

You keep telling yourself their results justify the friction. That you can manage around their personality. That maybe it'll improve on its own.

Sadly, it won't.

What It's Costing You:

While you're protecting your top performer, you're losing your next three best people. They're updating their CVs because they're tired of compensating for someone else's toxicity. And with that, your best collaborators are becoming your quietest & most disengaged ones.

In a sports context when coaches leave a club they’re rarely actually leaving the club; they’re leaving a person or people whose behaviour isn’t being addressed. And the ‘top performer(s) being protected? Still there. But the culture being built? Crumbling.

What to Actually Say:

Avoid opening with the morale problem. That puts them on the defensive immediately and you end up in a "them vs. everyone else" conversation.

Open with curiosity: e.g.

Let them tell you their version first. You'll learn whether they're aware, don't care, or completely oblivious. That tells you what kind of conversation you're actually having.

Then try to be direct:

And really try to frame it as a performance issue, not a personality issue i.e.

Yes, they might throw the toys from the pram and/or leave. That's life. Is losing one excellent performer who damages five others actually a loss?

"I Made the Wrong Call and We Need to Change Direction"

Why You Avoid It:

You made and sold this decision. To your team, to your board, to yourself. You've defended it in meetings. People have reorganised themselves around it. Resources have been committed.

Admitting you got it wrong feels like admitting incompetence and like undermining your own authority. In a way, it’s feeling like proving the doubters right.

So you keep pushing forward with a strategy you've stopped believing in. In essence you’re hoping something will shift and make it work.

What It's Costing You:

Your team already knows it's not working. They're watching you pretend it is. So every day you don't acknowledge reality, you're trading actual credibility for imagined authority.

Want to hear the bit that really hurts: they're losing respect not because you made a bad decision, but because you won't admit it.

Leaders make wrong calls. That’s just life….but weak leaders can't admit it.

What to Actually Say:

Don't bury it in qualifications or make excuses about information you didn't have. Just come out and say it plainly.....

Then immediately pivot to what happens next:

No pity party or apology tour. No defensive explanations about why it seemed right at the time. Just acknowledgment and action.

It happened me before with a football team - the relief in the room when I finally admitted a tactic wasn't working was almost physical. The team had been waiting for permission to say what everyone knew. When I gave it, finally, they just got into gear and started problem-solving.

Admitting you're wrong doesn't undermine your authority. Pretending you're right when everyone knows you're not is what kills credibility.

Your team doesn't need you to be infallible. They need you to be honest and decisive.

"You're Doing Everything I Asked But It's Still Not Good Enough"

Why You Avoid It:

This one's particularly uncomfortable because it's your fault.

You gave your team a brief. They delivered exactly what you asked for. And it's not working. But they didn’t fail…you didn't know what you actually needed when you asked for it.

Now you're stuck. Telling them it's not good enough feels, and is, unfair. You can't criticise them for doing precisely what you specified. So you accept subpar work and work around it, or try to fix it yourself.

What It's Costing You:

They think they're performing well because you told them their efforts are fine. Meanwhile you're quietly disappointed and they're picking up on that without understanding why. The net result is that trust erodes on both sides.

Plus you're not getting the work you actually need. The project limps forward with everyone vaguely dissatisfied but nobody saying why.

What to Actually Say:

How about you own it completely? So you might say,

Then be specific about what needs to change: "Here's what I understand now that I didn't understand then. Here's what we actually need. Can we reset from here?"

This conversation only works if you genuinely own the failed brief. If there's any hint of "well you could have asked questions" or "you should have known what I meant," it’s over and you’ll have lost them.

In a sport and business world fixated with data it happens all the time. A head-coach asks for basic stats breakdown. She gets it but then cottons on that she actually needed tactical pattern recognition. Instead of pretending the initial brief was fine, she could say:

The analyst doesn’t feel criticised. They’ll probably feel included in figuring out the actual problem. And as a bonus the redo took half the time because they were finally solving for the right thing.

Putting your hands up and saying you don't know what you need feels like weakness. We’ve been wired that way. But in reality it actually demonstrates enough self-awareness to recognise when your thinking has evolved. That's what good leaders do.

The Rising Cost of Delay

Every week you delay these conversations, the cost compounds. The team morale gets worse. The wrong strategy wastes more resources. The confused performer stays confused while you stay quietly disappointed.

It doesn’t get easier with time. The conversation you're avoiding this week will be harder next week, next month.

You already know that. You already know which conversation you're avoiding right now. You knew before you started reading this. You might have opened this newsletter specifically because you're looking for permission or language or courage to finally have it.

So put on your big boy or girl pants and go have it. This week. Not perfectly. Just honestly.

Your team doesn't need you to handle difficult conversations flawlessly. They need you to handle them instead of avoiding them.

Because the discomfort you're dodging will cost you more than it would cost you to sit through.

P.S. If you're sitting on a conversation you know needs to happen but can't quite figure out how to approach it without it going sideways, that's exactly the kind of thing worth discussing with someone outside your situation. Sometimes you don't need more leadership theory. You need someone to help you see the conversation you can't see clearly because you're too close to it. That's the work that actually changes outcomes.

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Thank you for being part of the Leaders Coach community. The work on how to lead better is something you have to do alone. But you don't have to do it on your own. Onward and Upward, Paul Clarke

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Beechmount Vale, Navan, Meath C15
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