The conversation that has been needed for three weeks — an extract from The Leader’s Path

The following is an extract from The Leader’s Path, published by Greenfields Press.

The conversation has been needed for three weeks.

Everyone involved knows it — the leader, the person the conversation is with, and, in all likelihood, several members of the team who have been watching the situation develop and drawing their own conclusions about what the leader’s silence indicates about their willingness to address what is plainly there. The longer it is not had, the more it costs: in the work itself, in the health of the team dynamic, in the quiet but accumulating signal to everyone observing that this is the kind of thing that is allowed to continue here.

And still the conversation has not been had. Because it is difficult. Because the person is senior, or sensitive, or has been going through something personally. Because the right moment has not presented itself.

These reasons are not entirely without merit. But they are also, in most cases that the leader examines honestly, rationalisations for the fundamental discomfort of having a conversation that is unlikely to be comfortable.

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The avoidance of necessary difficulty is one of the most consistent and most consequential failures in leadership, and it is also the failure that is most thoroughly obscured by the humanitarian impulses that appear to motivate it. Leaders who avoid difficult conversations rarely believe they are being cowardly. They believe they are being kind, or measured, or appropriately patient.

The accurate diagnostic question is not: have I been appropriately patient? It is: if there were no social risk in having this conversation — if the discomfort of it were removed — would I still be waiting? If the honest answer is no, the waiting is being driven by the risk rather than by the reasoning.

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The performance conversation that serves the person receiving it is specific about what the actual standard is, specific about how the current performance falls short of it, and specific about what the leader needs to see in order for the concern to be resolved. It does not require the leader to be harsh or unkind. It does require them to be clear, which is a more demanding standard than harshness, because it cannot be obscured by emotional intensity.

Clear feedback says precisely what the difficulty is and what change is needed. It can be delivered quietly. It does not need a raised voice to communicate its weight. The weight is in the content, not the delivery. And it honours the person receiving it by treating them as capable of hearing the truth and responding to it — which is, in the end, the most respectful thing a leader can offer.

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