Leaders spend most of their time looking forward, like drivers peering through the windshields of their vehicles. However, astute leaders recognize the view through the rearview mirror is equally important.
I've come to appreciate that, like when driving, periodically glancing behind me helps me, as a leader, see the full landscape. This vantage point often illuminates hazards approaching from behind. It also helps me assess the impact of my leadership on the people around me. Understanding the impact of our leadership on the people around us often reveals hazards we're likely to encounter on the road ahead.
After decades of studying the roadway of my leadership, I see four hazards related to difficult conversations. I've encountered these hazards and navigated them countless times. Sometimes successfully. Sometimes unsuccessfully. Whether engaging in difficult conversations with peers, direct reports, or superiors, these hazards have the potential to inflict roadway carnage – even with the most gifted and well-intended leaders.
Hazard #1: Missing the Moment
Like many things, timing is everything. Good leaders know the hard conversations that need to happen. They also appreciate the importance of finding the right moment to step into the conflict.
One of the most famous Proverbs is 27:17. It reads, "Iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another." Sharpening iron takes friction, heat, and force. One of the greatest ways to sharpen talent is through thoughtfully timed and well-placed difficult conversations. They create friction, heat, and force – the precise things needed to foster personal breakthroughs and sharpen people into more valuable instruments.
The moment isn't always right, but when leaders see those precious moments present themselves, they need to act swiftly. Failing to do so lets opportune moments pass, sometimes never to re-appear.
Hazard #2: Obscuring Your Position
To be kind and manage the risk that they may hurt the person on the receiving end of our words, leaders often soften their words. Remove some of the sting. Leaders commonly sandwich blunt words between niceties. While seemingly kind, this often leads to your position being obscured. At its worst, softening hard words or sandwiching them between pleasantries turns criticisms or complaints into compliments – turns clarity into confusion.
Hard words are hard to hear. To help our colleagues, we must remove the background noise hindering their ability to hear what we're saying. We don't do anyone any favors by obscuring our message. One of the kindest things we can do is deliver difficult messages clearly, directly, and convincingly. When our message is clearly heard, that creates an opportunity to discuss, debate, and wrestle with the implications of it. Ultimately, these are the gateways to transformation and growth.
Hazard #3: Stopping Short
Hard conversations are hard because there's a difficult message, one you’re convicted needs to be both shared and heard. The problem? Many leaders practice in their heads what they want to say. However, when the moment arrives and the conversation starts, they grow faint-hearted and chicken out. They initiate the conversation, set it up, make their approach, and then just can't bring themselves to say the precise things that need to be said.
The result: the deliverer of the message lets themself, and the recipient down. With the key message left unsaid, the receiver walks away either confused or falsely believing everything is ok. They perceive no need for change, and nothing gets resolved.
Hazard #4: Changing Your Mind
On the heels of a hard conversation, leaders often "feel bad" or regret having had the conversation because the other person left feeling discouraged. To "help" the other person, leaders sometimes want to say something encouraging or worse yet, let them off the hook.
The time immediately following a difficult conversation is a crucial moment you'd be wise to monitor carefully. Both the messenger and the receiver can be emotionally vulnerable. In that vulnerability, a messenger can mistakenly double back, change their mind, retract their message, and unnecessarily undo the hard work they just did.
Unless you mis-assessed the situation in the first place, you delivered a critical message someone needed to hear. If you "take back" what you said, it doesn't change the reality that it still needed to be said. However, now you find yourself in the unfortunate situation of needing to re-have the conversation you already had. Only this time it'll be more difficult.
Having hard conversations is one of the most powerful tools in a leader's toolkit. Through them, leaders can resolve conflict, bring out the best in others, increase bench strength, change culture, drive results, and accomplish great things. However, the roadway of difficult conversations is littered with hazards. Leader beware. Watch the signs. Proceed with caution. But proceed with great anticipation. On the other side of this road lies an amazing destination.