I Used to Avoid Hard Conversations Too
Let me tell you something that might surprise you coming from someone who coaches leaders on hard conversations. I was a conflict avoider for a huge portion of my adult life.
Like, a major one. I would rehearse the conversation, back out of it, replay it, justify not having it, and then carry the weight of whatever I should have said around with me for weeks. It's exhausting. And I see it everywhere I go.
A boss I had once told me: nothing good ever lingers, except a kiss.
I've thought about that line probably a hundred times since. Because it's true. The things you don't address don't disappear. They go underground and take root. They fester (think about that). By the time they surface again, they're so much bigger than they needed to be.
Here's what I've watched happen on teams
A leader avoids the conversation. They tell themselves it's not the right time, the person seems stressed, they don't want to damage the relationship. So they manage around it instead. They adjust their communication. They stop giving honest feedback. They pick up the slack themselves rather than address the gap.
Meanwhile, the person on the other end? They know something is off. People always know. The silence doesn't protect them. It just leaves them filling in the blanks with their worst assumptions. Otherwise known as the stories we tell ourselves.
Eventually one of two things happens: the leader explodes, or they quietly start writing someone off. Neither is fair. Neither had to happen.
What actually changed for me
I had to get honest about why I was avoiding it. It wasn't that I didn't know what to say. It was that I didn't trust myself to stay regulated while I said it. I was afraid I'd get emotional, or come across wrong, or blow up the relationship.
What coaching gave me was the ability to separate those fears from the actual conversation. To plan for the moments when my emotions want to take over. To practice being honest and warm at the same time, because those things are not opposites. They just feel like they are when you haven't done it much.
If you're sitting on something right now, I promise you the conversation is not as scary on the other side of it as it is in your head. It almost certainly needs to happen this week.
