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Leadership: don’t say it

You may have a very good point.

You may be entirely in the right.

It may be that you’ve understood their (bad) motivation perfectly, that they are wrongheaded, inconsiderate and rude to boot.

It may be that there’s a values-conflict that’s going to take a lot of deep and difficult work to address.

Some of the above is probably true. All of it may be true*… But saying it to them now – saying it how you’d most like to say it, maybe throwing in a few of the things that you’ve been carrying for a while – saying it now, in the heat of the moment, won’t help.

Grit your teeth. Breath deeply. Don’t say it. Instead do the harder work of fixing the deeper issues and slowly, slowly getting the boat moving in the right direction.

 

P.S. Of course, I said it. 

*And of course, it’s just possible that many of them are not true, or that you need kick in the empathy to know how to respond properly

1 thought on “Leadership: don’t say it”

  1. Agree with this. Applies in marriage too!! Find that chats with my team at another point in time effective. I think the reason we want to say it straight away is because we are busy and fear we’ll forget (as well as being impulsive and wanting to fix the situation). This takes discipline to record something and then bring it up again later. I am doing that this week coming, 7 days on from when the incident occurred. We’ll see how it goes…

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