3 conversations you are avoiding and how to start them

The useful part

Someone says something in a meeting, or fails to say it, and the room goes quiet. It settles into how people behave, what they will risk, how much of themselves they bring to work. In thirty years of working with leaders, and plenty of years getting it wrong myself, I have found that awkward silences tend to be a way of avoiding three conversations.

How it works

• The elephant This is the conversation everyone knows is needed and nobody will start.
• The well-liked colleague who is underperforming and costing the company far more than money.
• The strategy that stopped making sense a year ago and is still being blindly pursued.
• The cost is the energy spent walking around it, week after week, pretending the room is empty—and what it blocks that might otherwise be possible.
• You need one person willing to say, without blame, what everyone already knows.

What to take from it

"I think there's something we keep not discussing here." That sentence gives the rest of the room permission to breathe.

Details worth keeping

The conversation moves on, a little faster than it should. Most leaders treat such silences as awkward gaps to be bridged. They are gaps: something should be there, and isn't.