Why Leaders Avoid Key Conversations

Common Avoided Conversations At Work

Lead With Influence Not Control

One Question To Prepare Your Talk

Series Wrap And Next Steps

Speaker 0:02

Welcome to the 12-Minute Leadership Podcast, where in 12 minutes or less, I'll share small things that you can put into immediate practice that will make a big difference in your leadership effectiveness. I'm your host, Elise Boggs Morales, leadership professor, consultant, and coach. For the last 17 years, I have helped thousands of leaders level up their influence and achieve remarkable results. If you want to trade compliance for true commitment and create your dream team, you are in the right place. Get ready for a quick hit of practical wisdom to increase your team's engagement, inspire top performance, and retain your best talent. Ready to level up your influence and get better results? 12 minutes starts now. Hi everyone, Elise here. Welcome back to the podcast. We are wrapping up our series on the difference between authority and influence in leadership. And over the last few episodes, we've been focusing on something very specific. The situations where leaders are most tempted to default into authority instead of being intentional about using influence. We talked about conflict, we talked about accountability, and today we're closing with a moment that often sits underneath both of those, the conversations that leaders avoid. Most leadership challenges don't always come from what we say, they can also come from what we don't say. The conversations we keep putting off, the feedback we don't give, the tension we hope will resolve itself, and usually there's a reason we're avoiding it. Maybe we don't want to make things worse. Maybe we're not sure how it will land. Maybe we're worried about the reaction. Or maybe we just don't want to deal with the discomfort. So we wait. We tell ourselves we'll bring it up later. We hope it will work itself out. But over time, avoidance creates distance. The issue doesn't go away. It grows. It shows up in other ways in frustration and misalignment and lack of trust. And eventually, the conversation we avoided becomes a much harder conversation to have. And here's where this connects to everything we've been talking about in this series. Avoidance is just another version of defaulting. In this case, we aren't necessarily defaulting into authority, but we can default out of leadership altogether. We choose short-term comfort over long-term effectiveness. The ultimate cost of that is influence. And influence isn't just about how you show up in conversations, it's also about your willingness to have the right conversations in the first place. This is where great leaders do something different. They don't wait for the perfect moment, they don't wait until they feel completely ready. They recognize that avoiding the conversation is often more damaging than having it imperfectly. The best leaders choose to step in, not perfectly, but intentionally. If you're listening to this and thinking there's probably a conversation I've been avoiding, you're in good company. Every leader has one. Here are some examples of conversations that leaders can often avoid in my experience. It might be the conversation with a high performer who's delivering results but creating tension on the team. Or the conversation with someone who's consistently underperforming and you've been hoping it would improve without addressing it directly. It might be giving feedback to a peer where the dynamic feels a little bit more delicate. Or setting a boundary with someone who tends to overstep and you've let it go for too long. It could even be a conversation with your board where something doesn't feel aligned, but you haven't spoken up. And sometimes it's not even a formal conversation. It's addressing something in the moment, a comment, a behavior, a pattern that you notice, but choose to move past. So the question becomes: what are you going to do with it? That conversation. It's not just a task, it's a leadership moment and an opportunity to strengthen trust with that person, clarify expectations, and reinforce your influence. Or to let things continue in a direction that you don't actually want. This is where everything we've talked about comes together. The goal isn't just to have a conversation, it's how you have it. Do you go in with authority or do you lead with influence? Do you go in to correct or to understand first? Do you push your point or create space for a two-way conversation? This is where influence becomes real. These conversations, they're not scripted, they don't go exactly as you planned. There's emotion, there's reaction, there's unpredictability, and it would be very easy in those moments to fall back on control, to get more directive, more forceful, more focused on being right, or to pull back completely. But influence sits in the middle. It looks like stepping into the conversation with clarity and curiosity. It sounds like this feels important to talk about. I want to share something I've noticed. I'm also open to hearing your perspective. It's honest, direct, but it's also open. That combination is what builds trust. People don't just respond to what you say, they respond to how you show up. And just like everything we've talked about in this series, this is a skill that can be built. In my book, Lead Anyone, I talk about how leadership is built in small, consistent actions. And often in these conversations, the ones we hesitate to have, that matter most. So here's one thing you can take with you as we close out this series. Think about one conversation you've been avoiding. And instead of asking, how do I say this perfectly, ask, how do I show up in a way that builds trust and moves this forward? That shift alone will change how you lead. Because at the end of the day, leadership isn't about avoiding hard moments. It's about stepping into them with intention. And the leaders who build lasting influence are the ones who are willing to have the conversation others avoid and do it in a way that strengthens, not damages, the relationship. So, I hope you enjoyed today's episode and the series on authority and influence. Share it with another leader who needs it. I'll see you next time. Like what you heard on today's episode and want to go deeper? Subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also pick up my book, LeadAnyone, on Amazon. Then, go to my website to check out ways that we can support your leadership goals. From executive retreats to customized training and coaching, my team of experts will help you level up your leadership and accelerate your results. Go to www.eliseboggs.com for more info.