There is something I hear from time to time… someone says they didn’t bring up disappointing work performance or some other behaviour based issue with someone because they care about the other person’s feelings and “didn’t want to make their relationship awkward.”
I understand why that might feel like the right approach… in the moment. But after over twenty years of leadership skills and difficult conversations training to teams and leaders, let me share that the opposite is usually true. Silence almost never translates to care.
What Silence Actually Communicates
When we decide not to raise something like a missed deadline, a difference in expectations, questionable behaviour, or perhaps an inappropriate comment, we are not helping the other person. Sure, we’re protecting both of us from a moment of discomfort, but the person doesn’t get a chance… a choice… to adjust and perhaps even expand their knowledge and/or self-awareness.
I’ve watched this play out in boardrooms, offices, and on shop floors. A leader skips an opportunity to coach / mentor someone, and months later, that employee is passed over for a promotion because of a behaviour they were never given the chance to fix. And while that may have meant a few months of peace (and likely disappointing performance), we now see it’s the employees’ career that pays the price, not to mention the dent put into team performance and culture.
Silence is not kindness.
Silence might even be worse than doing or saying nothing, because silence might get interpreted as an act of acceptance… tolerance. So, an individual’s inappropriate boldness might get reinforced, and if that happens, expect to see it again and at potentially even greater scale.
Respect Isn’t the Same as Niceness
This is where a lot of people get tangled up. Niceness and respect feel like cousins, but they’re not even in the same family. If anything, I’d say kindness and respect feel like cousins.
Niceness protects the moment. It avoids friction and keeps the temperature comfortable in the moment, but it doesn’t provide space for solutions. Being nice usually means being silent, and silent doesn’t help people grow. Alternatively, to be kind we must make the choice to invest our time and energy in someone else’s well-being. And, investing in others is where respect shows up. Respect protects the person and the relationship, even when that means creating friction in the short term. Great relationships are not built when things are always easy. Sometimes the friction and pressure are what creates the strongest bonds… just like making diamonds.
Respect often means actively managing expectations, and when managing expectations begins far in advance, it makes things easier. Letting someone know what they should expect when things go well… and when things don’t go well is respect in my world. It means no surprises. It means everyone gets a choice to do what has been clearly laid out… or not… and to know what they can expect in either case.
But when we don’t show respect this way, we should expect a slow and quiet erosion of trust and the building of a problem that nobody named until it becomes too big to ignore. This causes strife and friction for the whole team, team culture, and eventually the leader’s own credibility. And this pressure isn’t healthy. It makes people protect themselves and question their career choices.
When you choose to have the conversation instead of avoiding it, you’re respecting four things at once:
- Their Potential: You’re telling them, through your actions rather than your words, that you believe they’re capable of hearing something hard and doing something with it. Avoidance says the opposite: that you’ve quietly written them off as someone who can’t grow.
- The Relationship: You’re treating the relationship as something worth the discomfort of repair. Avoidance treats the relationship as too fragile to survive honesty — which, ironically, is usually what makes it fragile.
- The Truth: You’re choosing not to manage someone with half-information, curated impressions, or a version of reality that’s easier to deliver than the real one. That’s a form of respect people feel even when the conversation itself is hard.
- Shared Trust: You’re showing them by being present and putting yourself in an uncomfortable position that they matter and you care. Trust is the foundation of mutual respect and the ability to feel safe.
Showing Up Right: A Respectful Way to Open
If you have decided to speak up, let’s make sure it goes well.
Most difficult conversations go sideways in the first ten seconds, before either person has said anything of substance – because of how they were approached. If someone senses they’re about to be ambushed or blamed, their guard goes up before you’ve said a single meaningful word.
Start by naming your intent before you name the issue: “I want to talk to you about something, and I want to be upfront – I’m not raising this because I think less of you. I’m raising it because I think you can handle it, and I think we’re better when we talk about things directly.”
That single sentence does something important. It separates the person from the problem before the problem even arrives. It tells them the conversation is being done with them, not at them.
Here’s what that looks like in two common situations:
Performance based: “I want to talk about the client deadline last week. I want to just talk about expectations and what is best for you and the team. And, I’m raising this with you because I think you can handle a direct conversation, and I really want to understand what got in the way of that deliverable.“
Behaviour based: “I want to talk about something I noticed in yesterday’s meeting. I was surprised by something you said, so I really want to understand what you experienced in case I missed something. And to be clear, I’m not raising this because I think less of you or out of blame. I really want to understand.”
Notice what both openings don’t do: they don’t lead with the verdict. That matters because respect also means not deciding the outcome before the conversation has happened. It’s tempting to walk in with the whole story already written – what happened, why, and what they’ll say in their defence, especially if you laid awake all night thinking about it. That’s not preparation. That’s prejudgment.
Respect and critical thinking mean holding your version of events loosely enough to actually be changed by what you hear. You’re not walking in to deliver blame and a verdict. You’re walking in to share what you experienced and be curious to want to understand something you might not yet fully understand – even when you’re pretty sure you are right. This is more difficult than most of us want to admit. But it’s the difference between a conversation that controls people and one that respects them.
Respect Is a Skill, Not Just an Instinct
None of this happens automatically just because a leader means well. Knowing how to open an important crucial conversation, how to stay in it once it gets uncomfortable, and how to listen instead of planning your rebuttal while the other person is still talking – that’s a skill set. It’s also one of the most important skills I can share that I bet you were never actually taught – I know I wasn’t when I was a young leader or through my formal education.
This is why I don’t think of this as an either/or. It’s not “just be respectful” versus “learn the skill.” Building the skill is one of the clearest ways to show the respect. It says you cared enough about getting this right and about the person on the other side of the table. It also says that you were willing to get better at it, instead of leaving it to instinct, mood, or whatever you happen to say in the moment.
That’s the piece that quietly runs through everything I teach: respect isn’t the outcome of a good, difficult conversation. It’s the starting condition that makes a productive one possible – and when it’s handled with real skill, it often builds even greater respect and trust for the next one.
If your team could use a shared way of thinking about this – and a genuine shift in how difficult conversations are framed – that’s exactly the work I do in my Difficult Conversations keynote and training workshops. Please reach out if I can help.