How to make hard leadership stuff, easier.

Sometimes Leadership isn’t actually that complex.

Whether it’s giving constructive feedback or calling out excuses, what we need to do as a Leader is often pretty simple.

Give the feedback.
Call out the excuse.

We know what needs to be done.

Sure, there’s room to add complexity to make sure we do it even better, but the basics of these conversations aren’t complex.

That doesn’t mean they are easy though.

Where the difficulty comes in - is saying something like “that’s an excuse”, when it’s confronting and intimidating to do so.

We don’t want to damage relationships,

we don’t want to come across rude or insensitive,

we don’t want to seem like we don’t trust our teams.

So we often just… don’t.

We don’t say the tough thing.

And, sorry if this is hard to hear - but that means we aren’t doing our jobs as Leaders.

So how do we make these hard leadership things - easier to implement?

Call it out.

Worried that saying “that’s an excuse” feels really blunt?

Say “I’m working on calling out excuses because I feel it’s impacting our progress as a team. I think that was an excuse”.

Worried that asking your team to repeat back to you what you’ve asked of them is coming across negatively?

Say “I want to make sure I’ve been clear. Can you repeat back what you’ve heard so I can check?


Try this next time you’re tempted to not say something, you know you should.