I let somebody sit in a review and hear something for the first time that I had known for six months. I told myself the whole time that I was being kind. I wasn't. I just didn't want the twenty uncomfortable minutes.

Nobody avoids a hard conversation because they're lazy. They avoid it because saying nothing feels like care in the moment, and the bill doesn't come due for months. Kim Scott calls it ruinous empathy — you care about the person, and because you care, you don't challenge them. And the opposite failure is no better: saying it harshly and calling that honesty.

You're not sparing them. You're deciding, by yourself, what they're allowed to know about their own career. Every week I didn't say it, I made it more expensive for that person. It never cost me anything. That's the part I got wrong.

In this one: why silence isn't neutral and what people conclude from it, a stretch from the new season of Ted Lasso about a coach nobody liked and what changed when somebody told her what he actually saw, Brené Brown's clear is kind, unclear is unkind — and then the move, step by step. Put a deadline on it. Say it in the one-on-one, because that's what those thirty minutes are for. Lead with what you saw, not what you concluded. Name the impact. Then stop talking.

Nobody has ever been fired by surprise. Somebody knew. Somebody always knew.

There is somebody on your team right now who would fix it if they knew. Tell them.

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