It takes courage, risk, and some vulnerability to apply the principles well described in resources like Crucial Conversations, Fierce Conversations, Dare To Lead, or Radical Candor.

Whatever model or theory you use, the precondition is trust.

For many organizations these 2-4 events each year have become much more important with the rise of remote work, closure of office space, and high personnel turnover in recent years. If you don’t get much time actually together you should make it count.

But sit through one training session where people get hungry, thirsty, or (as I learned the hard way several years ago) no one has provided coffee and you’ll understand why it matters.

People can’t give their best when they’re distracted by empty stomachs, dry throats, or missing their usual caffeine fix.

So, next time you hear someday they love feedback, listen a little deeper. Same if they desire data, thrive with deadlines, find joy in collaborating, or are very comfortable in conflict; there may be a deeper truth they aren’t ready to acknowledge, or don’t even understand about themselves.

Helping people understand gradients and ranges of success, encouraging them to see both what is working and what isn’t, and training our teams to hold things in tension are essential skills that are under-developed in many places.

I know there are leaders who have no trouble setting work aside completely aside when they’re off; that’s never been me. And so, in case you also find it difficult to fully step away, here are some of the things that made it possible for me to be present for the adventure while keeping my work anxiety under control.

I have to know the leaders I serve well enough to be able to discern when and how to encourage, when and how to challenge, and when and how to confront if I really think it’s necessary. If you lead, you need to do the same for the people in your organization.

In between micromanaging and total autonomy there’s lots of room for leaders to use suggestion, modeling, persuasion, and other strategies to move people towards more internal authority.

The referee probably should have ejected me from the game at that point but he knew I was a fair player and saw by my reaction that I was as shocked as anyone by my actions. I honestly just wasn’t thinking straight the second time.

Too many charity employees distrust their board.

Boards easily become seen as a distant and suspect entity, holding authority without insight, and out of touch with the day to day reality of things. They become a convenient bogeyman to blame and criticize when staff don’t feel seen and supported.

So I truly believe every organization is unique.

But I also cringe sometimes when leaders tell me how unique their team, challenges, and situation is.

The thing is, claiming uniqueness can be a way to avoid accountability. If no one else is in my situation then no one else has ever solved my problems; and I can’t be expected to do what others have done successfully.

We need to understand that being held in high regard is a privilege. It brings advantages and opportunities. It makes doing what we do easier and usually less expensive financially and otherwise.

And without those short cuts we must be more diligent about our character, better at expressing who we are and what we do, intentional in how we communicate since we no longer receive the benefit of the doubt.

Conflict is inevitable and often a sign of organizational and relational health. But how we handle it makes the difference between becoming more effective and further ingraining distrust. Hockey teams don’t need to resolve their differences; in fact many fans prefer if they don’t. But your organization (and maybe our world) can’t be healthy or effective if we don’t learn to acknowledge our own failures as a precursor to addressing the failures of others.

The thing is, none of this discourages Ben. He has no expectation of being world class; he’s having fun, improving, and enjoying his team mates. And that’s what he wants from the sport.

I’m willing to bet that the people (or animals, environment, etc.) that your organization serves don’t really care if you’re world class at what you do either.

After 25+ years of identifying, observing, developing, and coaching leaders; one of the things I am most sure of is that the majority of poor behaviour and bad decisions are driven much more by insecurity than by malice.

This is leadership. The ability to find a path through complexity and uncertainty, understanding how to resolve (or live in) tension, making the call when you can’t be absolutely sure what the right next step is.

In a less diverse, more stable generation we didn’t need to spend a lot of time looking at these things. It could be safely assumed that (almost) everyone just had the same core understanding of reality.

But not anymore.

When I consider the leaders, both the prominent and the largely unknown, who have lost their credibility through moral failures there is usually a pattern of behaviour preceding the end. Their vulnerable achilles wasn’t really a secret.

There are multiple factors that contributed to the awkward history, and just as many that have brought about the new reality, but credit has to go to all levels of leadership from both organizations (board, executives, staff, etc.) who have agreed to move forward with collegiality and sharing of best practices so that each can be more effective.

The numbers tell a story, but not the whole story.