Welcome to Friday 411, issue #155. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you’ll handle that hard thing you’ve been avoiding.
1 Insight
Hard things ignored escalate. Hard things handled early are contained.
It’s Monday morning, and Crystal hasn’t even finished her coffee.
She drops her bag at her desk, and her assistant walks in behind her with a list.
A team member is out indefinitely. A shipment is delayed and customers are calling. The travel budget for the conference just blew up. Fifteen resumes are sitting in her inbox for three open roles. An underperformer is still missing standards. And at 2:00 this afternoon, she has to tell a task group that the proposal they’ve poured eight months into isn’t moving forward.
Crystal drops her head in her hands.
Every item on that list is a hard thing. Every item is going to cost her energy, emotional capital, and a couple nights of sleep.
If you’ve been a leader for more than a minute, you know mornings like Crystal’s. Leadership is hard from the moment you open your eyes.
Every hard thing you face falls into one of three categories:
1. Hard Decisions
Inc. Magazine reports that the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day. You are not an average person. You are a leader, which means your decisions carry more weight. Any missteps can hurt more people.
Hard decisions are the ones where the right answer isn’t obvious, the data isn’t incomplete, or someone is going to be disappointed no matter what you choose. It could be anything from whether or not to hire, fire, or cut the budget to pivoting strategies or saying no to a project someone is excited about.
You can’t outsource these. You can’t wait them out. The longer you sit on a hard decision, the more it costs everyone else.
2. Hard Conversations
Hard conversations are the ones you rehearse in your head at 3 a.m. and then avoid at 9 a.m.
They may sound like telling someone their performance isn’t cutting it. Telling your boss the plan won’t work. Telling a longtime employee that the role is changing and they may not fit it anymore. Or telling a peer that what they said in the meeting wasn’t okay.
We’ve watched leaders hold off on hard conversations for days, weeks, or even months. You tell yourself:
- Beginning of the week will ruin their week.
- End of the week will ruin their weekend.
- Right before vacation will ruin their trip.
- Right after vacation will ruin their re-entry.
The truth is, there is no easy or convenient time to have hard conversations. Delaying or avoiding them just makes the situation worse. The frustration grows, trust shrinks, and the team starts to wonder why nothing is being addressed.
The conversation you’re avoiding is the conversation your team needs you to have.
3. Hard Actions
Hard actions are what happens after the decision or the conversation. They are the follow-through.
Hard actions look like letting someone go, restructuring a team, pulling a product, cutting a customer, or saying no to a request that everyone else said yes to.
Hard actions are where leadership becomes visible. Anyone can talk about what should be done. Few people are willing to do it.
The Cost Most Leaders Won’t Pay
Most leaders already know the hard thing they need to do. They’re just waiting for the “right time” — which is a nice way of saying procrastinating or avoiding.
If you already know what to do, why do you wait?
Because doing the hard thing costs you something. It’s the loss you’re afraid of.
It might cost you approval, comfort, sleep, a relationship, trading in perceived peace for temporary conflict, or your reputation.
Handling the hard thing takes the courage to be disliked or misunderstood.
That is the cost of leading well, and it’s the price most leaders aren’t willing to pay.
What’s On the Other Side
When you handle the hard thing, it doesn’t feel small in the moment. But stomping things out early prevents them from growing.
Hard things handled early stay small. Hard things ignored grow into disasters that wreck teams, careers, and companies.
That is the paradox of leadership. The thing that feels harder in the moment is what makes everything easier in the long run.
1 Action
Name the one hard thing you’ve been avoiding—whether it’s a decision, a conversation, or an action—and put it on your calendar to tackle in the next seven days at a specific time. Communicate your plan to one person you trust so you can’t quietly let it slip.
You already know what it is you’ve been avoiding. The only question left is when to face it.