Why people avoid hard conversations
Jump to the end of this article for a 5 step pathway to taking action.
If only.
It seems obvious now. It was only annoying when it happened. It’s now a big thing. Far more than annoying. More like debilitating. I should have said something. Why didn’t she say something?
The answer is not surprising. Humans are hardwired to avoid dangerous situations. Danger is not just physical. There is danger in being alienated by a person or a group. There’s danger in emotional damage caused or felt.
The pattern repeats. I avoid what is hard. I regret avoiding what is hard. I see risk in having the conversation. The risk was greater for not having the conversation. Technology makes it easier to avoid. Well, that’s a good excuse anyway. I can hide behind an avatar. The training we receive on communication is never going to work. We know the logic. This is not an intellectual exercise. ChatGPT could answer it, but that is just more words, no action. Behavioural science tells us we are motivated to avoid loss more than to realise gain. There you have it. What do I risk losing?
Being hurt.
Hurting someone else.
Being misunderstood
Being judged
Being wrong.
Difficult Conversations In a nutshell.
It’s not uncommon to have your career and life hindered by fear or by avoidance. As humans, it’s completely normal to experience fear and choose to avoid loss, abandonment, judgment, pain and hurt. We’re hardwired to survive and therefore loss and abandonment triggers risk and danger.
Rather than be exposed to risk, we seek belonging and connection. Aiming for acceptance instead of rejection plays out in schoolyards, in sports, in families, in communities and in workplaces. When this pattern endures without examination, you’re more likely to get stuck and derailed. It might be normal, but that doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.
Your instinct for survival incentivises you to be with others and not alone. Like any innate driver, it serves you well until it doesn’t.
The problem arises when survival instincts are triggered in situations that don’t typically cause danger. Consistently avoiding human connection for fear of being alienated will create new problems. Our fear of loss or rejection leads us to avoid the basics. The basics of human connection including conversations, empathy and acts of trust.
So many problems within organisations have their origin in an absent conversation.
If only one person had said something. If only one person had elected to listen instead of defend. If only the team embraced an actual conversation and not a ‘war’ over email or slack.
Avoiding conversations is caused by a fear of something fundamental. The fear might be of hurting someone. Fear of being rejected. Fear that the initial chat will escalate.
Most times humans fear the unknown. ‘I know what I might say, but I don’t know what the other person will say.’
With conversations, that’s the point. You can’t control them. Conversations are full of possibility. When you attempt to control a conversation it turns into a lecture. The possibility and potential is reduced. The connection and relationship is equally hindered.
Avoidance becomes a habit. Avoid one person and then another. Avoid one conversation and then another. Avoid one decision and then another. The good news is that habits form and habits can reform. There is another way.
It helps to know why conversations don’t happen easily in your organisation. Attend to the fear and you go a long way to fixing the problem. If this is a problem you experience, you can reframe it. There is a pathway out.
How fear shows up at work
Humans have every right to experience fear at work. Workplaces don’t have a reputation for taking a gentle touch. It’s normal to fear humiliation, rejection, being left out, being in the spotlight, unfair judgment, loss of opportunity, loss of agency, loss of means.
It may not be physical danger, yet the fear is just as intense. This fear is valid.
Psychological hurt doing as much damage as its physical cousin.
There are several ways fear shows up. No wonder it’s hard to pick!
Cynical responses. ‘We’ve tried that before.’
Intellectualising. ‘We need to do more research. What is best practice?’
Generalising. ‘People will never work as hard if they are out of the office.’
Catastrophising. ‘If we get it wrong, our customers will never trust us again.’
Undermining. ‘Our team will be fine, but Team X will become more selfish.’
Passive-aggressive. ‘We’ll do it. Like we always do.”
Passive Resistance. Ask no questions in the meeting. Reveal what you really think at the cafe.
Until you address the underlying fear, the behaviour will present itself in a myriad of ways. The most common way of all is:
Do nothing and hope it all goes away. The avoidance technique.
It’s usually fear of loss.
Loss of security, of status, of competence, of confidence, of reputation, of belonging. Until we address the potential of loss, expect the avoidance technique to be present.
Avoiding conversations early, can result in escalation. Things unsaid, take a life of their own. Humans are great at filling in gaps. And humans like to fill those gaps with the worst case scenario.
Take Action
Name it and Normalise it
Face into it
Reframe it
Repeat it
Celebrate it
1. Name it and Normalise it
It’s easy and naive to think fear doesn’t play out in your organisation or your team. You feel it too. It’s disingenuous to pretend everything is OK, when it’s not.
Most simply, treat the people you work with as adults. Adults prefer to know so they can make informed choices. Adopting the classic cliché, the facts are not always what you want, but they are what you need.
It doesn’t require you to speak about fear directly. “I know you are all scared,” won’t work and isn’t true. Instead, look for ways to normalise the experience. For example during change or restructures, phrasing like:
“I expect you will have a number of questions.”“It’s completely normal to be uncertain and even concerned.” “No matter how many restructures you have experienced, it’s normal to be cautious.” “Let’s work through what might change and what won’t change, together.”
2. Face into it
Face into the choice. It’s true that you have a choice to avoid. Importantly, when you adopt real agency in your life and career, you face into that as a choice. You are aware you are choosing not to act.
I have chosen not to speak about this. I have chosen to let it play it out. I have chosen to live with the consequences.
Making this choice deliberately is empowering and satisfying. Letting this choice happen because the alternative is unpleasant, is a recipe for future problems.
3. Reframe it
A simple reframe is, what is the risk of having this conversation and what is the risk of not having this conversation?
Stick with both answers. Ask a trusted colleague to help you frame both responses.
What is the risk of this conversation?
What is the risk of not having this conversation?
And despite your answers, you are never going to know with 100% accuracy. You will need to embrace and face into the uncertainty.
Again, by answering these questions you are likely to experience work through the lens of clarity and agency. This is good, no matter how hard it feels.
4. Repeat it
Habit forming is a simple exercise in repetition. You might have a daily habit of preparing for your working day. It might involve a coffee or a task you consistently complete first.
To break that habit requires a new consistency. Every broken habit, no matter whether good or bad, will feel clunky and clumsy at first.
A habit of avoiding conversations will only be broken by a clunky and clumsy experience. Even if the conversation is not clumsy, it might feel like it.
It’s true that conversations get easier the more times you have them. You will improve. You will get better outcomes even if those outcomes are linked to your confidence and your reputation.
5. Celebrate it
In sports and the arts and at schools, teachers and coaches are now more proficient in rewarding effort and process, not just outcomes.
Organisations still seem behind in this field. Outputs and outcomes are so powerful and seductive that they take up so much attention.
If you only cared about the outcome of a conversation at work, you would probably never have one. A conversation is unpredictable and unable to be controlled because it involves at least 2 people. It’s outcomes are equally unpredictable.
A conversation involves the human condition. Relationship and trust and emotion. All elements that have strong upsides and strong downsides.
Celebrate the effort. Celebrate the fact that you spoke about it. Celebrate your courage and your curiosity.
The call to action
The economic and human cost of avoidance is a number of significance. Who knows how many incidents of escalation could have been addressed at the first moment and in the first 24 hours?
How many hours of lost sleep? How many hours of worry? How many invoiced paid for investigations, lawyers and management time? How many new emotions occurring because you feel out of control?
If you, your team or your organisation is biasing towards avoidance you are taking a great risk and leaving much to chance.
The call to action is to meet the moment. To deal with it early. To do the human thing, even when every fibre of your body wants to do nothing.
None of this is easy, but it’s normal.