This is tough but I feel like I shifted the culture on my team over the last few years to be: I will talk to you about it, but you’ll be the one to action—we all have to get used to hard conversations and over time they’re less hard. I don’t have hard conversations on people’s behalf like I used to.
People can see something like sharing their preferences around work processes or habits or communication as conflict, and until they do it a few times they’ll be scared to bring things up. After a few times they realize most conversations are way lower pressure than they thought, no one has hurt feelings, and they start to be more self-sufficient.
So I hear them out and in some cases talk them through how they could approach the conversation they’re nervous about, but I’m teaching them to fish so they come to me less.
Not sure if this is exactly your situation but obviously I’ve thought about this a lot!
This is great insight. So I hear you saying you try to get them to internally solve difference instead of bringing them to you. You would think adults would naturally do this. 🤣
Haha yeah I actually had a chat with a peer this morning around a similar topic! It's so interesting how adults are actually so scared of certain conversations—immersion therapy is the only way through it!
