Stop Avoiding the Conversation: How to Confront Without Creating Conflict

Avoiding a difficult conversation may keep the peace temporarily but what is it doing to your workplace culture?

In this episode of The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment, Dr. Lashawnte McCray-Sarvis explores positive confrontation: the leadership skill of addressing difficult behaviors, performance concerns, and workplace issues directly without damaging dignity or unnecessarily creating conflict.

You’ll learn the C.L.E.A.R. Approach to Positive Confrontation:

C — Check yourself first
L — Lead with the facts
E — Explain the impact
A — Ask and listen
R — Reset the expectation

This episode challenges leaders to recognize that silence is also communication. When problems repeatedly go unaddressed, teams may begin to believe those behaviors have become acceptable.

Positive confrontation isn't about embarrassing people, proving a point, or winning an argument. It's about protecting expectations, strengthening accountability, and creating healthier workplace relationships.

If you've ever delayed a conversation because you didn't know what to say—or worried about how the other person would respond—this episode gives you a practical framework for saying what needs to be said.

Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of The Road to an Effective Classroom Environment. I am your host, Dr. Lashonta, known as that classy sassy consultant. I have on my coaching hat again today in an episode where we are talking about something that makes many people uncomfortable, and that's confrontation. Just hearing the word can make people tense up because when we hear confrontation, we can imagine people with raised voices, people on the defense, hurt feelings, someone walking away angry, or all parties walking away angry. But confrontation doesn't have to look like that. Healthy workplaces require confrontation. The question isn't whether leaders should confront problems. The question is how do we confront problems without attacking people? That's what we call positive confrontation. Positive confrontation is the ability to address a behavior, concern, a performance issue, or a disagreement directly while still protecting the dignity of the person and the health of the relationship. So if you're a leader, a supervisor, teacher leader, coach, or simply someone who works with other people, this is a skill you need because avoiding difficult conversations doesn't eliminate the problem. Usually, this gives the problem permission to grow. So we're gonna dive on in into this because being able to deal with disagreements or deal with problems in our workplace requires us to have developed our durable skills, which used to be called those soft skills. But we're talking about skills and how to communicate, how to get along, how to time manage. So this is one of those disduple skills, is being able to know how to deal with problems in the workplace. So as we dive in, we're gonna look at what positive confrontation is and what it is not. So setting the stage. So this is where the difference comes in. Imagine an employee has repeatedly failed to complete an assigned responsibility. A negative confrontation might sound like this. You never do what you're supposed to do. I don't understand why I have to keep reminding you. That's a negative confrontation. Now, so let's move from discussing the behavior to judging the person. Now we've moved from discussing the behavior to judging the person. So positive confrontation sounds a little different. This is what that same situation sounds like when we use positive confrontation. I've noticed that this responsibility has not been completed by the agreed-upon deadline for the past two weeks. I want to understand what's getting in the way and determine what needs to happen moving forward. Same issue, different leadership. One approach creates defensiveness, the other creates an opportunity for accountability and problem solving. So remember this the goal of confrontation should not be to win the conversation, the goal should be to improve what happens after the conversation. So why do we as humans, why do we avoid confrontation? What is it? Sometimes it's because we don't like conflict. I personally don't like conflict, I don't like messiness. When I'm in my workspace, I want to be able to be fully productive and I like to enjoy my job as well. I like to have fun, I like to cut up. Um, so I don't like conflict, but being in a leadership role, I know I have to address certain issues, certain problems on the job. Sometimes we're afraid of how other people will respond to us. And sometimes we tell ourselves, it isn't that serious. I'll give them another chance, or maybe they'll figure it out. Or here's one of my favorites that I've heard. I don't have time to deal with this right now. But the problem is this what we don't address can eventually become what we accept. If someone is always late and we don't say anything about it, we've communicated something. If someone speaks disrespectfully to other colleagues and we ignore it, we have communicated something. If expectations aren't being met and we continuously work around the person rather than speaking to them, we've communicated something. Silence is communication too. And as leaders, leaders have to recognize that avoiding a difficult conversation may protect your comfort comfort temporarily, but it can damage the culture long term. Other employees, they are watching, they're noticing what gets addressed, they're also noticing what doesn't. Positive confrontation protects more than the relationship between the two people, it also protects the standard. And just to share my own, I've had several situations in which I've had to address issues with people that I have worked with over these past 29 years in education. And even though the conversations can be can be difficult and sometimes the conversations can be lengthy, I am not a fan of long conferences. I believe that whatever we need to discuss can get done within you know 15 minutes for a small issue and maybe 30 minutes. And if it needs to carry on longer, then you know have have time set aside for the next day versus having a long, a long drawn-out talk, especially if you see where the in the individual is not seeing the error of their ways. So just just giving an example of a situation that I've had to uh deal with in my time as an educator. I have I had a um I had to talk with one of my one of my teachers about signing out late. And the individuals, you know, stated that she comes in early before others are there, and even before I was in the building, but and felt that signing out before her required time was okay. Had to have that type of conversation with the individual. And thankfully, she was she understood, she was forthcoming in presenting her side because I always have an environment that's conducive to being able to speak your mind, but it's still being a respectful environment. So let's continue on in looking at positive confrontation. So, how do we approach this? How do you actually have a positive confrontation with someone in the workplace? This is where I want to give you the five steps that I have used, and this is called thinking clear. And clear, each letter represents checking yourself first, lead with the facts, explain the impact, ask and listen, respect the expectation. That is clear. So when you are checking yourself first, this requires you to make sure that you have your emotions in check. Make sure you're going into this conversation and you know why you're going into the conversation. Are you correcting a problem? Are you trying to prove a point? Are you responding to facts or are you responding to emotions? Have you heard the entire story from the individual? Are you calm enough to have a productive conversation? Because you know, if you're angry, if you're embarrassed, frustrated, that emotion can easily become the conversation. So you don't want to focus on the emotions, you don't want to focus on proving a point. So you have to get yourself in check before you go into the conversation. And if you are emotional, if you have anger, if you have frustration, then you may want to delay the conversation until you are able to get yourself together. So you want to check yourself, as um Ice Q said in his song. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. I know I'm dating myself, but anyway, we're going back. Going back. So check yourself first before going into the conversation. Next, you want to make sure that you lead with the facts. And what does that mean? Start with what you know when you're beginning this conversation. You don't want to go off of assumptions, you don't want to go by gossip and rumors, and you don't want to use words like everybody says this. You want to deal with facts. You don't want to make the comment. For example, you don't want to say, you don't care about this team. You can say, you missed the last three team meetings, and I haven't received communication explaining your absence. So there's a difference. One phrase attacks the intention, and the other one identifies the behavior. And so that's the major difference. You want to address what happened before assigning meaning to why it happened. And then you want to explain the impact. People need to understand why the issue matters to you, and whether it matters to you, it matters to the company, to the school, the school district. You want to explain and make sure that the individual understands why the issue matters. Maybe that person's behavior is creating additional work for colleagues. Maybe the missed deadlines are delaying services. Maybe the negativity is affecting the team morale. Maybe inconsistent enforcement of breaking of expectations is confusing students or employees. Connect the behavior to the impact. So that might sound like this. When this information isn't submitted on time, another member of the team has to stop what they're doing to complete the process. That's beginning to affect our workflow. You're focusing on the impact. Now you're not just talking about a rule, you're talking about consequences. And then next, you want to ask and listen. This is where positive confrontation becomes different from a lecture. Because now you're asking questions. You're asking what happened. Help me understand what's getting in the way. What support do you need? What do you think needs to change? And then once you've asked the question or the questions, just listen. Don't ask the question if you've already decided you're not going to hear the answer. Take the time to listen. There may be information you don't know, and listening doesn't eliminate accountability. It helps you to determine the appropriate accountability. And that's an important distinction here. And then lastly, reset the expectation. Every positive confrontation should end with clarity. What needs to happen next? Who is responsible? When it should happen, and what happens if the issue continues. Don't leave the conversation with, okay, well, let's try to do better. That's too vague. What does better actually mean? What does that look like? That's not clear. So instead, you want to say, beginning tomorrow, I need the report submitted by 3 p.m. each Friday. If you're unable to meet the deadline, communicate with me before the deadline so we can address the issue. That's clear. And clarity is one of the greatest gifts a leader can give to those who are working with him. So now we want to look at the language of positive confrontation. One other thing I want to also remind you is that when you're going into these conversations, it's also good to start off with a positive phrase, whether you are going to start off with a on the positive note of talking about the person. Maybe the person did well in putting together a meeting or presentation for the meeting, and you want to give kudos to that individual. If it's a teacher, you may want to compliment the teacher on how well he or she has provided feedback to his or her students. So you can start the meeting off with a positive phrase, a compliment to what the person is doing well. So that's just another note, another way to start the meeting, starting off on a positive note by giving a compliment or showing that you have you are recognizing that person's effort on the job before delving into the conversation about the problem itself. So going back, the language of positive confrontation. So here are a few phrases that you want to put in your leadership toolbox. So instead of saying you always are doing XYZ, you want to say, I've noticed a pattern that we need to address. Instead of saying, why can't you just fill in the blank? You can say, help me understand what's pres preventing this from happening consistently. Instead of saying, and this is one of my one one of my favorite ones, instead of saying everybody is complaining about you, try to say, I want to address a concern that I've observed. Instead of saying you need to fix your attitude, try saying the way we're communicating is beginning to interfere with our ability to work effectively together. And another one, I value our working relationship, which is why I don't want to leave this issue unaddressed. That's positive confrontation. Notice that none of these statements remove accountability, they remove unnecessary hostility, and there's a difference. Positive does not mean passive. You can be kind and firm, supportive and direct, compassionate and accountable. Those are things that can exist in the same conversation. So here's what I want you to take away from today's episode. Healthy workplace culture isn't created by avoiding uncomfortable conversations. It's created when people know what concerns will be addressed fairly, respectfully, and consistently. So the next time you have to confront an issue, remember, confront it by being clear. Check yourself first, lead with the facts, explain the impact, ask and listen, reset the expectation. And before you enter that conversation, ask yourself one question. What do I want this relation? What do I want this relationship and this situation to look like when this conversation is over? Because leadership isn't demonstrated only when everyone agrees with you. Sometimes leadership is demonstrated in the conversation you would rather not have. Don't attack the person, address the behavior, protect the dignity, clarify the expectation, preserve the relationship when possible. And remember, confrontation doesn't have to destroy culture. Done well, it can strengthen it. So I have been your host for today, Dr. Lashonta, known as the Classy Sassy Consultant. And this has been the Road to an Effective Classroom Environment. Until next time, keep leading with clarity, connection, and intention.