In a recent piece, Sonja Lyubomirsky captures something I see often in leadership coaching: the quiet, persistent avoidance of “saying the hard thing.” Her reflection on what researchers call the perspective gap – the mismatch between how bad it feels to say something difficult and how it actually lands with the person hearing it – deserves a permanent spot in every leader’s mental toolkit.

That colour looks really nice on you.

Great job on your presentation. I really think people heard what you said.

Thank you for the extra work you put into that project; you made it so much better than it would have been otherwise.

Read those three sentences again and, this time, imagine hearing someone saying them to you. I’ll wait …

… How do you feel? They’re “just” words and, in this case, completely made up scenarios, but do you notice feeling a little lighter, a little happier, a little more confident?

“I’m really comfortable having difficult conversations” ranks right up there with “I love root canals” and “Tax season is my favorite time of year” in the things-nobody-actually-feels department. Yet leaders are tasked with navigating these conversational minefields without detonating our relationships or our sanity.

Most of us are terrible listeners. There, I said it. It’s true! We’re so busy formulating what we hope to be a brilliant response, checking our phones, or mentally rehearsing what we’re going to say next that we miss the actual human sitting in front of us.

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