Marlene Chism's Blog

I was talking with a business colleague when he said, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s always about the end result. It’s always about winning.”

“So, it’s not about the process?” I challenged.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“But isn’t it about a consistent process that produces winning results?” I asked.

His comment and his mindset challenged me.

Values matter. People matter. Integrity matters.

The end result certainly matters. Businesses must meet deadlines, serve customers, and achieve their objectives. But is the result all that matters? Success at any cost? What about the process used to achieve it? What about the people affected by that process?

And what if the result was achieved despite the process, rather than because of it?

Suppose the deadline was met and the customer was satisfied. Success was achieved.

But what if, behind that successful result, employees had to chase missing information, work around conflicting instructions, make last-minute decisions without adequate authority, and absorb responsibilities that belonged elsewhere? What if winning required violating organizational values or compromising ethical standards? Could that truly be called success?

The myth behind a results-only mindset: If the result was achieved, the process must have worked.

The truth: Capable people often achieve results by compensating for broken processes.

A successful outcome does not always prove the process was effective. Sometimes it proves the people were resourceful.

The process determines whether success is repeatable

Focusing on process doesn’t mean valuing activity over accomplishment. Process is the agreed-upon path for producing a result. It determines how decisions are made, information is shared, responsibilities are assigned, and problems are resolved.

When the process is broken, resourceful people rescue the outcome. They fill gaps, anticipate problems, and protect the customer from the chaos behind the scenes.

Their competence creates a false impression. Leadership sees a completed project while employees experience the rework and exhaustion required to complete it.

Because the outcome was achieved, leaders may not examine what made the work so difficult. Exceptional effort becomes the expected standard.

That isn’t sustainable execution. It’s organizational heroics.

A results-only mindset becomes dangerous when leaders define the result too narrowly. They celebrate the visible outcome without examining what was sacrificed or created along the way.

A results-only mindset can reward the wrong behavior

When leaders evaluate success only by the outcome, they may unintentionally reward the people who compensate for problems and discourage those who expose them.

The employee who quietly compensates for every gap may be praised as a team player. The employee who questions the process may be labeled negative, resistant, controlling, or too concerned with details.

This teaches people a dangerous lesson: Fix the problem quietly, but don’t question what created it.

Over time, employees stop providing critical feedback. They continue compensating until they burn out, or they decide the problem is no longer theirs to solve.

When the organization finally experiences a visible failure, leaders may be surprised. But the breakdown didn’t begin when the result was missed. It began when people learned that producing the outcome mattered more than telling the truth about what it took.

Execution breaks earlier than leaders think

A results-only mindset concentrates on the final stage of the work: execution. But execution usually breaks earlier. The Alignment Chain illustrates the sequence:

Clarity → Conversation → Accountability → Execution

Clarity precedes conversation. Conversation creates accountability. Accountability protects execution.

Although the Alignment Chain appears linear, clarity and conversation are interdependent. We need enough clarity to begin the conversation, but the conversation tests, deepens, and sometimes corrects that clarity.

For example, executives may agree on a pathway without fully understanding the tradeoffs required to achieve the goal. As those tradeoffs become apparent, confusion develops. What presents as a clarity problem may actually be a conversational failure. Someone needs to say, “I’m confused,” “I disagree,” or “This isn’t what I thought we agreed to.” Knowing the architecture of these difficult conversations helps surface concerns before they become execution problems.

Clarity often emerges through conversation. The breakdown occurs when people are unwilling or unable to question assumptions, challenge a decision or acknowledge that clarity has weakened.

When those conversations don’t happen, accountability becomes murky. By the time the problem becomes visible in execution, people may already be operating from competing assumptions.

The missed deadline may have begun with an unclear decision. The quality problem may have started when someone didn’t feel safe enough to disagree. The exhausted employee may have been compensating for a lack of authority, resources, or direction.

The result gives leaders important evidence, but it does not provide the complete diagnosis.

Examine both the result and the process

The answer is not to choose between results and process. Leaders must pay attention to both.

Results tell us whether we achieved the objective. Process tells us whether we can achieve it again without relying on confusion, silence, exhaustion, or heroics.

After an important project, leaders can ask:

Did we achieve the desired result?What worked as intended?Where did people have to improvise or compensate?What information, authority, or resources were missing?What depended too heavily on one person?What did this result cost in time, energy, or neglected priorities?What should we change before doing this again?

These questions are not about diminishing the accomplishment or elevating process above performance. They are about learning what actually produced the outcome.

My colleague was right about one thing: The end result matters.

But the process matters, too. The process affects the quality of the result, the cost of achieving it, and the organization’s ability to repeat it.

Leaders should celebrate successful outcomes. They should also remain curious about what those outcomes required.

Otherwise, today’s success may simply be a breakdown that capable people managed to postpone.

The post Why a Results-Only Mindset Is Dangerous appeared first on Marlene Chism.

When a leader avoids a difficult conversation, it’s easy to assume the problem is fear or a lack of leadership courage.

Sometimes yes, but after more than 20 years of consulting and coaching leaders, I’ve learned that conversation avoidance happens for various reasons. For example, avoidance may be an orientation problem, an accountability problem, or a legitimate business risk.

These distinctions matter because different problems require different interventions.

An orientation problem can’t be solved with accountability, and a legitimate business risk shouldn’t be dismissed as fear.

To identify the real problem, start by listening to what the leader says.

1. The orientation problem

What the leader says: “I don’t know where to start.”

The leader knows something needs to be addressed but cannot find the entry point.

They may be unclear about the real issue. They may have too many examples and too much history. Or they may be trying to address attitude, motivation, personality, and performance all at once.

When leaders lack orientation, they often delay the conversation while waiting for greater confidence. But confidence is unlikely to arrive through delay or avoidance.

Orientation starts with understanding the situation, the desired result, the business impact, and the purpose of the conversation. Without this grounding, leaders can easily get pulled into emotion, history, and irrelevant distractions.

Orientation provides the leadership clarity needed to begin the conversation and maintain its direction.

2. The anticipation problem

What the leader says: “I already know what they’ll say.”

The leader has conducted the entire conversation privately, playing both roles.

They anticipate that the employee will deny the behavior, blame someone else, become emotional, point out an exception, or bring up everything that has happened since the invention of fire.

The leader may be correct about the likely response, but anticipating their response and then delaying the conversation is what I call “resisting their resistance” in my book, From Conflict to Courage.

The leader’s responsibility isn’t to control the employee’s reaction. It’s to remain clear, listen, and redirect the conversation when it gets off track.

3. The accountability problem

What the leader says: “We’ve had the conversation, but nothing changed.”

Leaders sometimes assume that because a subject was discussed, accountability was established.

But talking about a problem is not the same as creating accountability.

The previous conversation may have included hints, suggestions, feedback, or expressions of concern. What it may not have included was a clear expectation, an agreement, a follow-up date, and the consequences of continued behavior.

4. The alignment problem

What the leader says: “My boss won’t support my decision.”

Sometimes the reluctance to act comes from past experience. A manager may have been told to hold people accountable while watching the senior leaders reverse decisions, tolerate exceptions, or protect certain employees.

This puts the manager in an impossible position. They’re expected to create accountability without the authority or support to maintain it.

Before meeting with the employee, the manager may need a conversation with their own leader to ask:

What authority do I have?What decisions can I make?What will happen if the employee refuses to change?Can I count on your support?

Leadership clarity must exist at the top before accountability can be established in a department.

5. The constraint problem

What the leader says: “They have tenure, so there’s nothing I can do.”

Organizations have real constraints. Policies, contracts, reporting structures, labor agreements, longstanding relationships, and legal considerations can limit a leader’s options, but a constraint isn’t always a complete barrier.

The leader may not be able to terminate the employee, but that doesn’t mean they can’t clarify expectations, address specific behavior, document patterns, establish boundaries, or explain business impact.

The useful question is, “Given the constraints, what conversation is still available to me?”

Constraints define the playing field, but they don’t eliminate the leader’s responsibility to play.

6. The business-risk problem

What the leader says: “They’re a top performer, and I can’t afford to lose them.”

This isn’t an imaginary concern. A top performer may hold critical knowledge, manage valuable client relationships, produce significant revenue, or possess expertise that would be difficult to replace.

Addressing the behavior may create a legitimate risk, but avoidance also creates risk.

A leader must consider both sides:

What would it cost us if this person leaves?What’s it costing us to tolerate the behavior?How is the behavior affecting trust, retention, collaboration, and execution?Are we becoming dependent on someone who won’t accept responsibility?

The goal isn’t to disregard the person’s value. It is to stop measuring value only by individual output. Someone can produce excellent results while quietly making it harder for everyone else to produce theirs.

Diagnose before you intervene

When every avoided conversation is labeled a courage problem, leaders receive simplistic advice: Be brave. Address it. Stop avoiding.

Courage matters, but courage without diagnosis can produce the wrong conversation. Before deciding what should be said, identify the real problem:

Once the problem is accurately diagnosed, the leader can choose the appropriate next move. Sometimes that means preparing more thoroughly. Sometimes it means aligning with senior leadership, working within organizational constraints, or accepting a legitimate business risk.

The goal isn’t simply to make leaders more courageous. It is to help them accurately diagnose what’s preventing the conversation and choose an intervention that matches the problem. Otherwise, unresolved issues travel downstream, where they eventually become accountability, culture, and execution problems.

This article was first published on SmartBrief.

The post Six Problems Leaders Misdiagnose as Fear of Conflict appeared first on Marlene Chism.

Years ago, I worked with a leadership team caught in a cycle of conflict and confusion. The following is a composite scenario. Names, roles and identifying details have been changed.

“David” was a high-performing founder who prided himself on saying what everyone else was afraid to say.

When he believed a decision was wrong, he pushed hard. He interrupted, raised his voice and questioned whether other leaders had the courage to face reality. His colleagues often agreed with him in meetings but privately admitted that challenging him was exhausting.

His business partner, “Lance,” had the opposite style.

Lance valued relationships and wanted people to feel heard. When David pushed, Lance often agreed to his requests before fully considering the implications or consulting with others.

After getting new input, Lance would often modify a prior decision or pivot completely. David saw these reversals as proof that Lance was evasive and couldn’t be trusted, so he became more forceful. Lance, anticipating another confrontation, became more accommodating.

Before long, the entire executive team had adapted to the David-Lance dance of drama. Each could clearly see the other person’s contribution. Neither could see their own.

The primary pattern that keeps conflict securely in place is the need to be right. Three habits reinforce it:

Refusing to own your contributionUsing another person’s behavior to justify your ownPointing to the other person as the source of the problem

David wasn’t wrong that Lance’s reversals damaged trust. Lance wasn’t wrong that David’s intensity made honest disagreement difficult. The problem was that each man used the other’s behavior to justify his own. David believed he had to push because Lance was unreliable. Lance believed he had to appease because David was aggressive.

Both were waiting for the other person to change first. They were more committed to being right than to getting it right.

Conflict Avoidance Wears Many Disguises

Aggression and appeasement look like opposite behaviors, but they serve the same purpose: avoiding the discomfort of a clear and responsible conversation.

The aggressive leader tries to control the conversation through intensity and creates fear. The appeasing leader tries to control the conversation by preventing disappointment and creates confusion.

This pattern occurs between founders and executives, managers and employees, colleagues and business partners. Appeasement and aggression are two sides of the same coin: avoidance.

The Organization Learns to Work Around Its Leaders

When leaders repeat these patterns, the organization adapts. People learn not to challenge the aggressive leader publicly. They complain privately, withhold information or wait for the storm to pass.

They also learn not to trust the appeasing leader’s agreement. Instead, they seek confirmation from others, delay action or create backup plans because today’s yes may become tomorrow’s no.

Over time, the organization pays for this dynamic through slower decisions, conflicting priorities, failed execution, declining trust and unwanted turnover.

Look for the Missing Structure

When conflict escalates, the path of least resistance is to cast blame. Who started it? Who is more difficult to work with? Who needs to leave?

Those questions may eventually need to be answered, especially when behavior violates organizational standards. But removing one person doesn’t automatically repair a system that has learned to tolerate intimidation, appeasement and indirect communication.

Persistent leadership conflict often signals that essential structures are missing, unclear or unenforced. The organization may have a mission and stated values but no shared rules for how leaders will make decisions, navigate disagreement and hold one another accountable.

Instead of focusing only on personalities, ask:

Do our leaders’ behaviors reflect our values?What are our rules for disagreement and decision-making?Who has decision authority, and how are decisions documented or reconsidered?Who intervenes when behavioral standards are violated?

Structure shapes behavior, but only when leaders are willing to honor and enforce it. A mission explains what the organization is trying to accomplish. Values define how people are expected to behave while accomplishing it. Rules of the road clarify what happens when pressure rises, opinions differ or someone crosses a line.

Without enforcement, values become wall art and rules become suggestions. The real test of a leadership structure is whether it still applies when the person violating it is a founder, top performer or powerful executive.

Without that structure, personalities fill the vacuum. The most forceful person gains influence, the most accommodating person creates temporary peace, and everyone else learns to work around both of them.

Change the Dance, Not Just the Dancers

The goal is not to eliminate disagreement or determine which leader is the bigger problem. The goal is to create enough clarity and structure that neither aggression nor appeasement becomes an effective way to lead.

When decision rights are clear, behavioral standards are enforced and leaders have an agreed-upon process for challenging or reconsidering decisions, aggression no longer sets the agenda and appeasement no longer buys temporary peace.

You don’t break the cycle by simply choosing a villain or replacing one of the leaders. You break it by changing the structure that allowed the pattern to become the organization’s unofficial operating system in the first place.

This article first appeared on SmartBrief.

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The post When Leadership Conflict Becomes the Operating System appeared first on Marlene Chism.

When a leader avoids a difficult conversation, it’s easy to assume the problem is fear, or a lack of leadership courage.

Sometimes yes, but after more than 20 years of consulting and coaching leaders, I’ve learned that conversation avoidance happens for various reasons. For example, avoidance may be an orientation problem, an accountability problem, or a legitimate business risk.

These distinctions matter because different problems require different interventions.

An orientation problem can’t be solved with accountability, and a legitimate business risk shouldn’t be dismissed as fear.

To identify the real problem, start by listening to what the leader says.

1. The Orientation Problem

What the leader says: “I don’t know where to start.”

The leader knows something needs to be addressed but cannot find the entry point.

They may be unclear about the real issue. They may have too many examples and too much history. Or they may be trying to address attitude, motivation, personality, and performance all at once.

When leaders lack orientation, they often delay the conversation while waiting for greater confidence. But confidence is unlikely to arrive through delay or avoidance.

Orientation starts with understanding the situation, the desired result, the business impact, and the purpose of the conversation. Without this grounding, leaders can easily get pulled into emotion, history, and irrelevant distractions. Orientation provides the leadership clarity needed to begin the conversation and maintain its direction.

2. The Anticipation Problem

What the leader says: “I already know what they’ll say.”

The leader has conducted the entire conversation privately, playing both roles.

They anticipate that the employee will deny the behavior, blame someone else, become emotional, point out an exception, or bring up everything that has happened since the invention of fire.

The leader may be correct about the likely response, but anticipating their response, and then delaying the conversation is what I call “resisting their resistance” in my book, From Conflict to Courage.

The leader’s responsibility isn’t to control the employee’s reaction. It’s to remain clear, listen, and redirect the conversation when it gets off track.

3. The Accountability Problem

What the leader says: “We’ve had the conversation, but nothing changed.”

Leaders sometimes assume that because a subject was discussed, accountability was established.

But talking about a problem is not the same as creating accountability.

The previous conversation may have included hints, suggestions, feedback, or expressions of concern. What it may not have included was a clear expectation, an agreement, a follow-up date, and the consequences of continued behavior.

4. The Alignment Problem

What the leader says: “My boss won’t support my decision.”

Sometimes the reluctance to act comes from past experience. A manager may have been told to hold people accountable while watching the senior leaders reverse decisions, tolerate exceptions, or protect certain employees.

This puts the manager in an impossible position. They’re expected to create accountability without the authority or support to maintain it.

Before meeting with the employee, the manager may need a conversation with their own leader to ask:

What authority do I have?What decisions can I make?What will happen if the employee refuses to change?Can I count on your support?

Leadership clarity must exist at the top before accountability can be established in a department.

5. The Constraint Problem

What the leader says: “They have tenure, so there’s nothing I can do.”

Organizations have real constraints. Policies, contracts, reporting structures, labor agreements, longstanding relationships, and legal considerations can limit a leader’s options, but a constraint isn’t always a complete barrier.

The leader may not be able to terminate the employee, but that doesn’t mean they can’t clarify expectations, address specific behavior, document patterns, establish boundaries, or explain business impact.

The useful question is, “Given the constraints, what conversation is still available to me?”

Constraints define the playing field, but they don’t eliminate the leader’s responsibility to play.

6. The Business-Risk Problem

What the leader says: “They’re a top performer, and I can’t afford to lose them.”

This isn’t an imaginary concern. A top performer may hold critical knowledge, manage valuable client relationships, produce significant revenue, or possess expertise that would be difficult to replace.

Addressing the behavior may create a legitimate risk, but avoidance also creates risk.

A leader must consider both sides:

What would it cost us if this person leaves?What’s it costing us to tolerate the behavior?How is the behavior affecting trust, retention, collaboration, and execution?Are we becoming dependent on someone who won’t accept responsibility?

The goal isn’t to disregard the person’s value. It is to stop measuring value only by individual output. Someone can produce excellent results while quietly making it harder for everyone else to produce theirs.

Diagnose Before You Intervene

When every avoided conversation is labeled a courage problem, leaders receive simplistic advice: Be brave. Address it. Stop avoiding.

Courage matters, but courage without diagnosis can produce the wrong conversation. Before deciding what should be said, identify the real problem:

Once the problem is accurately diagnosed, the leader can choose the appropriate next move. Sometimes that means preparing more thoroughly. Sometimes it means aligning with senior leadership, working within organizational constraints, or accepting a legitimate business risk.

The goal isn’t simply to make leaders more courageous. It is to help them accurately diagnose what’s preventing the conversation and choose an intervention that matches the problem. Otherwise, unresolved issues travel downstream, where they eventually become accountability, culture, and execution problems.

This article was first published on SmartBrief.

The post Six Problems Leaders Misdiagnose as Fear of Conflict appeared first on Marlene Chism.

When leaders avoid difficult conversations, we often assume they lack courage or fear conflict.

After more than 20 years of consulting and training leaders, I’ve discovered that avoidance is not always a character flaw. Sometimes it is a reasonable response to feeling unprepared, unsupported, or uncertain about what happens next.

Here are six statements I hear repeatedly:

“I don’t know where to start.”“I already know what they’ll say.”“We’ve had the conversation, but nothing changed.”“My boss won’t support my decision.”“They have tenure, so there’s nothing I can do.”“They’re a top performer, and I can’t afford to lose them.”

These may sound like excuses. But each one contains useful diagnostic information.

“I don’t know where to start.”

This is an orientation problem.

The leader may recognize that something needs to be addressed but cannot clearly define the issue, the desired outcome, or the opening statement. Without that clarity, the conversation feels bigger and riskier than it is.

The first move is not to become more courageous. It is to clarify the intention and identify the observable behavior that needs to be discussed.

“I already know what they’ll say.”

This is an anticipation problem.

The leader is mentally conducting both sides of the conversation before it ever occurs. They anticipate defensiveness, denial, blame, or a lengthy explanation and conclude that the conversation will go nowhere.

But predicting someone’s response is not the same as hearing it. A leader needs the ability to listen without surrendering the direction of the conversation.

“We’ve had the conversation, but nothing changed.”

This is often an accountability problem disguised as a communication problem.

Talking about an issue is not the same as creating accountability. Was the expectation clearly stated? Was there agreement about what would change? Was a follow-up date established? Were consequences or next steps discussed?

If nothing changed, the answer may not be another version of the same conversation. The next move may be a clear accountability conversation.

“My boss won’t support my decision.”

This is a leadership alignment problem.

A manager cannot confidently establish accountability when senior leaders routinely reverse decisions, make exceptions, or refuse to support reasonable consequences.

Before addressing the employee, the manager may need clarity from above. What authority does the manager actually have? What will senior leadership support when resistance appears?

“They have tenure, so there’s nothing I can do.”

This is a perceived constraint problem.

Tenure, history, relationships, and organizational politics may limit certain options. They do not eliminate the leader’s responsibility to clarify expectations and address behavior.

The leader may not control every consequence, but there is usually a conversation available that has not yet occurred.

“They’re a top performer, and I can’t afford to lose them.”

This is a business-risk problem.

The leader is weighing short-term performance against the long-term cost of tolerated behavior. That calculation deserves serious consideration.

But top performance does not neutralize the effects of disrespect, disruption, or damaged trust. The question is not simply, “Can we afford to lose this person?” It is also, “What is it costing us to avoid addressing the behavior?”

Avoidance is often a lack of architecture

Some leaders genuinely fear conflict. But underneath much of that fear is a lack of orientation.

They don’t know how to begin. They don’t know how to respond when the conversation takes an unexpected turn. They don’t know how to move from listening to clarity and from clarity to accountability.

Without a structure, leaders lose confidence, get off track, repeat themselves, overexplain, or avoid the conversation altogether.

Courage matters. But asking leaders to “be more courageous” without giving them a reliable structure is like asking someone to drive confidently without teaching them how to steer.

Leaders need more than a script. They need to understand the architecture of the conversation so they can diagnose where it is breaking down and choose the right next move.

On September 23, I’m hosting a live webinar, The Architecture of Difficult Conversations.

You’ll learn how to:

Recognize where conversations break downUnderstand the four-part conversation architectureDiagnose what is missing so you can choose your next moveDistinguish accountability problems from leadership clarity problems

If you lead others, coach managers, or find yourself circling the same unresolved issue, I’d love to have you join me.

The post Valid Reasons Leaders Avoid Difficult Conversations appeared first on Marlene Chism.

When organizations face legal risk, they often assume the problem was poor documentation or ineffective leadership. In reality, those issues are usually symptoms of a deeper failure: a lack of clarity. Inconsistent leadership and weak documentation rarely occur in isolation; they emerge when expectations are unclear, conversations are avoided and performance standards are inconsistently reinforced.

Documentation, in these cases, becomes a checklist exercise, something completed to satisfy a process rather than to reflect real accountability. When leaders are clear about the root cause of performance issues and have a consistent system for coaching employees to success, documentation serves a very different purpose. It becomes a record of clarity, accountability and intent. Leaders cannot document, or hold people accountable for, expectations they never clearly defined, aligned to or reinforced.

The recent SHRM lawsuit offers a sobering example of what happens when clarity breaks down, even among respected and reputable organizations. As the year begins, it’s worth examining why clarity isn’t just a value, it’s a leadership requirement.

Clarity First, Accountability Second

If leaders aren’t clear about the situation, the desired outcome or the obstacles, accountability is impossible. Most leaders I work with struggle to articulate what’s really happening. And even when they can, they often view the issue through a narrow or reactive lens, reaching for quick fixes, outside coaching or policy enforcement to solve a problem that may not even exist.

This lack of clarity is frequently the result of inadequate training. Leaders are promoted for technical competence, not for their ability to think critically, communicate clearly or coach performance. Poor documentation often reflects this reality. If employees don’t know what success looks like, documentation won’t resolve the issue, and may not protect the organization when conflict escalates.

Bottom Line: There is no accountability without clarity.

Clarity Is a Prerequisite for Alignment

In the corporate world, “alignment” is a popular but misunderstood word. Alignment to what? A goal? A metric? A policy? A value?

Too often, organizations claim alignment to mission and values while behaving in ways that contradict them. Leaders may align to documentation practices or legal defense strategies rather than aligning to leadership development, competence and trust. The result is performative alignment, polished language without consistent behavior.

True alignment requires intention and investment. It means allocating time and budget to train leaders how to think strategically, coach for competency and promote accountability without fear. When that alignment exists, documentation becomes a record of progress and expectations, not a paper shield designed to avoid the courthouse.

Bottom Line: Alignment without clarity is cosmetic. It looks good on the outside.

Clarity Comes Before Courage

When leaders avoid performance conversations, the behavior is often labeled as a lack of courage. In reality, the issue is more fundamental: they lack clarity. Clarity is what gives courage its direction.

Managers consistently report that difficult conversations become easier once they are clear about what’s happening, what’s not happening, why it matters and how to communicate it. Without clarity, courage becomes impulsive, and impulsive conversations create confusion instead of collaboration.

This lack of clarity shows up when senior leaders pressure managers to “just go have the conversation” without providing a framework or skill set. Fear becomes the motivator, fear of consequences rather than confidence in competence. Leaders need structure, not ultimatums. Courage grounded in clarity builds capability; courage fueled by fear creates damage.

Bottom Line: Courage without clarity can become reckless.

Clarity Dissolves Drama

Whenever you see a supervisor withholding feedback because the feedback will be perceived as bias, you’re witnessing leadership driven by fear rather than truth. When HR edits documentation to cover uncertainty or inconsistency, clarity is being replaced with concealment. Gossip, incivility, assumptions and legal threats are not isolated problems, but symptoms of unclear expectations and unspoken realities.

Drama thrives where clarity is absent. It feeds on storytelling, interpretation and silence. Clarity forces reality into the room. It stops speculation. It creates peace by naming what is actually happening — without heat or hostility.

As I’ve said since writing Stop Workplace Drama: clarity can change any experience. It cuts through confusion and replaces it with shared understanding.

Bottom Line: In all workplace drama there’s always a lack of clarity.

Conclusion

Clarity is not an idea or a soft skill. It is a principle, a value and a leadership discipline. When expectations are clear, alignment follows, accountability becomes fair and courage becomes purposeful. When clarity is absent, even the best organizations are left managing consequences instead of performance.

The real leadership risk isn’t saying the wrong thing. It’s leaving the most important things unsaid.

This article first appeared on SmartBrief for Leadership.

The post Why Clarity Comes Before Accountability appeared first on Marlene Chism.

For years, I believed something that served me well, until it no longer worked.

The belief was: If something feels uncomfortable, I should lean into it. That mindset helped me to speak up when it would have been easier to stay quiet. It also allowed me to work with strong personalities, or even difficult people as some would say. As a result, I built resilience, and I expanded my conflict capacity.

Then at some point, that same mindset started working against me, because I treated all friction as a signal to withstand, to endure, or to push forward. I even built a whole body of work about how to “release resistance.” The philosophy built on the idea that we just have to be willing to be uncomfortable in order to grow. I still embrace this idea that when it comes to growth comfort isn’t a requirement, but I’ve since come to believe that while comfort isn’t a requirement for growth, neither is misery.

Here’s how it’s shifted for me.

Not long ago, I was considering re-engaging with a leader I had worked with in the past. He was successful, powerful and direct. I might even categorize him as authoritarian, or a bit difficult to work with low level of awareness, and plenty of blame to go around.

A decade ago, I would have described the experience as “challenging,” but in a way that I felt proud to navigate. It’s as if I needed to prove something to myself.

As I thought about re-engaging, I noticed something subtle, and it wasn’t fear or nervousness. Instead, there was a distinct knowing that I had grown past working with this type of leader.
I was asking a very different question.

Instead of asking: What can I learn from this kind of friction and how can I grow? I was asking, “Is this growth or misalignment?” That’s when I realized that not all friction is created equal. Friction can stall you or can sharpen you.

Not All Friction Is Created Equal

In leadership, and in life, there are at least two very different kinds of friction: Growth Friction and Misalignment Friction.

Growth Friction is an acquired taste, the kind of friction that you need to embrace when you’re seeking personal or leadership growth. It feels like vulnerability, risking rejection, and navigating uncertainty. This kind of friction expands you. There’s nothing like the emotional high of feeling things you didn’t want to feel and doing things you were too scared to do. This is called progress, and even when we dread it, something whispers to us that it’s our work to do.

This kind of friction shows up when you’re raising your standards, reinventing your life, entering a bigger conversation, and making change that matters. If you want to grow, you learn how to build the skill of staying with it. You toughen up, become thick-skinned, more forgiving, and quietly effective. If you get a taste for that which is difficult, you start to confuse misalignment friction with growth friction.

Misalignment Friction is the kind of friction most of us misinterpret. It feels like pushing uphill with a person, overriding a system, managing someone else’s ego, over-explaining your value, subtle dread before the conversation even starts. Misalignment Friction has you compromising your standards and over-compensating for someone else’s disagreeableness. Misalignment Friction doesn’t expand you. It drains you.

And here’s the trap:

If you’ve trained yourself to “push through discomfort,” you might override this signal… and stay too long. You’ll be living from the old story that you need to push through, make exceptions, and tolerate the intolerable.

How to Tell the Difference

The distinction between Growth Friction and Misalignment Friction isn’t always obvious in the moment. Both feel uncomfortable. Both can involve strong personalities, ambiguity, and pressure.

So how do you know?

Growth Friction asks you to rise.
Misalignment Friction asks you to contort.

Let’s make that practical:

Growth Friction says: “This is hard, and I’m becoming more clear, more capable, more grounded.”Misalignment Friction says: “This is hard, and I’m becoming more confused, more depleted, or less myself.”Growth Friction sharpens your thinking.Misalignment Friction has you over-explaining and second-guessing.Growth Friction builds capacity.Misalignment Friction burns capacity.

One expands your leadership.
The other erodes your standards.

The cost of getting it wrong matters more than it seems.
When leaders misinterpret misalignment as growth, they don’t just drain themselves—they create execution risk.

They:

tolerate unclear expectationsdelay necessary conversationsover-accommodate difficult behaviorand normalize dysfunction in the name of “being adaptable”

And slowly, almost invisibly, standards drift.

Not because leaders don’t care.
But because they’ve mistaken endurance for leadership.

The Question That Changes Everything

So instead of asking:

“How do I push through this?”

Try asking:

“What is this friction asking of me—growth or alignment?”

That single question can save you months of wasted energy, compromised standards, and conversations that should never have been negotiated in the first place.

The post When Friction Isn’t Growth: A Leadership Distinction That Changes Everything appeared first on Marlene Chism.

An employee is sent home for repeated reliability issues. Instead of working through the leader who made the decision, the employee calls the founder.

The founder knows the employee’s history and remembers the early years. He understands the pressures of work, fatigue, and family responsibilities. His first instinct isn’t structure. It’s sympathy.

Then comes the sentence that explains almost everything: “We’re like family.”

The pride behind the phrase

In more than 20 years as a consultant, I’ve noticed a pattern in certain types of businesses, especially family-owned, founder-led, and franchise organizations: many strongly identify with “being like family.”

This identity holds a lot of pride. It suggests care, flexibility, trust, loyalty, and a willingness to go the extra mile. At its best, this culture is a strength. People help each other. Leaders know their employees’ stories. There’s warmth, history, and belonging that often large organizations struggle to maintain. Trouble emerges when family values conflict with business reality.

When care blurs authority

Without clarity, the “we’re like family” operating system creates conflict. For example, a founder builds a successful business over many years and eventually a new leader emerges in the succession plan. Sometimes that person is a relative or next-generation partner. On paper, the authority structure looks clear, but in daily practice, the old relationships still carry more weight than the new roles.

An employee with a long history in the company starts having reliability, behavior, or performance issues. The current leader addresses the issue. The employee doesn’t like the decision, so instead of working through the leader, the employee goes back to the founder.

The founder’s first instinct is compassion. But when compassion allows employees to bypass their manager, clarity erodes, authority weakens, and accountability breaks down.

The drama triangle at work

In that moment, the Karpman Drama Triangle emerges. The founder unintentionally steps into the rescuer role. The employee is positioned as the victim. The current leader is positioned as the persecutor. Suddenly, what should have been a clear performance coaching conversation becomes workplace drama.

The presenting problem looks like employee accountability, but the root problem is leadership clarity: Who’s really in charge? Who has decision rights? What happens when an employee bypasses their manager? Are top leaders aligned before they respond? Is compassion being used to support accountability, or to avoid it?

These questions matter because employees are always watching.

Employees are always watching

When one employee bypasses a leader and gets rescued, the precedent is set. Others learn that the leadership structure is optional. They discover that history matters more than performance. They see that accountability depends on who you know. They come to understand that if you don’t like an answer, you can simply appeal to someone with more emotional history.

That’s not family. That’s workplace drama.

The problem with “we’re like family” is not the caring. Caring is human. The problem is when caring becomes a substitute for clarity. In healthy families, love may be unconditional. In healthy businesses, employment is based on agreements: reliability, behavior, performance, trust, and the health of the business.

A better agreement: care, clarity and standards

A healthier culture does not require leaders to care less; it requires them to clarify more. Clarity has to start at the top, because accountability doesn’t survive without it.

Top leaders in any type of organization need to define decision rights before a crisis, not during and not after. They need to agree on how performance issues will be handled. They need to decide what happens when an employee goes around a manager. They need to speak with one voice, especially when emotions are high.

A lack of clarity is the first breakdown in accountability. The current leader wonders, “Do I really have authority?” The founder wonders, “Am I being too hard or too soft?” The employee wonders, “Who do I need to persuade?” The team wonders, “Why are we expected to follow standards that others can negotiate?”

The better path is to replace vague family language with clear leadership agreements that include a both-and mindset: Both family values and business priorities.

For example: “We care about you, and we also have standards.”

“We want to understand what is happening, and we will work through the proper leadership channel.”

“We are willing to support you, and we will not bypass the person responsible for managing this issue.”

Businesses that operate from family values have a real opportunity. They can keep the best parts of family culture: loyalty, care, history, generosity, and belonging. But they must pair those values with structure, role clarity, and accountability.

“We’re like family” feels warm. But “we lead with care, clarity, and standards” builds a lasting business.

This article was first published on SmartBrief for Leaders.

The post When Workplace Loyalty Undermines Accountability appeared first on Marlene Chism.

I recently attended my 50-year high school reunion.

Like many people, I approached it with mixed emotions. There was curiosity, nostalgia, anticipation, and perhaps a quiet awareness that reunions are never really about the event itself. They are about time. Identity. Memory. Aging. Loss. Perspective.

Out of more than 300 classmates, nearly 60 have already passed away. That realization alone changes the atmosphere of a 50-year reunion.

At some point, the event stops being about popularity, accomplishment, appearance, or status and becomes something much more profound: the simple awareness that the horizon is shorter than it once was, and that everyone present is fortunate to still be here.

Many people dread reunions beforehand. They wonder:
Do I even have anything in common with these people anymore?
I haven’t seen most of them in five decades.

And in some ways, the answer is no.

Some people are still carrying old identities.
Some have not grown very much.
Some have achieved remarkable levels of success but very little depth.
Some are still trying to prove something.
Some are still trapped in old stories about who they are supposed to be.

But underneath all of that is a deeper truth.

As Eckhart Tolle once suggested, whether in seven years or seventy, all of us eventually become dust.

Oddly enough, that reality gives people far more in common than their careers, accomplishments, politics, wealth, appearance, or social standing ever could.

At a 50-year reunion, people begin to recognize that life has humbled everyone in some way.

No one escapes loss.
No one escapes disappointment.
No one escapes aging.
No one escapes uncertainty.

Some people lost spouses.
Some lost dreams.
Some lost health.
Some lost confidence.
Some quietly rebuilt themselves after life fell apart.

And suddenly, the old labels begin to matter less.

The athlete.
The outsider.
The beauty queen.
The rebel.
The brain.
The shy one.
The popular one.

Time has a way of softening those identities, even when people still cling to them.

What becomes more visible over time is character.

Wisdom.
Kindness.
Humor.
Resilience.
Self-awareness.
Presence.

Ironically, by this stage of life, perfection becomes far less impressive than humanity.

Maybe that’s the hidden gift of a 50-year reunion.

Not reliving the past.
Not measuring who won or lost.
Not proving who became successful.

But recognizing, perhaps for the first time, that beneath all the stories and identities, people are far more alike than different.

Human beings, briefly here, doing their best with a complicated life.

The post What a 50-Year Reunion Reveals appeared first on Marlene Chism.

Learning to lead feels difficult for the same reason learning to dance does; you’re trying to perform before you’ve mastered the basics.

As a dancer, I’ve taken lessons in Tap, Ballroom, Latin, Lindy Hop, and West Coast Swing—and I see the same patterns in every beginner class.

Most beginners walk in carrying some level of insecurity.

They worry about being judged.
They feel clumsy.
They wonder if they’re holding others back.

And then there are a few who think they’re better than they are.

Leadership is no different. Every leader comes in with a different mix of ability—learning speed, coordination, confidence, and self-awareness. And they also bring different levels of desire and purpose, regardless of natural talent.

But here’s the distinction: Dancers understand something most leaders don’t.

1. The Basics Are the Foundation

In every dance class I’ve ever taken, we start with the basics, and not just once.

Over and over again.

At the time, it can feel repetitive—even unnecessary. Really great dancers keep returning to beginner classes to refine their fundamentals. Mediocre dancers avoid them—they think they’re above it.

I remember while taking a tap class, listening to the instructor walk us through the same foundational steps for what felt like the twentieth time. I was impatient. I wanted to get to the routines—the fun part, the impressive part. I remember thinking, “This is a waste of time.”

But then something shifted.

When we finally moved into a more complex sequence, the dancers who had dialed in the basics flowed. They stayed on beat. They adapted quickly.

The rest of us? We were a half-step behind, thinking too hard, missing cues, trying to keep up. That’s when it clicked: The basics weren’t slowing us down. The basics were the only thing making progress possible.

Leadership works the same way.

When leaders struggle, it’s often not because they lack intelligence, aptitude, or drive. It’s because they’ve skipped over the fundamentals:

Setting clear expectations (Carity)Addressing issues directly (Difficult Conversations)Managing conflict without reactivity (Capacity)Holding people accountable to agreed-upon standards (Measurement)Coaching for improvement and follow-through (Development)

Without these basics and a few others, everything else becomes harder than it needs to be.

2. Dancing and Leading are Not Checklist Activities

No dancer ever takes one class and says, “I’ve got it.” But leaders do this all the time. They attend a workshop. They read a book. They take one curated LinkedIn course. They get a certificate. They check the box, and then they move on—assuming the learning is complete.

Even senior leaders fall into this trap. They send their managers to complete a course, and assume the skill is handled, after all, there’s a “certificate” to prove learning took place. So, they continue to invest in one-and-done solutions, only to wonder why months later, there’s an execution problem.

Dancing isn’t a one-class event, or a six-week workshop, and neither is Leadership. it’s a practice. Over and over. Whether it’s dancing or leading, the moment you think you’ve “learned it” is often the moment your effectiveness starts to plateau.

3. Mastery Requires Practice—Especially When It’s Uncomfortable

One of the most difficult dances I’ve learned is Samba. (While I took the leap to compete in Argentina, the truth is, I’m just at the very beginning and continue to take lessons.) What I’ve since learned from staying with it, is you don’t improve by watching. Watching can give you awareness, but not skill or confidence. In dance and in leadership, awareness without practice is just intellectual entertainment.

You improve by doing—awkwardly at first. You miss a few steps. You get off beat. You feel exposed. And then, slowly, things start to click. All the hard work and expanding your comfort zone start to pay off. You feel confident and proud of yourself for overcoming your barriers.

Leadership follows the same path. You don’t get better at difficult conversations by avoiding them. You don’t build clarity by hinting or hoping people “just get it.” You don’t develop presence by staying in your comfort zone.

You get better by practicing—especially when it feels uncomfortable.

The Bottom Line

There was a moment a few weeks ago on the dance floor when everything felt easy. The music, the connection, and the rhythm felt like magic. It all clicked. I remembered a time when this particular dance would have been uncomfortable if not difficult. I said to my dance partner. “Wow, for all the work we do and all the difficulties we overcome in class, when we dance like this, it’s a reminder of why we do it.”

If leadership feels harder than it should… if conversations feel awkward… if things feel out of sync…It doesn’t mean you’re bad at leadership. It means you’ve skipped the fundamentals and the practice that make leadership work.

Leadership, like dance, isn’t about knowing more. It’s about practicing what matters—until it becomes second nature.

And once it does? That’s when everything starts to flow.

The post Why Learning to Lead is Like Learning to Dance appeared first on Marlene Chism.