Do you ever have those moments where you know what you want to say, and you know you absolutely cannot say that? Your first instinct is to furrow your brow and ask WHAT?! because you know you can’t ask if they are joking. Or you want to tell them to shut their mouth and do their job, but you’re pretty sure that in 2025 you can’t really say that either. (If you really want to get right to the easy button, click here. I’ll send it right to you.)
So what do you do? You follow your grandmother’s advice. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. The problem is, that advice is leading you down a frustrating rabbit hole that leads to accepting sub par work or you doing it all yourself. Today we’re cracking open those Are you kidding me? moments to find the opportunity within.
Picture this, you’re sitting in a meeting with all of your peers trying to come up with a solution to a massive problem. (We’re talking, could lose customers or staff if we don’t get it right, level problem.) Your co-worker shares an idea that makes the rest of the room go quiet. No one wants to tell them their idea is dumb. You want to be a team player but there is no way you’re going with their approach. So, what do you do? Well, there are two ways people typically approach this, and yes, it follows that age old advice from your grandma.
Don’t say anything at all
You sit in silence trying hard not to make direct eye contact with the person who made the suggestion. If you just hold out long enough someone else will have to tell them it’s a bad idea, right? Wrong. When you’re silent you imply agreement with that first bad idea that is thrown out there. Here’s the truth, getting to the best solution takes multiple views of the problem and potential solutions. Meaning, you have to understand the impacts of each idea to know if it’s the right one. Which really means, if you’re the person who can look at the problem, and that bad idea, from a new angle, you could be the lynch pin in getting to the solution that feels like it was custom made for this situation.
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Just last week a client told me about how the nursing staff needed more communication at shift change. The nurses coming on for their shift were wasting valuable time trying to find all the details on each patient when they started their shift. They were sometimes spending 30 minutes making sure call buttons were working, figuring out what medications they’d had and when, and so on. In some cases if the patient wasn’t in their room they were spending even more time actually finding the patient.
The first solution proposed was to ask nurses to come in early or stay late and chat before they parted ways. My client saw several angles this didn’t work from. The direction wasn’t clear. It asked people to work without pay. There was no accountability to who, how, and what would be shared across shifts. By speaking up about these gaps, my client transformed this bad idea into something that would have patients feeling cared for and nurses feeling equipped and empowered as they started their shifts. Solutions that can benefit your customers and your staff is what you would want too right?
Just say something nice
The first half of grandma’s advice is something we women especially, take to heart. This is especially true when we’re trying to get outside the box ideas, and they go a little too far outside the box. For example, when another client wanted to increase engagement over the summer and her team asked to work part time. We don’t want to come across bossy (or other words starting with the same letter) so we just say something sweet like, Well, that might work. Are there any other ideas? You know exactly what you’re saying, there is absolutely no way we’re doing that. Someone please come up with something else quick! So you pat yourself on the back for saying it, nicely. Except, you didn’t say any of that. You passive aggressively moved on while essentially complimenting their idea. Passive aggression is not a strong foundation for your leadership.
Leaders are clear and direct in their communication. You can acknowledge a point you agree with while redirecting the person, or group, to an entirely new solution. So the next time someone suggests a 4 day work week to increase engagement, you can support their focus on work life balance and ask for other solutions that also support customer experience. After all, Brene Brown is absolutely right when she says, clear is kind.
So where’s my communication easy button?
The trouble in these OMG did he really just say that?! moments is that you want a fix. Most leaders want to just take control and pretend that idea never came up. But all that leads to is you taking on all of the mental load and shows your team you only like your ideas. Leaders in these awkward and frustrating situations influence through communication. The key to influential communication is curiosity. You could take that awkward silence to empower them to be accountable for every view of that problem. You could take that nicely worded side eye and actually increase trust on the team. Empowered employees who think strategically and gel as a team is what you really want, isn’t it?
I’ll admit, it takes time to master this influential communication skill. My clients spend months learning to be dynamic in their curiosity at the highest levels. But, you can put a few ‘get out of jail free’ cards in your pocket. I took the 7 most common leadership thoughts (that you were never say out loud) and translated them for you. Click here and grab your communication translation guide to get the strategic questions that develop trust, resilience, and critical thinking on the team through doing the work you assigned them in the first place.