Difficult Leadership Situations: When Routine Is No Longer Enough

Underperformance is uncomfortable because it forces a manager to look closely.

Are expectations clear? Are they realistic? Are skills or experience missing? Is there a lack of commitment? Or is someone expected to deliver under conditions that simply do not allow the required performance?

This distinction is not academic. A capability issue needs a different response from a lack of commitment. An unrealistic expectation does not become more realistic merely because it is expressed more forcefully.

If what can reasonably be expected is clear and performance still falls short, leadership is required: name the issue, make expectations specific, agree support and then check what changes.

Waiting too long helps neither the employee nor the team.

Critical feedback, crossed boundaries or conflicts do not reliably resolve themselves when given more time. They usually become larger.

Clarity is not the same as harshness.

A good difficult conversation identifies what has been observed, the effect it has and what needs to change. It does not require sharpness for its own sake. But it does require a message that does not have to be guessed afterwards.

It becomes complicated when anger, defensiveness or personal accusations enter the conversation. Both things matter then: take the response seriously and still remain focused on the actual issue.

You may find that problems are escalated early, decisions repeatedly referred back for reassurance, or tasks never truly completed. Eventually, the thought arises: If I do not do it myself, it will not happen.

This is precisely where a systemic perspective helps.

When you take over a task under time pressure, you solve a problem for the moment. When you provide an immediate answer, you help. When you completely rewrite a draft, you protect quality.

Useful in the short term. Over time, however, a learned pattern can develop.

If you ultimately make the decisions, provide the solutions or correct results so extensively that only your own version remains, the incentive for someone else to take full responsibility decreases. Not out of malice. Not as a game. Both sides have simply learnt how the system works.

An appeal to “Please be more proactive” is not enough.

Greater ownership develops where responsibility genuinely remains. Provide support without taking over the solution. Do not reclaim every decision. Do not correct every result until it looks like your own.

Development arises not only from giving responsibility, but also from not taking it back too soon.

Not every disagreement is a challenge to authority.

Employees may criticise decisions. They may hold a different view. They may see risks that the manager has overlooked.

It is different when agreements are repeatedly ignored, decisions undermined or boundaries continually crossed.

The issue is no longer a difference in perspective, but commitment and accountability.

Understanding the other person's perspective and setting clear boundaries are not mutually exclusive. Leadership sometimes has to make clear what behaviour is expected in future and what will happen if nothing changes.

Leadership never takes place in a vacuum.

You are expected to demand performance while resources are lacking. Your own management expects rapid results while giving you very little authority to decide. Other departments block a solution, follow different priorities or send conflicting signals.

A manager can spend a long time trying to compensate for the problem through ever greater personal effort.

A systemic perspective shifts the question:

What can genuinely be resolved at my level, and what needs to be decided or changed elsewhere?

Good leadership does not mean personally absorbing every organisational contradiction. Sometimes it means making the contradiction visible, requesting resources or no longer avoiding an escalation.

This is not always the most comfortable perspective, but it is often a very useful one.

Under pressure, some managers increase control. Others postpone the clear conversation. Still others take over tasks because they want to secure the result. Some try to accommodate every interest simultaneously until hardly any decision remains.

These responses are understandable. That is precisely why they persist so stubbornly.

The decisive question is not: Who is to blame?

It is: Which of my responses helps me in the short term while reinforcing, over time, the very pattern I want to change?

This does not hand the problem back to the manager alone. On the contrary, it reveals which part of the system is actually within your control.

Some situations do not end with the conversation.

An escalated conflict, an unpleasant staffing decision or a situation in which you later feel you were too harsh or too lenient can influence the next leadership situation.

You may then become more cautious, controlling or conflict-averse without consciously choosing to do so.

Reflection can therefore be worthwhile not only before difficult situations, but especially afterwards: What happened? What was helpful? What would I do differently today? And what do I specifically not want to carry unnoticed from this experience into the next situation?