How to Have the Hard Conversations You Keep Avoiding

The hard conversations you keep avoiding are costing you more than money. In this solo episode of Focus on the Fun Stuff, I unpack why business owners avoid difficult conversations - with team members, clients, and ourselves - and the four-step approach I now use to have them quickly.

Inspired by Patrick Lencioni's The Motive, I talk through the shift from "reward-centred" to "responsibility-based" leadership, why most avoidance is a motivation problem rather than a skill problem, and the simple two-step test that tells you whether you're genuinely waiting for the right moment or just dodging the discomfort.

⏱️ In this episode:
– Why the conversations you're not having drain your energy, focus and money
– The Motive by Patrick Lencioni, and the one line that stopped me in my tracks
– The two-step test: are you waiting, or avoiding?
– My four steps for having the hard conversation — fast

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Focus on the Fun Stuff, the podcast for business owners who want to build a business that they actually love. I'm your host, Emma Mills, seven figure founder of MyPA, the UK's leading virtual PA support agency. And since 2008, MyPA has helped thousands of business owners to buy back their time, get out of the weeds, and focus on what matters most. And every week on the podcast, I'm sharing my own journey, live as it happens, and interviewing other business owners who've been exactly where you are now. And we're sharing practical tactics and real strategies to help you build a business that works for you, not the other way around.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

I think the number one reason why most business owners don't enjoy their business is not necessarily the wrong strategy, it's not burnout, it's not even money. I think it's the conversations that you are not having. And those conversations that you are not having lead to everything else, like the burnout, like the wrong strategy, like the money problems. And I've been guilty of it so much in my business, and when I haven't had the hard conversations, what has proceeded and come after it is inevitably hard times because you're just delaying all the things that you know you should solve. And today that is what I want to talk about and how I've solved it. I would bet that most business owners who are watching this right now have at least one unresolved conversation problem in their business that they know they should have but they're not having, and immediately, like I'm sure that you'll it'll either be related to a customer that you know you should have got rid of a long time ago, uh, the one who's not playing by your rules, not paying you enough, doesn't think you're worth it, but still uses you, whether it's the team member who's been on the team just for too long and you've never really like held them to account and you know that they're not good enough, but it feels more painful to have the conversation. And the real like the most painful bit is what it costs you, and I don't just mean in money, but when you have this kind of conversation like sat in your head, and I'm talking from a complete place of experience here, when you have that kind of conversation sat in your head, it drains your energy, it drains your focus, it drains your time, so it becomes really expensive, and ultimately it's gonna drain your money because not making these decisions quickly, not having these conversations, not resolving them, will cost you, will cost your peace and cost your business. So I think like if there's one skill business owners could should get better at this year, especially when there is so many things we we need to be considering now, are future businesses, AI, team, being lean, um, navigating different financial situations. Like there is one decision I think all business owners should 100% focus on is the speed to having the hard conversations. So if you just take 10 seconds right now, just to think for a minute, what is my version of that conversation? The thing that you think about on a Sunday night that gives you the Sunday scare is the things you think about when you wake up in the middle of the night or when you're in the car driving home, we will all have at least one of those things in the back of our mind that niggles us, that sits there, the conversation we don't want to have. I want you to pull that one to the front of your mind because we're gonna tackle it in this episode. And the worst part about this situation is that the conversation is nearly never as bad as everything that you think about it's gonna be in your head. And there is a book that has changed my life is a strong sentence. I appreciate that, but honestly, I um so I we're renovating a house at the moment and we're doing a lot of moving about from room to room, everything's covered in dust, and the other weekend we finally have started to put a second bedroom into existence. We've been living in one room for a really long time, and on this Sunday I was cleaning out our second bedroom, and we were chugging this piece of furniture away, and under it, I'm not even this sounds like a more dramatic than it needs to be, but there was a piece of furniture, and underneath it was some books, and I was clearing it out, and I saw this book and it was literally covered in dust, so I cleaned it off. I was like, Oh, I feel like um Matt on my team has read this book before, and I think some other people have mentioned it, and it's a pretty thin book. I was like, Do you know what? I'm gonna give it a go this afternoon. And honestly, I read the whole thing in this in the Sunday afternoon, it probably took me like 90 minutes, and it's a parable, um, so it's like a little story which explains why business owners avoid the hard conversations. Honestly, I would add it to your Amazon list, and summer's come in if you need a book for holidays. I appreciate it, it's not the sexiest book to have on a beach. It is The Motif by Patrick Lencioni. And Patrick Lencioni is um management consultant, his business goes into other businesses and helps leadership teams get stronger, better, more truthful with each other. He he overhauls culture in a business, and he wrote this book, The Motif, which is a parable of two leaders in a business. And one's one business is really struggling, and he gets helped by this other business owner who he's a bit jealous of and a bit um he wishes he was him, and he gets advice from this business owner who's doing really well. I've recommended it to a few people since, and every single time they've texted me back to go, wow, yeah, you're right, that book is as good as you said it was gonna be. And ultimately, what happens is the business owner who is struggling gets told by the business owner who is doing really well that his problem in his business is that he is focused on reward-centered leadership. And what that means is that there are a lot of business owners or people that reach higher levels of management or they become the MD or they start a business, and because they have spent so long either creating this thing or moving their way through the hierarchies of a business, we all know that absolute blood, sweat, and tears everybody needs to put into to build and grow a business. Because you've spent so long doing that, a lot of leaders will get to the point where they think, me being the owner of this business, like I get to get the rewards now. I want this business to make my life easier, which we all want, but they'll take it from a perspective of I don't really want to manage my team, I don't really want to, I really don't want to attend the teams with the meetings with my leadership team, so I'll kind of do it a bit half-bait. I don't really want to have this hard conversation over here because I'm the leader now, and I ultimately should be doing only the things that I enjoy. And what the book goes on to explain is that if that is your approach to leadership, that you are just in it for ultimately the rewards, you're always gonna have problems in your business, and you are always going to avoid the hard conversations because you think that that's not what you should be doing, that's not what all of this effort has led up to having to have the hard conversations. But the business owner who is absolutely smashing it, whose whose team are highly effective, the business is growing, he is operating under responsibility-based leadership, and what that means is they see the leadership in a business as like the job it actually is. And there was one line in the book which stood out to me so much. And the line is that if you think leadership, like if you think the thing is going to be hard or the job's gonna be hard or the conversation's gonna be hard, like that's exactly what leadership is, like it is meant to be hard, like stop the book is ultimately like stop complaining, like it is meant to be hard. And if if you don't want to do that, then you have to take the consequences of having less than average people on your team, having customers that you don't want to have, having a business that isn't really operating well. But the business owners who do the responsibility-based leadership, which is like my job is to solve all the difficult problems in this business, and I am gonna do them to the best of my ability, I'm gonna do them quickly, and as soon as these hard conversations need to happen, well, I'm gonna address them straight away because it's my job, and honestly, it's sung to me so much this book because there have definitely been times where I've just thought, Well, I just you know, I want this business to give me a nice life, I want to have a nice time, I don't really wanna like it's not fair, like that kind of not fair attitude, and this book completely woke me up to the hell are you going on about Emil? Like, it's meant to be hard, and like it's meant to be hard on a consistent basis, and that's why when you have when you do these things, you get much, much bigger rewards, but you have to do the hard things. So basically, Patrick Lencioni says in this book that leadership problems of having the hard conversations are not a skill problem, they're a motivation problem. Leaders know what they need to do, they just don't want to do it, which I honestly think can be true for so many of us at some point in the journey, and the reason they don't want to do it is because somewhere along the way they've completely confused the fact that being the business owner, being the leader, they think that's the price, but it's not. The price of being the leader is doing the work and having the hard conversations. So I think we've all had those conversations where we think that avoiding the conversation now is the safe choice, but all it's doing is cuing up problems for the future, queuing up something that is going to be worse the longer that you leave it. And you know, we tell ourselves all these kinds of stories like well, we want to protect the culture of the team or we don't want to offend people or or we're protecting a client relationship, but actually all we're doing in these moments is protecting ourselves. And the reality is like the thing that I really I want you to get from this episode, we're protecting ourselves from something that inevitably is a 20-minute period of our life, like these conversations, these really hard things that we put off for so long that we keep in the back of our mind that we think, oh no, no, no, I know that's a problem, I will get to it later. They're all inevitably 20-minute things in our lives that will be over before we know it. But we're trying to protect ourselves from that discomfort rather than just getting it done. So I think we all know the cost of not having these conversations, like even if we are dressing it up as something else, we all know the cost of it. Number two, I want to help you identify whether you are avoiding the conversation versus the old line of I'm just waiting for the right moment. Because a lot of the time it's kind of strategic, well, I'm just waiting for the right moment, I'll do it at the end of the day, I'll do it on Friday so that goes into the weekend, I'll wait till I have the conversation, you know, I've got the next call button with the client. A lot of these things can just be strategic avoidance of it. So, the problem that you thought about at the beginning of the episode, the one that comes to mind and the thing that you know you're avoiding, I've got a two-step test for you. If you have thought about this problem in the past week more than like three times or more, you are avoiding doing something about it. Like it's really simple. Like if you know that it's come up in your mind and you've pushed it away again, like three times or more, you are definitely starting to delay or avoid. Step number two, which I think so many of us can relate to, if you think about this thing you're avoiding, and it creates a physical response, like your stomach tightens, you start to like feel on edge, you feel a bit sweaty, that's fear. Like that's that's not a timing issue, that's not waiting for the right moment. That's that's a I don't really want to deal with this situation. I think those two things will immediately just kind of call out the bull on whether you're kind of delaying something because it's better for everybody, or whether you do you're delaying it because it's actually just an easier thing to do right now. And the whole point of this episode is like I want to help you get over these conversations because even recently, like I've had the same thing where there's a conversation I know we need to have, and my ability to get to it quicker is happening much quicker now. And all of the people that I admire most in business, all the people that I've interviewed on my podcast since 2024, like they all have this amazing ability to deal with things very quickly and to have the hard conversations very quickly, and because of that, their business is a success as a result of it. And I'm not just talking about monetary wealth here, but like they have a team that they love to be with, they're all high-performing team members because they've they've quickly because they've quickly had the conversations, they've got customers that they enjoy to serve, they've got a business that works for them because they've they've very quickly dealt with things that they needed to deal with. So I just want you to know that the right moment is almost never perfect. You can always put it off another 10 minutes, another week. The right moment is never gonna feel like the right moment, but the right moment is definitely right now. But the wrong moment is to put it off because that moment in six months' time just accumulates with it a whole load of baggage and other problems and things that you could have solved so much more quickly. In 2024 and 2025, and I've talked about this at great length on Mike Jones's Better Happy podcast, I was super disillusioned with my business, and it like it's so much now how different my energy is in 2026. Like the difference is absolutely striking. Like for me, I can just gosh, like I'm back in control now, like I know what we're doing with the business, I know where we're going. But when I look back, one of the biggest reasons that I was disillusioned with my business in 24 and 25 is because I wasn't having the hard conversations. I was thinking it would get better. I was thinking that oh, that they'll they'll put a bit more effort in. I was thinking that oh well we'll just keep this client because we're trying to protect revenue and we don't have our rhythmic marketing sorted out. They all came from procrastination and fear and just trying to keep the peace and try rather than actually going, do you know what? I know what kind of business I want to create, I know where my standards are, I know what's possible, I've set the vision and I'm steadfast on the vision. And rather than that, I spent most of my 24 and 25 settling because it felt easier than having the hard conversations, and it's definitely something I regret now, but I've learned from it. And now my ability to have the hard conversations 2026 is absolutely like from zero to a hundred. Like, I I now know as soon as in your gut, as soon as your their name comes into your head, like as soon as you're thinking about it, it's a problem. These things never get better. I once watched Nigel Bottrell uh interview Charlie Mullins at a convention that we that they had, and he was asked on stage, like, when do you know that it's the right time to remove someone from your team? When's the right time to hire someone? And his response was just like, as soon as the thought comes into your head, that is the time to get rid of them. And I think that that like analogy, that method can be applied to any hard problem in your business. As soon as it comes into your head, you need to do something about it. It might be having a difficult conversation, it might be removing somebody, just having the conversation as soon as it comes into your head. So you might be thinking, yeah, well, Emma, no, I know this stuff that I'm avoiding. There are conversations I should have, I know I should have them, I still don't want to have them. Can you help me have the conversations? And honestly, these are the four steps that I apply now to when I'm like, oh, that's a problem, I need to have the conversation. So my most important step number one is that when I am gonna have the conversation, whether I'm gonna grab somebody immediately, whether it's booked into the diary, I don't think about the conversation prior. And that's not like that I'm not gonna prepare, but I think it's so easy to build up in your head how it's gonna go, what's gonna happen, how are they gonna react, what's gonna happen if I say this. I think it's really clear to just understand what your outcome is gonna be from this conversation, what you want. Do you want to give somebody a chance to improve? Are you gonna remove them? Do you want someone to stand their side of the story? Like, what's what is the outcome that you want from it? Just get really, really clear on that, and then I would not like I then don't think about that conversation prior to having it. That's that is the most important step for me. I just think, okay, that I need I need this conversation to end in them leaving. That's where it's going. Like that's it, done. I think that's been the most important step for me rather than the overthinking it. Number two is the language. It's not to waffle, it's not to fill space like silence with words either. I think the more direct you can be, so if it's with a team member, somebody that you need to let go, if it's a I've looked at this across the week, this isn't working. Unfortunately, our journey together today is coming to an end. Like, I just think you need to be as direct as possible on it. So don't think don't think about it pre-just get really clear on what the outcome needs to be and make the language as clear as possible. And I think as soon as you've said what you need to say, be really, really mindful of just stopping the conversation. And hard conversations, like they don't need to be emotional, aggressive, they just need to be factual and to the point. I know that people, some people listening to this podcast won't have this issue, like for them, it'll be a very easy conversation to have, but for so many business owners, you know, you know your staff intimately well, you know your clients intimately well, and there can be emotion with it. But for me, it's been really helpful to kind of elevate myself a couple of levels above that to go, this is a business. A business is like a puzzle. I need to get the people in the right seats, I need to get the right kind of clients, and anything that doesn't fit in the right place is only going to be a detriment to my future self, to the future bank account of the business, to the future team who don't like working around an underperforming team member, to the clients who who aren't um who we're not able to deliver our best to you because they're not right the right fit. I think when I look at it from a perspective of business is just a puzzle of getting the right place, the right things in the right places to make it work really well. That for me takes the emotion out of it because the emotion you might feel now is not as bad as the emotion you're gonna feel when you let this problem fester, and six months down the line you're having to deal with something much bigger. I think this topic today is a really important one because my mission in life is to help other business owners to focus on the fun stuff to enjoy their businesses, and I think the conversations that we're not having is one of the biggest levers to pull on that journey to enjoyment. And the cot the only conversations that I think we all regret as business owners is the ones that we don't have. Like, we don't regret the conversations where we've sorted the thing out, where we've had it even though it felt difficult. We regret the ones where we were gonna do the conversation on a Friday, Friday when it's now the weekend, you're feeling a bit cracked, you're like, I should have really sorted that out on Friday. Now I'm gonna have to figure it out next week. So here's what I want you to do like, what's that one conversation you know you've been putting off? Not the easy one, the one you are avoiding. The one that is living rent-free in your head as soon as you wake up in the morning. I want you to have it this week because the business that you went that you're gonna enjoy, the business where you can focus on the fun stuff, is living on the other side of that conversation.