Avoiding the problem won't solve it.

But this might.

I avoid confrontation.

It’s how I was raised. In my family, we never fought. We just stopped talking to each other - until it became inconvenient. Then we started talking again.

It’s an imperfect solution.

And not one you can sustain in the workplace. Problems don’t disappear just because you avoid talking about them.

I don’t know what I hate more - the confrontation itself, or what I put myself through in the lead-up to it. What do I say? How do I say it? What if they get angry? What if they ask questions I can’t answer? What if they say [whatever the worst-case scenario response might be]?

That’s the worst part. You can never anticipate exactly what someone will say in response. I’m not known for snappy comebacks in tense situations - I’ve never been able to channel my inner Hawkeye Pierce.

Which doesn’t mean I never think of a comeback. I do. Always way too late, though.

So conversations can last for years in my head - as one day in the shower, I think of the perfect retort to something someone said in 1998.

I’ve lost many hours of sleep in anticipation of a tense talk.

Which brings me to Sam.

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Sam missed a deadline. It was a big deal: he neglected to supply the data we needed for the VP’s monthly executive team meeting.

Without his data, the VP was without some key figures the c-suite folks use to make decisions.

The c-suite folks were not happy. The VP even less so.

She was furious. She called and blasted our department head, who called my boss and blasted him, who called and blasted me.

As he should have. The team I led was responsible for that monthly report. It was my reputation taking the hit for the failure.

Common wisdom suggests I should then have blasted Sam.

However.

Sam didn’t report to me, but was a key part of my team’s main deliverable. I had responsibility for the outcome - but limited authority over his work.

We couldn’t let it happen again. Which meant I had to have a talk with Sam.

My brain settled into its familiar-but-excruciating habit of overthinking every word, imagining every argument, testing out various tones, trying to anticipate every pushback.

There had to be a better way to do this.

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I set Sam aside for a minute. If I removed him from the equation - what was the problem?

Our monthly report was incomplete. Why was that a problem?

The VP didn’t have data she needed for her monthly check-in with the CEO and his compadres.

Why was that a problem?

They use that data to make decisions: what’s trending that we need to address, what have we not been paying enough attention to, what’s emerging that we need to keep an eye on.

Why was that a problem?

Leadership couldn’t solve what they couldn’t see.

THIS was the problem: missing data meant less-informed decisions that could hurt the business.

At that moment, it stopped being about what Sam did or didn’t do. Regardless of how it happened, this was the result - and we needed to ensure it didn’t happen again.

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And it was a solvable issue. It was just a matter of getting there.

Starting with Sam would send the conversation down a familiar path: what he did, how it landed, and why it was a problem… which delayed the fixing it part.

What if I reversed the order?

Instead of accusing Sam, I’d enlist him to help figure out a way to avoid it happening again.

So I framed it this way:

“The executive team is missing the data they need for the monthly strategy session. Without it, they can’t make needed changes to improve performance. I’m hoping you and I can figure out what happened so we can avoid it in the future.”

The “we” was the key.

Instead of treating this as a Sam problem, I framed it as a breakdown in the process. My ultimate goal wasn’t to assign blame - it was to make sure the executive team had what they needed going forward.

This felt like a smarter way to get to the solution. And a whole lot less stressful.

Was I letting Sam off the hook to make things easier on me?

Some might see it that way.

But I reasoned that if the problem was bigger than Sam, starting with an accusation would change the conversation from figuring out what happened to defending what didn’t.

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And, as it happens, the problem wasn’t Sam.

At least, not all Sam.

His biggest mistake was not alerting us to the larger problem.

We walked through his monthly process for gathering the data: the people he reached out to, the systems he used, the timetable he worked from.

In doing so, I uncovered that the data warehouse he depended on had fallen prey to a technical bug. He’d tried all his contacts internally, and even reached out to the vendor to find out when he’d regain access.

As he talked through it, he realized that he should have clued us in to the problem as soon as he discovered it.

We discussed the process for the following month, gamed a few potential problem scenarios, and developed contingency plans for each. We hammered out who would need to know what by when if another problem arose so we’d have time to implement Plan B. (Or C.)

We left the conversation with a clear plan of action and who owned what.

There were no raised voices or bulging forehead veins. No one was giving anyone the silent treatment. We’d met the problem head on and worked out a plan to avoid future issues.

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The Sam Situation happened years ago - but I still use what I learned from it. Framing a situation as a shared problem rather than an accusation makes conversations more productive, sometimes surfaces deeper issues, and helps preserve working relationships.

Does it work for every situation?

No.

It works when your goal is to restore a system or fix a process.

It does NOT work when someone is causing harm to others or to the organization. Bullying, harassment, ethical lapses - those aren’t process issues, they’re boundary violations.

But in most cases, this is where I start: not with the person. With the problem.

With Sam, that meant delaying judgment long enough to understand what had actually gone wrong. We nailed the larger issue, and Sam identified his own role in it without me forcing it.

So now, whenever I find myself bracing for a hard conversation, I quickly move past the who to get to the what. What is the ultimate problem we need to solve?