Leadership is tough.  It’s not for the faint of heart.

When you are a leader not everyone is going to like you.  Hey, if you want everyone to like you, you should probably stay away from leadership and start giving away ice cream.

One of the toughest aspects of leadership is confrontation.  People need correction and directional shifts from time to time.  That requires confrontation.  The trouble is, because we often feel awkward and uncomfortable about confronting people, we are polarized at two ends of the confrontational spectrum.

Leaders can be rhinos or ostriches: Rhino leaders ram their people with what needs to change then leave them to recover from internal injuries.  Ostrich leaders bury their heads in the sand pretending nothing is wrong, hoping somehow everything will magically rectify itself.

Clearly neither is effective.

Leaders need to become “carefrontational”: confrontation done in a caring or loving fashion.

Let me tell you a story of a leader who wonderfully demonstrated carefrontational leadership with one of his “difficult’ employees…

This employee was very ambitious, self-centered, selfish, arrogant, and didn’t have great people or communication skills.  He was good at what he did, but he thought he was better than everyone else.  He wanted his boss’s job and did not hide that fact.  In fact, he wanted to be his boss’s boss.

My client is the owner of a very large company.  He is very supportive of this difficult person’s boss.  He is very supportive of her development as a leader as well.  Part of learning to lead is learning to lead difficult people.  So, the owner of the company thought it would be good for the three of them to go out for lunch and chat about a few things, after discussing the game plan with the difficult person’s boss.

At the lunch the difficult employee let loose on his boss.  Shockingly so actually.  It was unbelievable the things he said to his boss, in front of the owner.  The owner could not believe it.  The difficult employee’s boss did her best to respond, but she was aghast at what was going on.

The owner helped wrap things up and indicated that they both clearly had to figure out how to work through this, and encouraged them to do so.

It was a few days later in the privacy of his office he demonstrated brilliant carefrontation.

He invited the difficult employee to come in and close the door.  He then asked him how he thought the lunch went.  Surprisingly, he thought it went really well.  The owner was shocked – clearly this guy did not get it.  So, he asked if he could share his perspective.  The employee, of course, said yes.

The owner told him the lunch was absolutely terrible.  He told him that he needed to embrace what he was about to tell him whether he was still working here or elsewhere.  He told him he would not progress in his career or in life if he did not embrace what he was about to hear.

The owner then explained to him how not to talk to his boss; how not to behave in the office; how not to communicate with others.  He also told him in no uncertain terms how he impacts other people in the office.  He told him he would never, ever be promoted if he continued to behave the way he had been behaving.  He outlined what acceptable behaviour looks like as it pertains to his relationship with his boss, and the other workers in the office.

He didn’t pull any punches, but he did it in a fashion that was in the best interest of the employee and the company.  He did it in a caring fashion.

This leader practiced carefrontation when it would have been easier to simply fire this employee.  However, the owner believes in helping his employees grow – and that’s why people love to work for him.

And you know what?  The difficult employee is not so difficult anymore.  That carefrontation marked the beginning of a significant change in his life and his work.

Wholehearted leaders are carefrontational because it grows great people and great organizations.