You hate confrontations with employees. They only seem to make things worse. Sometimes you even end up firing an employee. For these reasons, you generally avoid giving employees negative feedback unless it’s absolutely necessary. When it comes to small performance issues, you don’t come down like a ton of bricks; instead, you hint at a problem, making suggestions that will indirectly improve the situation—you hope. Sometimes if the problem seems relatively insignificant, you just let it slide. Yes, some employees take advantage of this, but you still hesitate to push too hard because you don’t want to make a scene.

Those Dreaded Confrontations

The typical hands-off manager ...

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