There is a dangerous idea floating around the workplace: If you care about employees, you should avoid making them uncomfortable.
That sounds compassionate. Sometimes it is. Other times, it is managerial cowardice disguised as servant leadership.
Leaders who avoid difficult conversations leave people guessing. And capable employees miss opportunities to improve because nobody respected them enough to tell them the truth.
Steve Jobs addressed this tension in a 2008 Fortune interview. Describing his responsibility as Apple’s CEO, he said:
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.
That line lands differently today. Employees are exhausted. Teams are navigating constant change, artificial intelligence is rewriting jobs, and many managers are leading people they rarely see in person.
Yet the essential leadership decision remains the same: Will you prioritize comfort over hard conversations, or will you help push people to grow and become better?
Challenge people and clear the path
Jobs’s full explanation deserves more attention than the famous quote. He described his job as bringing different parts of Apple together, clearing obstacles, securing resources for critical projects, and pushing talented people to improve.
That changes the equation considerably. A leader cannot demand exceptional work while withholding the information, authority, time, or tools required to produce it.
Before questioning an employee’s performance, a leader should ask:
- Have I made the expected result clear?
- Have I explained why it matters?
- Does this person have the authority and resources to deliver?
- Did I provide useful feedback before the problem became serious?
- What obstacle have I failed to remove?
Give feedback people can actually use
Telling someone to “step it up” doesn’t make them better. When having crucial conversations with employees, useful feedback is required, but it must be timely and specific. It describes the behavior, explains its effect, and establishes what better performance looks like. The conversation should leave the employee with a path forward rather than a bruised identity.
This matters even more when work is changing quickly. Employees cannot develop new judgment, adapt to unfamiliar technology, or take intelligent risks if every mistake becomes evidence that they do not belong.
The real test of leadership
Making people better is not something leaders do to employees. It is something they pursue with them.
That requires leaders to see potential, name the gap honestly, provide support, and remain accountable for the environment they create. It also means recognizing when someone cannot or will not meet the standard. Human-centered leadership does not require carrying persistent underperformance forever. It requires handling it clearly and fairly.
Jobs’s quote still holds up, provided leaders understand the responsibility hidden inside it. Your job is not to keep everyone comfortable. Your job is to create the conditions in which capable people can do meaningful work, hear the truth, and become more than they were when they arrived.
My advice? Think of one person on your team who is capable of more. Have the conversation you have been postponing, but enter it with this question: “What support or obstacle removal do you need from me to reach the standard we both know you can meet?”
—Marcel Schwantes
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This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com.
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