Good morning and welcome to the Increase Your Impact Podcast. I'm Justin Sua, episode 2,100.

A nice little round number, 2,100 episodes. We're in. Let's get into it. Today we are talking about that conversation you're avoiding.

You know what I'm talking about. It's the one that you keep thinking about, but you keep pushing it to the side.

Maybe it's something you need to address with a player, a colleague. Maybe it's a family member, someone you love, a friend.

It nags you during the quiet moments. It weighs on you. Even when you are trying to pretend that it doesn't.

The principle or the truth is the longer you hold on to something, the heavier it gets.

Leadership isn't just about inspiring people when things are good.

It's about stepping into that tension when things are hard.

And it almost always includes a difficult conversation, whether it's given feedback,

setting a boundary, naming something that's been left unsaid, all of those things.

Those are the moments that define you as a leader.

And I know it's uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable for me.

It's uncomfortable for many of the best

leaders I've been around. You don't want to hurt people's feelings. You don't want to make it worse.

You don't want to, you might want to even try to convince yourself, oh, it's going to fix itself.

But that unresolved tension doesn't go away. It doesn't just dissolve. It actually does the opposite. It expands.

And avoiding that conversation doesn't make the issue go away either. It just makes you have to carry it

longer. And what may have started as a simple conversation actually becomes a burden that you hate bearing. Leaders lead

in. They recognize that discomfort is the price of clarity. That love and truth are not opposites. They're actually companions and that avoiding hard

things doesn't protect relationships. It actually weakens it. Just think about that. The hard

conversation you are avoiding is not protecting the relationship. It's actually weakening it.

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