Scott McInnesFounder and Director, Inspiring Change · 20+ Years Helping Leaders Build Stronger Cultures, More Human Communication and Embed Lasting Change | Founder | Keynote Speaker | Podcast Host

Managerial Avoidance + Difficult Conversations are Affecting Organisational Cultures Negatively

3 Feb 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:01

Chief People Officers say managers avoid difficult conversations, hurting company culture. Reframing these talks as "development" or "support" conversations reduces fear. A chronic lack of self-awareness in managers is the root cause, making their role pivotal to cultural change.

Chapters

We found, and we heard from CPOs, that a really big challenge when it comes to building strong culture, and particularly around the behavioral aspects of leadership, is a lot of managerial avoidance. People not necessarily being willing to have the difficult conversation. And I wonder that maybe even branding it as a tough conversation, a difficult conversation, actually already sets the scene for the manager as being, oh, this is gonna be an absolute nightmare. You know, they're gonna go mad, they're gonna cry, they're gonna shout and scream at me. Whereas actually, if we perhaps called it a development conversation, a support conversation, a conversation that's about you being a better version of you, and perhaps just holding up a mirror to help you see and understand a behavior that you might not even realize you've got. I'm very long in the tooth at doing this stuff. And the one thing that I found over every team I've worked with, every session I've run, every one-to-one I've had, self-awareness is in incredibly short supply. So people just might not even realize that they're doing this stuff. So the role of managers is absolutely key.