Patience Can Quietly Become Avoidance

Patience is usually a good thing. People make mistakes. They have bad days. They deserve opportunities to learn, recover and correct course. But I've learned that patience can quietly become something else.

Avoidance.

Sometimes we tell ourselves we're giving someone more time when, if we're honest, we're really postponing a conversation we don't want to have. I've done it. I've noticed a problem with someone's performance or behaviour and thought, I'll give it another week. Then another. Maybe they'll figure it out. Maybe things will improve on their own. Maybe I won't have to have that uncomfortable conversation after all.

Occasionally, that works. More often, the problem simply gets heavier. A behaviour becomes a pattern. Frustration grows. Other people notice. Silence begins to look like acceptance. And eventually, the conversation we were trying to avoid becomes considerably more difficult than the one we could have had weeks earlier. This isn't only a leadership problem. We do it in friendships, families and relationships too. We avoid saying something because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings. We don't ask the question because we're afraid of the answer. We convince ourselves we're keeping the peace.

Sometimes we are. But sometimes we're protecting our own comfort and calling it compassion. That's a distinction worth examining. Patience gives people room to grow. Avoidance gives problems room to grow. They can look remarkably similar from the outside. Which is why every now and then, when I find myself saying, I'll give it a little more time, I've learned to ask myself another question:

Am I being patient—or am I hoping this becomes someone else's conversation?

— Jason Alderson