Avoidance Is Expensive: Why I’m Re-Reading the Leadership Classics (Starting with Crucial Conversations)

Melissa Scheinfeld
Jan 28
3 min read

This year, I’m doing something that looks simple on the surface—but feels surprisingly meaningful in practice: I’m re-reading the fundamental leadership books that shaped me a decade ago.

After two decades of coaching leaders, I’ve noticed something: the same leadership gaps show up again and again—and I keep pointing clients back to the same handful of frameworks. I’m constantly referencing a core “canon.”

If I’m going to recommend these tools as essentials, I want to return to them with fresh eyes. I want to remember what I forgot, notice what I missed the first time, and re-earn my own confidence in how I teach them.

So I’m starting my year of re-learning with a classic: Crucial Conversations.

Why Crucial Conversations first?

Many of my clients are brilliant, high-performing leaders who moved up fast—often without formal leadership training, and sometimes without an HR department as a partner. They’ve learned through experience, grit, and good instincts.

When communication gets tense—when stakes are high, opinions differ, and emotions show up—those same leaders can get stuck.

When “crucial conversations” become a blind spot, it’s not a small gap-- it’s a structural one.

The most common myth I see in leaders

Here’s the belief that causes the most damage:

“I can either preserve the relationship, or be direct.”

This is the false tradeoff that drives avoidance. Avoidance, which is expensive-- in missed expectations, unspoken resentment, burnout, and culture drift.

A better question is:

What would it look like if directness were a way to build relationships—not threaten them?

The 3 places crucial conversations show up constantly

When leaders avoid clarity, three predictable outcomes appear.

1) Effectiveness suffers

Teams can’t execute without clear requests and honest feedback.

If you want a report by a certain date, you have to say so. If the quality isn’t there, you have to name it. When leaders hold back to “keep things smooth,” work becomes vague, performance becomes confusing, and resentment grows.

2) Delegation breaks and burnout grows

I hear leaders say they’re overwhelmed all the time—connected to work constantly, carrying too much, and trying not to disappoint people.

The fastest path to burnout is unclear delegation:

vague expectations
unclear timelines
no feedback loop
no boundaries

Being direct is often the most compassionate way to lead sustainably—because it prevents silent overwork and last-minute emergencies.

3) Psychological safety collapses into gossip

When direct conversations don’t happen, side conversations do.

Once an organization normalizes venting “around” someone instead of speaking “to” them, trust unravels fast. People start to sense the truth: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

Avoidance doesn’t keep relationships safe. It makes relationships fragile.

A framework I love: CPR (Content, Pattern, Relationship… then Process)

One of the most practical tools from Crucial Conversations is a simple sequence for navigating conversations that feel off.

Start here:

Content: is the icky feeling I'm having based on WHAT is being said?
Pattern: is this because of something that KEEPS HAPPENING over time?
Relationship: is the root that there is something BETWEEN US that we need to figure out?

And if you move through those layers and still feel stuck, you shift into Process—talking about the conversation itself:

“What outcome are we each hoping for?”
“When is the best time to have this conversation?”
“How do you want us to handle moments when we disagree?”

This is the move that turns conflict from reactive to constructive.

My biggest takeaway (and the phrase I’m keeping this year)

Avoidance is expensive. Conflict with clarity produces results.

Not perfect clarity—the kind that paralyzes decisions—but the clarity that creates a shared understanding before disagreement.

Because conflict itself isn’t the enemy. The enemy is conflict without understanding.

When people engage in conflict before they take the time to understand one another, it’s not conflict—it’s noise.

When we start with curiosity, build a shared pool of meaning, and then name our differences clearly? That’s where leadership gets real. That’s where trust strengthens. That’s where teams grow up.

If you’re leading a team right now and you feel the pull toward avoidance, consider this: the conversation you’re not having is already shaping the culture.

And I’ll be over here re-reading the classics—see you with the next one soon!