Lowrie Beacham didn't like confronting people or making decisions that favored one staffer over another, including the time two of his people were vying to be in charge of the new fitness center.

    'Instead of having one bad day and getting over it, it went on for literally years,' he recalls. 'You just kick the can a little farther down the road -- 'Let's have a meeting on this next month' -- anything you can try to keep from having that confrontation.'

    Anytime his employees bristled at his gentle criticisms, he'd change the subject: 'You're getting to work on time; that's wonderful!' he'd say, 'Never mind that your clients say you're difficult to work with.'

    What resulted was a dysfunctional department, he admits, 'with no discipline, no confidence in where they stood, lots of scheming and kvetching, backstabbing.' He gave up his management role. 'I'm extremely happy not managing,' he says.

    The bad manager tends to conjure images of the blood-vessel-bursting screamer looking for a handle to fly off. But these types are increasingly rare. Far more common, and more insidious, are the managers who won't say a critical word to the staffers who need to hear it. In avoiding an unpleasant conversation, they allow something worse to ferment in the delay. They achieve kindness in the short term but heartlessness in the long run, dooming the problem employee to nonimprovement. You can't fix what you can't say is broken.

    'In a knowledge economy, where work is more complex and interdependent, people need feedback more -- what they particularly need feedback on are on things that are difficult to give: one's interpersonal style,' says David Bradford, a lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

    John Hardcastle, formerly in financial reporting, was one of the countless people who, surveys show, want to learn and improve. But every time he had to submit a report and asked for feedback, his boss couldn't say anything negative. 'He would visibly dance around the aspects of my reports that needed improvement,' he says. 'I never really knew exactly where I stood.'

    Boses who want to avoid any discomfort, 'use generalities so people really don't know what they're talking about,' says Laura Collins, an HR consultant. Instead, they tend toward one-size-fits-all comments: 'pay a little more attention to detail' and 'improve the way you communicate' and 'develop better organization skills.'

    Those were the ones Ryan Broderick, formerly an assistant account executive in advertising, heard from a boss. The substanceless nature of his feedback stuck him with one of the worst performance-related torments: Being left to your own imagination. 'Hearing nothing is worse than hearing something,' he said.

    It makes one pine for the boss who throws venomous tirades. 'Those kinds of people may not control their emotions but at least they're honest about it,' says James Fuller, an IT project manager whose former boss didn't assign him any projects for six months and never hashed out why.
Such avoidance is a recipe for an employee blindsiding. During the year she worked for one such boss, Maxine Erlwein got glowing 90-day and six-month reviews, and held daily meetings with her boss to whom she'd tell her plans. Then, in the annual review, her former boss 'tried to claim my performance was not meeting any of the minimum requirements of the position,' she says. The stress leveled her appetite, memory and sleep. 'Nonconfrontational people will nurse a grudge,' she says.

    No one appreciates the deceptive peace and quiet. Lawrence Levine, program analyst, has witnessed a colleague spending much of his day on eBay, among other online time-killers. There's no doubt the supervisor saw it, too. It mystified the staff.

    'We all pondered in the absence of any action why the heck this person drawing a decent salary was allowed to do this stuff,' he says. 'The anger was that all the rest of us were evaluated on what we produced.'

    But John Traylor, a chief engineer who once experienced a similar frustration over a lazy colleague, sees a different side now that he's a conflict-avoiding manager himself. He hates to give an employee news that would 'crush his spirit.'

    He even once quietly arranged to have an employee transferred at the request of others. 'He could leave with the dignity of having been asked by higher levels to move to a more important project -- and I didn't have to confront the real issue,' he says.

    He concedes that his handling didn't help the employee improve. He also says that the management training he received from the company didn't teach him how to deal with such conflict. 'It would have been helpful,' he says.

    One IT manager at an insurance company who didn't want to be identified as the guy who confirmed our worst fears, also admits to a tendency to avoid battles. But he blames a system in which such clashes just cause HR headaches.

    He wishes it were otherwise. 'I'd rather be mean once to one person than cause this unrest across the team,' he says.

    As it stands, he adds, 'it's a horrible cycle, because now I have even more work to keep everyone else happy.'

    勞萊特•比查恩(Lowrie Beacham)以前不喜歡與別人正面發生沖突，或者作出使一名員工比其他員工獲得更多好處的決定，即使是他手下的兩名員工正在競爭新健身中心主管職務時也是如此。

    他回憶道，他完全可以在某一天把問題都說出來，然后完全忘掉它。但他沒有這樣做，這種狀況持續了數年的時間。每一次他都往后推一點──“下個月我們就這個問題開個會吧”──他會竭盡全力避免正面沖突的發生。

    每次員工對他溫和的批評表現出不滿時，他就會轉移話題：“你總是準時上班；這很棒啊！”他還會說，別把客戶抱怨你很難合作的話放在心上。

    比查恩也承認，這種管理風格的結果催生了一個渙散的部門：毫無紀律，員工對自己在部門中的表現和位置毫無信心，員工之間勾心斗角，而且個個牢騷滿腹。最后，比查恩辭去了管理職務。他說，非常高興再也不用管這些事情了。

    糟糕的經理往往會給人留下這樣的印象：脾氣暴躁、吹毛求疵。但是這種類型的經理日益稀少。更常見、也更具欺騙性的是那些絕不會批評本該受批評員工的管理人員。為了避免不太令人愉快的談話，他們在拖延中令事態不斷惡化，在短期內獲得了為人和藹的名聲，長此下去卻有無情之嫌，因為問題員工在這樣領導的帶領下不會有任何長進。如果不把問題說出來，又怎么能去解決它呢。

    斯坦福大學商學院(Stanford Graduate School of Business)的講師大衛•布拉德福特(David Bradford)說，在知識經濟時代，日常工作更加復雜，也更加依賴彼此的合作，大家需要更多的反饋──特別需要反饋的方面恰恰是那些難以給出反饋的方面，如與人交往的風格。

    約翰•哈德卡斯特勒(John Hardcastle)之前從事財務報告工作，他很想在工作中不斷學習和提高（調查顯示，很多人都是如此）。但是每次他提交了財務報告并希望獲得反饋時，他的上司卻不會作任何負面評價。哈德卡斯特勒說，老板很明顯地繞開那些需要改進的地方。哈德卡斯特勒因此從來都不清楚自己的表現到底如何。

    人力資源顧問勞拉•科林斯(Laura Collins)說，那些希望避免任何不悅的老板總會用一些籠統化的措辭，這樣下屬根本不知道他們在說什么。他們會給出適合任何人的評論，比如“要更加注意細節”、“提高與人溝通的能力”以及“培養更好的組織技巧”等。

    曾擔任財務主管助理的萊恩•布朗德利克(Ryan Broderick)就曾聽到過這樣的反饋。前老板這種毫無實質內容的反饋令他陷入了職業生涯最痛苦的折磨之一：一切全靠自己想像和揣測。他說，聽到毫無實質內容的評價比挨批評更加糟糕。

    有一點會讓人們想念暴跳如雷地批評員工的老板。IT項目經理詹姆士•福勒爾(James Fuller)說，這類老板雖然不怎么會控制情緒，但是至少他們對員工的態度很誠實。福勒爾的前老板在六個月內沒有給他安排任何項目，也從來沒有告訴他這樣做的原因。

    這種回避問題的方式倒是避免員工一葉障目的良方。默克西內•額爾維恩(Maxine Erlwein)曾為這種“和事佬”老板工作過一年，在前三個月和半年的測評中她獲得非常棒的評價，她每天都與老板開會，匯報自己當天的計劃。但是在年度測評中，她的前老板卻盡力表示，她的工作表現沒有達到所在職位的最低要求。這種壓力讓額爾維恩寢食難安。她說，不愿與人發生沖突的人時間長了會讓人怨恨。

    沒有人對這種表面上的和睦與平靜感恩戴德。項目分析師勞倫斯•萊溫(Lawrence Levine)曾看到一名同事整天掛在eBay等消閑網站上無所事事。毫無疑問，他們的主管也知曉這個情況。這件事令員工們很疑惑。

    他說，主管并沒有就此采取任何行動，所有人都在想，為什么這個家伙整天無所事事還能拿不錯的薪水。大家之所以感到憤怒是因為其余所有人都是按勞取酬的。

    但約翰•泰勒(John Traylor)卻知曉老板這樣做的苦衷。他以前也曾因一名懶惰的同事有過類似沮喪經歷。泰勒自己就是一個盡量避免正面沖突的管理者，他不愿意向員工說出那些可能打擊后者精神的消息。

    他有一次甚至特意安排讓其他部門“請”走一位員工。他說，由于是被高層請走、做更重要的項目，這位員工可以很有尊嚴地離開。而且他也不用和他談真正的問題所在。

    他也承認，他的這種處理方式不利于員工的提高。他還說，他在公司接受的管理培訓沒有教授他處理這種問題的方法。如果有的話，應該會非常有用。

    一家保險公司的IT經理也承認他總是盡量避免正面沖突，但是他把這歸咎于體制，認為這樣的沖突只會在人事方面造成更多問題。

    他現在并不希望這樣。他說，他寧愿直接批評某個員工，也不愿令整個團隊感到不滿。

    他還說，正如眼下的狀況，這是一個令人討厭的循環，因為現在他需要做更多工作才能取悅每個人。