Why honest communication in business is harder than it should be.
I’ve been told I have a direct communication style.
That’s fair.
Whether that’s a strength or a liability depends entirely on who’s in front of me and what the situation requires. Communication isn’t judged by what you intend. It’s judged by how it lands. What feels like honest and transparent to me might feel abrasive to someone else.
That’s the challenge.
Directness only works if it’s situational
One of the biggest shifts for me over the last decade has been understanding that communication has to be situational. Speed, tone, posture, volume. All of it matters.
I’ve actively worked on this. I’ve rehearsed difficult conversations. I’ve role-played. I’ve stood in front of the mirror doing a slightly embarrassing “Wolf of Wall Street” routine before meetings where I knew the conversation mattered.
The stuff that happens in the moment is harder. But if you know a difficult conversation is coming, you’d be naïve not to prepare for it.
Most people aren’t used to unfiltered honesty. When someone says, “Here’s what I think. Here’s my truth,” it can feel confrontational simply because it’s rare.
As a society, we’ve spent years softening language and celebrating avoidance in the name of comfort. So when someone is direct, it feels arresting.
But that doesn’t automatically make it wrong.
What I learned from communication coaching
A few years back, I did some communication coaching because I’d had a few back-to-back situations where I believed I was having a straightforward conversation and was told I’d been aggressive or defensive. One example: a long-term client told me over a beer that he’d felt bullied by me on an early Zoom call.
Bullied. On Zoom.
My initial reaction was disbelief. But the common denominator was me. So instead of deciding everyone else was too sensitive, I thought I’d better take a look at this.
The first lesson was obvious but important: communication is verbal and non-verbal.
My hierarchy is simple:
- In person
- On the phone
- Then email
If it’s difficult, don’t hide behind a keyboard. But in person, what you say can be less important than how you say it. I’m animated. I use my hands. I move forward physically when I’m engaged. I’m 100 kilos, shaved head, tattoos. That’s the visual package.
My voice sits on a relatively narrow scale and I use volume for emphasis. So when I care about a point, I speak louder. That combination can read as aggression.
Then add lines like: “I’m not interested in feelings here. I’m interested in facts”. You can see how that might land. None of this was malicious but the intent doesn’t remove the impact.
Accountability gets mistaken for aggression
There’s also a cultural piece. If I say to a member of staff: “You said you’d do this. We agreed it was important. You haven’t done it. I’m calling that out.” To me, that’s black and white. It’s accountability. It’s not personal. But in an environment where confrontation is treated as inherently negative, that can feel like an attack.
I wasn’t raised to see conflict as bad. I think conflict, when done properly, is healthy.
Open disagreement surfaces problems. Avoidance buries them. The difficulty is that many people haven’t grown up with that framing. So what I see as clarity, they might experience as hostility.
In customer situations, it’s even trickier. You receive feedback that may not be factually accurate or may be self-serving. If you push back calmly, you can be labelled defensive. It becomes: “I’ve spoken. You must now accept.”
There’s a difference between listening and agreeing. That nuance is often lost.
Being “nice” is not the goal
I’m more interested in being fair and reasonable than I am in being nice. Niceness can be short-term avoidance dressed up as virtue. Letting your child eat cake for breakfast might feel nice in the moment. Over time, it’s not.
The same applies in business. Avoiding a difficult conversation might feel kinder today. It’s rarely kinder over six months.
That doesn’t mean licence to be blunt for the sake of it. There are people who say, “I’m just being me”, as an excuse to say whatever they want, however they want. That’s not authenticity. That’s just being an arse.
There’s a spectrum. The job is to find the point where honesty and respect meet.
Trust is the foundation. If someone trusts that your intent is good, you can have robust conversations. Without trust, even neutral statements can feel loaded.
Authenticity versus playing the game
I communicate differently now than I did ten years ago. Not because I’ve bent to social pressure, but because I’ve expanded my range. I’m older. I’m a parent. I work with more diverse teams and clients. I understand better how things land.
But I’ve tried not to drift into sycophancy or corporate politeness. If you play that game long enough, you become inauthentic. And inauthentic leaders lose trust quickly.
The worst communication style in my view is what I call the grin-and-nod approach. Smile, agree, then do something completely different. At least with directness, you know where you stand.
As you get older, you also learn which battles are worth fighting. You don’t need to contest everything. That maturity shows up in communication. You conserve energy for what matters.
What 25-year-old me would say
If you’d asked me about communication at 25, I would have been far less nuanced. Back then it was: run through brick walls and don’t care what anyone thinks. That person still exists. People evolve; they don’t become entirely different humans; but I now see the value in understanding the other side of the table.
The younger version of me would probably roll his eyes and say I’ve gone soft. I don’t think it’s softness. I think it’s range.
Direct communication in leadership isn’t about volume or bluntness. It’s about clarity, accountability and trust, delivered in a way the receiver can actually process.
That’s harder than hiding behind “nice”. And it’s definitely harder than just saying what you think.