You keep the person and lose the point. Your Pull axis is high, your Push axis is low, and in most disagreements the other person got what they wanted and still likes you. People trust you and bring you things early. What they do not get from you is your honest view, because you have learned that giving it costs you the relationship, and the relationship is what you value.
The Smoother's problem is item five: agreeing to something mainly to end the conflict. Every time you do that, you carry a resentment the other person does not know about, and you teach them that pushing works. Over a year that produces a leader who is liked, tired, and quietly furious, and a team that has never been told no.
This is the "too nice" pattern that founders describe: making excuses for underperformance, finding it almost impossible to show dissatisfaction, optimising for harmony until harmony costs the company. It is not kindness. Kindness would be telling the person now rather than letting them find out in twelve months.
Check your two Push bars. If Naming is lowest, the problem is the first sentence: you cannot get the thing said. If Holding is lowest, you say it and fold at the first pushback, which is worse, because now the other person knows the position was negotiable.
A VP I worked with could not bear to disappoint anyone. Every hard message came with a paragraph of apology in front of it, and by the time she reached the point, the point was gone. We took the apology out. No prequel and no compliment wrapped around it. One sentence about what she had seen, one about what had to change.
The first time she said it, she told me her hands were shaking and she wanted to take it back straight away. She did not. The other person said thank you. Firm is not the opposite of warm. When people know you are on their side, firm is how the warmth arrives.
One change for this week. Choose one thing you have agreed to that you did not agree with. Go back and say so, plainly, in one sentence, and then stay quiet. You do not have to win. You have to be on the record.
Your Directness score will be low. It is not measuring how nice you are. It is measuring whether people can find out what you think.
Next step: the six conversations leaders avoid, and how to open each one, are in the Hard Conversations diagnostic.
Next step
The six conversations leaders avoid, and how to open each one
The other results
- Straight TalkerYou name it, you hold it, you keep the person.
- EnforcerYou name it and win it. The relationship pays.
- PostponerYou wait. The problem does not.
- DealmakerYou split it. Nobody is unhappy enough to fix it.
About this result
This is one of 5 results from the Conflict Style Assessment, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.