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.'

    劳莱特•比查恩(Lowrie Beacham)以前不喜欢与别人正面发生冲突，或者作出使一名员工比其他员工获得更多好处的决定，即使是他手下的两名员工正在竞争新健身中心主管职务时也是如此。

    他回忆道，他完全可以在某一天把问题都说出来，然后完全忘掉它。但他没有这样做，这种状况持续了数年的时间。每一次他都往后推一点──“下个月我们就这个问题开个会吧”──他会竭尽全力避免正面冲突的发生。

    每次员工对他温和的批评表现出不满时，他就会转移话题：“你总是准时上班；这很棒啊！”他还会说，别把客户抱怨你很难合作的话放在心上。

    比查恩也承认，这种管理风格的结果催生了一个涣散的部门：毫无纪律，员工对自己在部门中的表现和位置毫无信心，员工之间勾心斗角，而且个个牢骚满腹。最后，比查恩辞去了管理职务。他说，非常高兴再也不用管这些事情了。

    糟糕的经理往往会给人留下这样的印象：脾气暴躁、吹毛求疵。但是这种类型的经理日益稀少。更常见、也更具欺骗性的是那些绝不会批评本该受批评员工的管理人员。为了避免不太令人愉快的谈话，他们在拖延中令事态不断恶化，在短期内获得了为人和蔼的名声，长此下去却有无情之嫌，因为问题员工在这样领导的带领下不会有任何长进。如果不把问题说出来，又怎么能去解决它呢。

    斯坦福大学商学院(Stanford Graduate School of Business)的讲师大卫•布拉德福特(David Bradford)说，在知识经济时代，日常工作更加复杂，也更加依赖彼此的合作，大家需要更多的反馈──特别需要反馈的方面恰恰是那些难以给出反馈的方面，如与人交往的风格。

    约翰•哈德卡斯特勒(John Hardcastle)之前从事财务报告工作，他很想在工作中不断学习和提高（调查显示，很多人都是如此）。但是每次他提交了财务报告并希望获得反馈时，他的上司却不会作任何负面评价。哈德卡斯特勒说，老板很明显地绕开那些需要改进的地方。哈德卡斯特勒因此从来都不清楚自己的表现到底如何。

    人力资源顾问劳拉•科林斯(Laura Collins)说，那些希望避免任何不悦的老板总会用一些笼统化的措辞，这样下属根本不知道他们在说什么。他们会给出适合任何人的评论，比如“要更加注意细节”、“提高与人沟通的能力”以及“培养更好的组织技巧”等。

    曾担任财务主管助理的莱恩•布朗德利克(Ryan Broderick)就曾听到过这样的反馈。前老板这种毫无实质内容的反馈令他陷入了职业生涯最痛苦的折磨之一：一切全靠自己想像和揣测。他说，听到毫无实质内容的评价比挨批评更加糟糕。

    有一点会让人们想念暴跳如雷地批评员工的老板。IT项目经理詹姆士•福勒尔(James Fuller)说，这类老板虽然不怎么会控制情绪，但是至少他们对员工的态度很诚实。福勒尔的前老板在六个月内没有给他安排任何项目，也从来没有告诉他这样做的原因。

    这种回避问题的方式倒是避免员工一叶障目的良方。默克西内•额尔维恩(Maxine Erlwein)曾为这种“和事佬”老板工作过一年，在前三个月和半年的测评中她获得非常棒的评价，她每天都与老板开会，汇报自己当天的计划。但是在年度测评中，她的前老板却尽力表示，她的工作表现没有达到所在职位的最低要求。这种压力让额尔维恩寝食难安。她说，不愿与人发生冲突的人时间长了会让人怨恨。

    没有人对这种表面上的和睦与平静感恩戴德。项目分析师劳伦斯•莱温(Lawrence Levine)曾看到一名同事整天挂在eBay等消闲网站上无所事事。毫无疑问，他们的主管也知晓这个情况。这件事令员工们很疑惑。

    他说，主管并没有就此采取任何行动，所有人都在想，为什么这个家伙整天无所事事还能拿不错的薪水。大家之所以感到愤怒是因为其余所有人都是按劳取酬的。

    但约翰•泰勒(John Traylor)却知晓老板这样做的苦衷。他以前也曾因一名懒惰的同事有过类似沮丧经历。泰勒自己就是一个尽量避免正面冲突的管理者，他不愿意向员工说出那些可能打击后者精神的消息。

    他有一次甚至特意安排让其他部门“请”走一位员工。他说，由于是被高层请走、做更重要的项目，这位员工可以很有尊严地离开。而且他也不用和他谈真正的问题所在。

    他也承认，他的这种处理方式不利于员工的提高。他还说，他在公司接受的管理培训没有教授他处理这种问题的方法。如果有的话，应该会非常有用。

    一家保险公司的IT经理也承认他总是尽量避免正面冲突，但是他把这归咎于体制，认为这样的冲突只会在人事方面造成更多问题。

    他现在并不希望这样。他说，他宁愿直接批评某个员工，也不愿令整个团队感到不满。

    他还说，正如眼下的状况，这是一个令人讨厌的循环，因为现在他需要做更多工作才能取悦每个人。