You’re ending your most important conversations too early

I can’t count how many people have cried in my presence.

It’s not just women. It’s men too .. in fact it’s more often men. It’s young people, old people, experienced and inexperienced leaders … everyone.

Their shame is all but immediate ‘I’m so sorry for crying”

But I’m not sorry.

Because I know that tears show up at the exact moment something real has been reached. Tears flow when the surface level problems have been placated, safety is created, and the person is ready to expose the real issues.

In the moment when crying can’t be avoided, something seems to shift.

It is difficult to quantify exactly what.

But change is happening.

And yet, as often as I’ve witnessed grown men cry, I’ve heard this consistent fear from leaders:

“But what if he/she cries?”

Tears are terrifying for leaders.

Immediately they feel out of their depth, uncomfortable, and assume they need to resolve the 'situation' … even though their message was the cause of the tears.

Most will do anything in their power to extricate themselves – end the meeting, defer to HR, soften the message … whatever it takes not to sit in a room with someone you just made cry.

But this is the moment for celebration, not withdrawal.

You didn’t just cause harm – you enabled release.

And the tears are not the problem – they’re the signal.

You’ve hit something pivotal. Something here is real. Something is ready to be let go of. Your conversation has reached a place where change has possible.

Breakdown precedes breakthrough.

But this is when most leaders step back! And miss the opportunity. Not to upset their team further – but support them in and beyond the emotion.

Think of the emotion as an opening – one door is closing just before another opens.

Most leaders will unknowingly shutdown right at this moment of breakthrough. They attempt to fix the situation when the moment requires only space.

Space to feel.

Space to process.

Space to express what's actually going on.

It might not feel like ‘business’, but it’s the business of people. The space for something to move. For clarity to emerge and with it, a completely different perspective.

Because what holds people back bubbles below the surface, sometimes for decades. It becomes so well-known to the person that they no longer know it exists.

There’s not a strong emotion attached to it day to day, but there is a noise, a slight blurriness that shows up in their actions, a distortion of the truth and lack of clarity.

The reason you’re having that conversation.

Until the cage is rattled, the emotion is expressed, and suddenly the path forward is obvious.

Now this is business. It was just clouded before with emotion.

You don’t need to resolve tears.

You just need to be able to stay when they show up.

Tears are not a breakdown, they are a breakthrough.

Tears transform trajectory.

And if you can’t welcome them, your fear of them will always hold your leadership and performance back. In fact without the ability to face tears, I’d suggest you’ll be inadvertently managing around them … that this is not leadership. It’s management.

Now I’m not suggesting your emotional intelligence or success as a leader is defined by your ability to elicit tears from your team. That would be crazy.

But your leadership will be defined by your ability to express yourself kindly, unemotionally and authentically without fear of reaction, which for many means fear of tears.

Your ability to create change depends on it.

So the question isn’t:

“How do I stop this from happening?”

It’s:

Can I stay when it does?

Because that’s where the shift happens.