Leadership comes with a relentless stream of decisions, often leading to decision fatigue. This mental strain erodes focus and impairs a leader’s ability to make thoughtful choices. To succeed in such demanding roles, leaders must focus on what truly matters. But how can you decide where to devote your attention when daily challenges seem endless?

Three Pillars To Ponder

In A CEO Only Does Three Things: Finding Your Focus in the C-Suite, author Trey Taylor identifies three pillars that should command a leader’s focus: numbers, culture and talent. These areas are the backbone of a senior leader’s success:

• Numbers: Most leaders excel in this area because their job performance directly depends on it.

• Culture: Often a secondary focus, culture is essential for the attraction, retention and engagement of employees.

• Talent (Or People): This is where leaders frequently struggle. Despite being a cornerstone of success, people-related challenges are often met with avoidance or mishandling.

Why Leaders Struggle With People Issues

Many leaders avoid addressing people issues effectively, treating them like “hot potatoes” – tossing them aside or delegating them to others. This reluctance stems from the complexity of human emotions, the subjectivity of such issues and the ever-present fear of litigation.

However, failing to address people problems can have a ripple effect across an organization. It can impact trust, culture and team dynamics and often leads to dysfunction.

Common Mistakes In Handling People Issues

Here are some common ways leaders mishandle people challenges:

1. Avoidance: Leaders dismiss, minimize or ignore issues, hoping they will resolve themselves. This is a common move I observe leaders, even senior leaders, deploy.

2. Ineffective Conversations: Crucial conversations, which often involve performance feedback, conflict resolution, organizational change or difficult decisions, are avoided or mishandled. Feedback, if given, is often superficial, indirect or poorly communicated.

3. Bias And Blind Spots: Leaders may struggle to listen objectively due to biases or preconceived notions about employees. The most common sentence I hear from my leader-coaching clients is: “I don’t see that behavior.” “I don’t experience that person the way you are describing.” The sad truth is they will often never see it, because they are being managed up to by the employee in question. Leaders may also be blind as to how effective they are at communication. I have seen many clients butcher communication as being indirect or unclear, when in fact, they think they are being direct and clear. It is not unusual that the employee walks out of that crucial conversation thinking it was a positive experience!

4. Failure To Act: Leaders downplay the impact of unresolved issues, leading to consequences such as reduced trust, good employees leaving and a perception of favoritism.

5. Poor Feedback Practices: Feedback is either absent or delayed, making small issues grow into significant problems.

The Impact Of Mishandling People Issues

When leaders fail to address people issues effectively, the consequences reverberate through the organization:

1. Erosion Of Trust: Team members lose confidence in the leader’s ability to address challenges.

2. Dysfunctional Teams: Teams start to resemble dysfunctional families, leaning on each other for support while avoiding the leader.

3. Talent Drain: High performers may leave, frustrated by a lack of accountability or clear expectations.

4. Reputation Damage: A leader’s credibility and effectiveness take a hit when they tolerate inferior performance or favoritism.

The Mindset Shift Leaders Need

Addressing people issues effectively requires a mindset shift. Leaders must view giving timely, constructive feedback as an act of care rather than criticism. I would venture to say constructive feedback can even be considered nurturing because you are showing your employee that you care about them and their success.

Feedback, when delivered with clarity and compassion, can encourage self-growth and self-awareness and provide a clear roadmap for improvement. It also has the capacity to strengthen one’s confidence and foster individual and team performance.

In order to tackle people issues effectively, leaders must embrace three key components:

1. Awareness: Recognize the issue and your role in addressing it.

2. Acceptance: Acknowledge the reality, even when it is uncomfortable.

3. Action: Take deliberate steps to address the problem, guided by empathy and clarity.

Signs You Are Mishandling People Issues

Not sure if you are managing people challenges effectively? Here are some signs you might be struggling:

1. Emotional Reactions: Feeling triggered or wanting to avoid the issue entirely. When you become triggered, you have an intense emotional reaction to a situation, event or interaction that evokes past experiences, unresolved emotions or personal sensitivities. Good leaders can recognize their triggers and pause, reflect and respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively.

2. Procrastination: Finding excuses to delay crucial conversations.

3. Ineffective Communication: Talking in circles, being indirect or failing to adequately prepare.

4. Extreme Responses: Overreacting with anger or avoiding the problem entirely.

5. Inconsistent Follow-Through: Failing to act on promises or signaling bias in your approach.

Becoming A More Effective Leader

Effective leadership requires setting aside personal biases, managing emotions and prioritizing the needs of the team. By focusing on people issues with the same rigor applied to numbers and culture, leaders can foster trust, accountability and stronger organizational performance.

As Carl Jung said in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, “We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.” Leaders must first acknowledge the problem, accept it and then act decisively.

Handling people issues well is not just a nice-to-have skill; it is essential for team and organizational success. By embracing awareness, acceptance and action, leaders can turn difficult conversations into transformative moments for their teams – and themselves. Prioritize people, and you can unlock the full potential of your leadership.

Learn more about Executive Coaching

This article was originally published on Forbes.com as a Forbes Coaches Council post.