When we all use phrases like “it is what it is” or “I’m just tired” - portraying that we’re doing fine while masking our struggle.

And honestly, that actually seems rational. Talking about struggles is really hard! And most of the time, we don’t know if the person we’re talking to actually cares or is just interested in making small talk.

And so we use a phrase like, “it is what it is” and move on.

In our culture, we have lots of phrases like these, which have a double meaning - where we’re trying to suggest that we’re doing fine enough but are actually feeling the weight of something difficult.

But just because it’s rational, doesn’t mean we should use phrases like these and just move on - letting the struggle remain hidden.

And if we’re taking the responsibility to lead, whether at work or at home, surfacing and resolving struggles is part of our responsibility as leaders.

The difficult question is how. That’s what I’ve been reflecting on and what this post is about: how do we surface and help resolve struggles when it’s rational to mask them?

Surfacing Struggles

Luckily, we often use consistent turns of phrases when we are surfacing struggles. If we listen for those tells, we have a chance to double down when we hear them and try to learn more.

I asked a question on facebook this week to try generating a list of these phrases which create a subtle and believable facade. Thank you to anyone who shared their two cents, these were the examples folks shared:

• “Living the dream.”

• “I’m fine.”

• “It’s going.”

• “I am okay.”

• “I’m hanging in there.”

• “That’s life.”

• “I’m here.”

• “Another day in paradise.”

• “Eff it.” (Used causally)

If we hear someone use phrases like these (or we say them ourselves) we can use it as a trigger to pause and explore, rather than as a cue to move on.

Surfacing Struggles With Kids

Kids are less obfuscating with their struggles, they come right out and share their little hearts out. They just struggle with being specific about their woes when then say or do stuff like:

• “I can’t do this!”

• “I’ll never figure this out!”

• “This is too hard!”

• [Screams and foot stomps]!

• [Pterodactyl noises with hands over ears]!

• “Poo-poo, poo-poo, POO-POO!”

• “I forgot how to walk!” (My personal favorite from our kids)

With kids, these can be cues to pause, gather our patience and saddle up to emotional coach through some big feelings.

Surfacing Struggles At Work

At work, we’re more opaque, deftly deflecting and misdirecting with our words to make our inner struggles seem like obstacles outside our control. How often have you heard phrases like this?:

• “We don’t have the resources.”

• “We’re too busy.”

• “It’s not our job.”

• “We’ll just CYA and keep it moving.”

• “We need to run this by the executive team first.” (or replace executive team with “legal”, “audit”, or “HR”)

• “We’re breaking the guidelines set out in [insert name of esoteric poorly defined policy that’s only tangentially related to the issue at hand].”

At work, it’s so easy to take these phrases at face value and assume that there’s nothing to explore. But there usually is.

Once I started listening for them, I found that these phrases of deflection came up at home and at work, all the time.

Resolving Struggles

When others use subtle but believable facades to avoid or deflect from their struggles, the key is to decipher what they would actually be saying if they felt like they could be honest and vulnerable.

If we can figure that out, we can meet the person in front of us (or ourselves in the mirror) where they are, understand their true needs, and then help them deal with their struggles.

When someone uses a subtle but believable deflection, they usually, deep down, mean something like this:

• “I’m overwhelmed. There’s so much happening and I can’t even figure out where to start.”

• “I’m scared. Things are not going well and I don’t know whether the future will be better.”

• “I don’t trust you. I need you to give me reasons to put my faith in you.”

• “I’m stuck. I’ve been trying to make this better but nothing seems to make a difference. I need help.”

• “I feel alone. I don’t feel the support of other people on this very difficult thing we’re going through.”

• “I don’t believe in myself. I need convincing that you won’t let me fail.”

• “I don’t care. To keep going, I need to feel like what we’re doing actually matters.”

• “I don’t trust our group. I’ve been let down before and I don’t want to be hurt again.”

• “I’m confused. I don’t know what to do or what’s expected of me.”

• “I’m ashamed. I need to feel included and that my behaviors don’t make my worth conditional.”

• “I feel guilty. I need encouragement and guidance that I can do better.”

• “I feel like I’m in danger. I need you to help me feel safe.”

If we discover the real root feeling or struggle, the posture we need to take is relatively straightforward. It’s rarely an easy struggle, but if we know what the person in front of us is actually dealing with, we actually have a chance to be helpful to them. If we don’t understand, we definitely won’t be helpful, even if we’re well-intentioned and try really hard.

Practical Skills Matter: Listening, Integrity, Compassion

The practical lesson that I’ve learned is twofold.

First, we need to listen very carefully for these very subtle deflections and instead of being fooled by them, we need to sharpen our focus. We need to pause and graciously lean in. These deflections are really tells that the person in front of us, or ourselves if we say them out loud, are actually struggling.

Second, we need to find a way to hear precisely what the person in front of us is having a hard time saying. That can happen in one of two ways. We either have to listen and observe very carefully, or, we need to show integrity and compassion so unflinchingly and consistently that the person in front of us feels safe enough to tell the truth.

Conclusions

Beyond the practical tools around how to surface and resolve struggles, there’s a broader point that’s important to make: we have a choice to make.

On the one hand, one could completely reject my point of view. Someone could say, “I’m not responsible for helping every person in front of me with every single one of their struggles. They need to suck it up, they need to figure some of this out on their own. They need to take responsibility for their own struggles, that’s not fully on me.”

Maybe that’s true, at least to some degree. In my life, I’ve found it impossible to help someone who’s not enrolled in the journey of finding a better way. And, it’s also true that we have practical limits. We as individuals can’t possibly do this all ourselves - there’s not enough time or energy available to us to take every struggle of the people we care about onto our shoulders alone.

But at the same time, I believe we need to try because we owe it to each other. We have all struggled. We have all needed someone to help us surface and resolve our struggles. We all have been helped, by someone, at some time. Nobody in this world has done it alone.

And if we want to move forward - whether it’s with our kids at home or with our colleagues at work - someone has to be responsible for it.

So when someone in our orbit next says something like, “it is what it is” or “I’m just tired” I hope we all choose to say something like, “oh really, what do you mean?” Instead of letting the conversation pass as if nothing happened.

That’s the choice we have ahead of us. Let’s choose to listen deeply.