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."

Bosses who want to avoid any discomfort, "use generalities so people really don't know what they're talking about," says Laura Collins, a human resources 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."