As a leader of your team, you have to have the ability to “confront” situations and have those difficult conversations and not shy away from them otherwise problems fester and grow into bigger problems.
“Confront” is not the same as being “confrontational”.
Having a difficult conversation is made easier by focusing on fixing the problem and not blaming or judging the person.
Try it. Next time one of your staff makes a mistake (no facial expressions) just focus on fixing the problem. No blaming or judging and see how it turns out.
“Confrontational” is blaming the person and having a huge fight over pride, ego and “being right” rather than the “right solution”.
If you have a manager who cannot confront situations and have difficult conversations then they should not be a leader/Manager.
If they want to be a leader they better learn and get up to speed, otherwise, things will fall apart around them and they will find they are constantly surrounded by problems.
Typically if they spent the same time finding solutions as they spent blaming someone else, problems would not appear to follow them around.
Find a solution and the problem goes away.
Constantly finding solutions and you are never surrounded by problems.
Blaming the person just creates more problems as the original problem has not gone away and you end up with lots more problems around you.
Alternatively, get out of being a manager. (this applies to the future and all staff who want to be managers as everyone thinks they can be a manager. Not so)
If it’s not in their nature, get them out of Managing otherwise they will do damage to people around them.
If you find you have to keep fixing up problems for someone then they are in the wrong seat.
As the leader puts them in the right seat with the right training, they will be happier and things will be much better for everyone.
Very few people are outright bad. (Although there is a handful).
Most are just in the wrong seat. They are great in the right seat.
Grinders should stay at grinding. Minders should stay at managing and not grinding. Finders should stay in their lane.
Keep everyone in their lane and bring complementary skills together working as a team and watch the leverage created like the synergistic magic of music in harmony.