Drop "just" from your sentences. "I just wanted to check" becomes "I wanted to check."

Why it works: One small word does a lot of quiet damage to how certain you sound.

Use it: Read back your next email before you hit send.

Somewhere on your team is one person who treats 9am as a rough guide.

Everyone else arrives on time. They don't.

Everyone else takes a fifteen-minute break. Theirs runs to twenty. Sometimes thirty.

You've noticed. You've noticed for weeks.

And you've said nothing.

Not because you're short of words. Because every version in your head sounds petty, or it sounds like a bigger deal than it is.

This isn't about you being bad at confrontation. You've had harder conversations than this one and handled them fine.

It's that this particular conversation doesn't feel like it earns the confrontation.

You picture yourself saying it and it sounds absurd in your head.

"Can we talk about your coffee breaks?"

So you say nothing, and tell yourself it'll correct itself on its own.

It doesn't. Late becomes later. A long break becomes the new normal.

I think this is one of the most avoidable problems in leadership, and one of the most common.

Not because it's hard to raise. Because it feels too small to be worth raising — right up until it isn't.

But the coffee break conversation is exactly the kind of thing that gets easier to have the first time you have it, and harder every time you don't.

Because it was never about the ten minutes.

It's about what the ten minutes teaches everyone else.

Every person who does show up on time, who does keep their breaks to fifteen minutes, is watching whether it matters.

If it doesn't, you've just taught your best people that showing up properly is optional.

I've seen leaders let this run for months because raising it felt like more fuss than it was worth.

They tell themselves it'll look like they're being petty over minutes.

It isn't petty. It's the job.

You don't need a formal meeting. You need one clear conversation.

Start with the fact, not the feeling.

"Your hours are 9 to [x]. I need you here and working from 9, not getting settled at ten past."

If it's happened before, name the pattern. But there’s no need to list every time it's happened.

"This isn't a one-off. It's a pattern, and I'm not prepared to keep overlooking it."

If there's a reason behind it, ask. But don't let the question turn into permission.

"If something's making it hard to get in on time, tell me and we'll look at it. But I need it fixed, not excused."

And if you need to name the wider cost, this line does it without sounding petty. It's not only what it costs the person covering for them. It's what everyone else quietly concludes about what you'll actually enforce.

"When you're late or away from your desk, someone else picks up the slack. That's not fair on them, and it hasn't gone unnoticed."

Then end on what happens next, so it doesn't just sit there as a warning.

"I don't want to keep having this conversation. I need this sorted, not discussed again in a fortnight."

Say all of this once, clearly.

Skip the three weeks of pointed looks and comments about "some people."

A slow build of hints lets the other person pretend not to notice.

It also makes you look like you're sulking, not leading.

One direct sentence does more than a month of hoping they'll read the room.

And once you've said it, hold it. If the pattern continues after a plain conversation, that's not a reason to go quiet again. That's your cue to have the next conversation, sooner and more firmly than you'd like.

You're not being difficult by naming this.

You're doing the part of the job everyone else is waiting for you to do.

The rest of your team already knows this person turns up late.

They're just waiting to see if it costs them anything.

Say it once.

Then watch what changes.