One thing I've noticed we do a LOT of at HubSpot is making indirect requests of people. What is an indirect request (other than the bane of my existence)? It's when you say something like "I wonder what this report would look like if we cut the data by Product Tier" or "I wish we'd create a process to better manage this lead handoff" or "Someone should dig into the drop in email open rates last week." Or, of course, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" These are all requests, that take time and effort, and that require prioritization against other tasks. But actually asking for these things to be prioritized inherently means deprioritizing something else - and those convos are generally long, and hard, and pretty annoying.
So why does this matter? This matters because when you're in a position of authority (say, the Director of a small team...cough cough) people will take your wonderings and mutterings as things they have to go do. Our co-founder Dharmesh actually wrote an article around the practical application of a fix back in 2017 - though the practice has since died off. I find myself doing this all the time. Making an innocuous comment or request that I don't really care about, but saying it to folks who treat it like a direct request because it comes from a direct superior, someone they're 'supposed to listen to'. (No matter how many times I tell people not to listen to me, for some reason they still do.). Then these folks go and spend time and effort to find an answer. They'll deprioritize other work to accommodate my ask. An ask that I didn't really make and likely would not prioritize above their other work. And of course once it's done, I will thank and reward them for their hard work - because the alternative of saying "Oh yah, didn't really want that, you shouldn't have done that" sounds HORRIBLE. And maybe I did want it, a little, and what's done is done - next time I'll just be more clear. (Spoiler alert: I won't be. Consistency is not my strong point.)
So what do we about this? I think the biggest thing is to just stay aware. If you're prone to asking probing questions - be clear about when you do and don't want follow-up. If you tend to wonder aloud - be clear about when you actually expect answers. If you're on the receiving end of this - clarify the expected next step if something seems indirect or unclear.
Focus is often our biggest issue. There's a million things going on and we're getting pulled in every direction at once. It can be hard, if not impossible, to know where to focus your time. As leaders, our job is to absorb ambiguity and pass down clarity. If we want to effectively tackle the next 5 years of HubSpot's growth - we've gotttttt to be intentional.