Hard Conversations Without Damage

There is a person you need to talk to and a thing you keep not saying. This course gets you through that conversation with the problem named and the relationship intact.

Most hard conversations go badly because of what you carry into them: a verdict that you are right and the other person has to change. They hear the charge in your first sentence, start defending, and the real issue never gets discussed. Putting the conversation off costs too, in weeks of replaying it in your head while nothing changes.

The method draws on Difficult Conversations by Stone, Patton and Heen, and on Crucial Conversations. You separate the fact a camera would have recorded from the story you built on it, name your own part before theirs, and open with a fact, a purpose and a real question. When the other person goes quiet or sharp, you have short, specific lines that make the conversation safe again. Every move comes with the words to say, and you practise them on a branching conversation and four heated replies before you try the real one.

You walk away with a seven-line one-pager you fill in before any charged conversation, and one real conversation had.

Who it's for

Managers: need to raise performance or behaviour without the other person shutting down.

Founders and partners: have an issue with a co-founder, investor or supplier that has been building because nobody will start it.

Anyone who avoids conflict: wants a repeatable way to raise the thing that matters, at work or at home.