Difficult Conversations

cheat sheet

Download our guide to prepare for a difficult conversation

What is a difficult conversation? You might define it in many ways, but for me, it's a conversation which makes me uncomfortable, or puts unreasonable demands on me at work. When I think about how to have a difficult conversation, I think of what preparation I need to do to help the other person see things from my point of view as well.

Not many people (hopefully) wake up in the morning and ask themselves how they can upset someone quickly and easily. No - people behave the way they do for logial and rational reasons, at least when considered from their own point of view. The problems come when one person's viewpoint differs from anothers, and when both parties feel so strongly that they are right, that they forget to consider the feelings of the other person. That's when difficult conversations happen.

In this Knowledge Bites cheat sheet, you'll learn a simple and repeatable conversation structure when you can use whenever you need to have a difficult conversation with someone else. It requires just a small amount of preparation, and I hope it will then help you to be more empathetic to the other party, and help them to stand in your shoes a little better. And when that happens, along comes the magic which helps people to work more collaboratively with each other and have a more stable working relationship.

So, you need our difficult conversations cheat sheet to help you think through your conversation structure in advance to maximise the chance of bringing a wider view of a business situation to both of you, and start on the road to working better together. And why not check out our training course on working with difficult colleagues for more ideas and hands-on practice.