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Validity : 02nd Aug'26 to 12th Aug'26
Difficult Conversations for Managers: What to Say, How to Say It, and How to Stay Calm
- Why managers delay difficult conversations and what delay costs the manager, employee, and wider team.
- How to decide whether the conversation is for coaching, correction, clarification, accountability, or escalation.
- How to prepare facts, examples, impact, expectations, and the outcome needed before the meeting.
- How to open the conversation directly without sounding aggressive, apologetic, or vague.
- A simple behavior-impact-standard structure for addressing performance and conduct concerns.
- How to ask for the employee’s view and listen without losing the point of the conversation.
- How to handle defensiveness, blame, silence, tears, anger, counterattack, or repeated side arguments.
- How managers can regulate their own tone, pace, body language, and emotional response under pressure.
- Useful phrases for returning the conversation to facts, standards, ownership, and next steps.
- When to pause the conversation or involve Human Resources, employee relations, compliance, security, or another formal route.
- How to close with clear actions, support, responsibility, timing, and a review point.
- What fair documentation and follow-up should include after the conversation.
Overview of the webinar
This workshop helps managers prepare for and conduct difficult workplace conversations with greater clarity and control. It focuses on choosing the right purpose, separating facts from assumptions, opening the conversation without creating unnecessary heat, explaining impact and expectations, listening to the employee response, and staying steady when the other person becomes defensive, emotional, silent, or argumentative. Participants will also learn how to close with specific actions and follow-up, document appropriately, and recognize when the matter should move to Human Resources or another formal process. The session is practical, manager-focused, and designed for immediate workplace use.
Who should attend?
- Managers
- Supervisors
- Team leaders
- Department Heads
- Operations Managers
- Project Managers
- Human Resources Professionals
- Employee Relations Professionals
- Small Business Owners
- Newly Promoted Managers
Why should you attend?
Avoiding a difficult conversation does not remove the issue. It allows frustration, ambiguity, inconsistent standards, and employee-relations risk to grow. A conversation handled too late or too emotionally can damage trust and trigger defensiveness. This session gives managers practical language and a clear structure for addressing issues early, fairly, and calmly.
Faculty - Mr.Lukasz Kalinowski
Lukasz Kalinowski is an Executive Coach, Leadership Trainer and former General Manager with over 18 years' experience in leadership, operations and management. His background includes leading large teams, managing high-pressure commercial environments, and supporting senior leaders, managers and business owners across the UK, US, Europe and the UAE.His work focuses on practical leadership: difficult conversations, accountability, conflict at work, resilience, change fatigue, decision-making under pressure and helping teams adopt Artificial Intelligence without fear, confusion or unnecessary extra work. Lukasz combines senior operational experience with executive coaching to deliver sessions that are clear, direct and immediately useful for busy professionals.
Credits
HR (General) recertification credit hours toward aPHR™, PHR®, PHRca®, SPHR®, GPHR®, PHRi™ and SPHRi™ recertification through HR Certification Institute® (HRCI®). Please make note of the activity ID number on your recertification application form. For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HR Certification Institute website at www.hrci.org
ComplianceIQ is recognized by SHRM to offer Professional Development Credits (PDCs) for the SHRM-CPSM or SHRM-SCPSM. This program is valid for [1] PDCs for the SHRM-CPSM or SHRM-SCPSM. For more information about certification or recertification, please visit www.shrmcertification.org.