Category: Improve Your Difficult Conversations

On Wednesday you should have received my top tip about one difficult conversation that keeps coming up: caretakers.   Did you get it? Did you like it?Do you want more?   Remember, if you’d like to keep getting these top tips to help you have more successful difficult conversations then please subscribe here:   Why? […]

You may remember my 2-minute top tips; weekly videos designed to help you tackle tough conversations in school.  And they’re coming back next week! Here’s what to expect: Here’s what happens next:   Next Wednesday 28th February I’ll land in your inbox with a top tip about a difficult conversation that is showing up more […]

If you get a stone in your shoe, what do you do?   Stop, take your shoe off, remove the stone, put your shoe back on and carry on. Right?   Because having a stone in your shoe: Can be painful, and it slows down how fast you can walk. Simple problem, obvious solution (the […]

It’s hard to talk to someone about their conduct. It doesn’t feel as concrete as something like lateness or not following policy. But it’s so important.  Because conduct is our behaviour. And culture is our behaviour over time – as critical to your school’s success as performance is (and I would suggest it’s more important). […]

We’re all trying to be useful. And I have a lot of free resources that have helped many school leaders. In fact, this video has been watched over 3000 times. Ok, it’s not viral, but it’s a lot.   In fact, you’ll see someone has commented ‘Goodness, why aren’t there more views?’ (and it wasn’t […]

It’s October. Storming season. If all seemed to be going well in Sept, that’s great. But don’t be surprised if a few cracks appear in October. I hope they don’t. But it’s typically when it happens. Don’t worry, it’s normal. Here’s a good rule of thumb for any time of the year. It’ll help you […]

There are 5 difficult conversations I come across ALL the time in schools. They are relatively simple to resolve. But most have been going on for a long time: Lateness. Not marking books to the minimum standard. Caretakers not doing everything they need to, as quickly as they need to. Unwelcoming receptionist. The teacher who […]

Who likes conflict? Pretty much no-one!  (Including me!) So it’s no surprise that a lot of us will avoid having a difficult conversation. However, there might well come a time when we realise we have to have a difficult conversation and, at that point, we often regret not having it sooner; after all, it’s very […]

Making excuses for why you don’t need to have the conversation. Almost everyone avoids difficult conversations and, when you do have these conversations, it would be normal for you to not look forward to them. There are several reasons for this:  We don’t want to upset the other person or be upset ourselves (which is […]

We’ve not found a difficult conversation we haven’t been able to fix yet. In fact, I’m looking for it. Here are three scenarios that felt impossible to the people we were working with but were fixed in very few conversations (and without capability or court). How to get through when someone doesn’t think there is a […]