Good morning! I hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable half term! I had some great responses to my last e-blog about your worst experiences of difficult conversations and the lessons you learnt for the future so thank you for those! As I’ve had so many excellent questions and comments over the course of this term we […]

Good morning! Many thanks to all the messages I’ve received in response to last week’s question about communicating clearly. Here is another installment from me, Phil McMillan from Heads Up, on some more thoughts and tips on how to handle those difficult conversations that are needed to drive improvement. We’re going to address some of […]

Many thanks to all the messages since last week about the mistakes we make with tricky conversations. It’s me again, Phil McMillan from Heads Up, with some more thoughts and tips on how to handle those difficult conversations that are needed to drive improvement. One response from last week’s question about common mistakes that caught […]

Hello! Thanks to everyone who got in touch since last week. I’ve had a lot of interesting responses about what one question you would ask an expert about having difficult conversations! My expert is working on the answers which we’ll be sharing after half-term. I’m Phil McMillan from Heads Up, back again with some thoughts […]

Thanks so much for all the replies to my question last week from Stuart, Sylvia, K, Jennifer and everyone else about what would make having difficult conversations easier for you. If you missed last week’s post, I’m Phil McMillan from Heads Up. This term I’ll be sharing some thoughts and looking to hear from you about […]

Do you hate having difficult conversations? I do. I’m Phil McMillan from Heads Up (aka Mr Sonia Gill!). Back when I was a team manager nothing filled me with more dread than having to tackle a member of my team about their performance or behaviour. Two weeks in to the new term and I’d imagine […]

Sometimes a conversation is difficult because the other person doesn’t understand there is a problem – you might have told them several times but feel that they don’t appreciate how serious this is or that they don’t acknowledge that there is a problem. One of the school leadership team’s I support had exactly this issue; […]

So you’re having a difficult conversation and they start to cry. What do you do? I get asked this a lot, because it happens quite often. When someone cries in a difficult conversation it’s awkward and in my experience most of us are unsure what to do and most of us feel guilty because we […]

I get asked this a lot. How soon should I have the conversation: too quickly seems like I’m nit-picking, too long and it can seem to late. What time of day? What day of the week? And more. And it’s tricky because we do want to pick our moment as best we can but this […]

This is a question I asked over 1724 school leaders before Christmas and here’s what I found out: The top 3 issues, making up 51% of responses, were: 22% – getting the conversation started 17% – managing the other person’s emotions 12% – the person not hearing the message If you’d like some help with […]