Successful difficult conversations

Category: Staff performance and behaviour

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 […]

Clare Fowler, Employment Solicitor at the charity YESS Law, shared the four most common reactions from people who are unhappy when you start talking to them about improving their performance.
There are five common conversations we see pop up all the time. In fact only 4% of schools have told me that they don’t have any of these conversations in their schools. What are they?
Herding cats? Sticking jelly to the wall? Same stuff, different day? Whatever phrase you like to use, my guess is the idea is a familiar one – the quest for plans and policies to be followed with consistency.
I see this all the time. Plans are made, results aren’t as good as expected, so plans are changed. Plans keep changing, but people don’t. (Although the great ones move on too quickly!). What I find in schools is that your plans are fine. The problem is everyone isn’t doing them for some reason or other.

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 […]

Let’s face it, this is a life skill (if you’ve got my book check out who I dedicated it too- http://amzn.to/2GHGty2).  There is a priority order in your school and it goes like this: Start with your Senior Leadership Team – it’s a must for them because they’ll have the most, they’ll have the hardest and […]