FIELD GUIDE NO. 3
Hard Conversations
Having the Talk You've Been Avoiding
You've known for weeks which conversation you're avoiding. You've rehearsed it, put it off, told yourself it might correct itself. It won't — and the avoidance is costing you more than the conversation ever would, usually your best people first. This guide walks the talk you've been putting off through five phases — reading the situation, preparing, delivering, following through, and the conversations leaders dread most — with a diagnostic to find where you break down and a real conversation to have within 48 hours.
Every phase, walked through.
Each phase follows the same anatomy: what the moment actually requires, the mistake I see most in coaching, the move that works instead, the coaching question that surfaces what you're really avoiding, and one real conversation to have within 48 hours. The final phase takes the hardest ones line by line — the performance gap, the boundary, the peer conflict, the one with your boss.
THE AVOIDANCE
COSTS MORE
FIVE PHASES,
ONE AT A TIME
ONE REAL
CONVERSATION
The conversation you're dreading is almost never as bad as the avoidance. Avoidance is what costs you — sleep, credibility, and usually your best person, who's watching you tolerate what they'd never tolerate. Name the real price and the conversation gets easier to walk into.
Reading the situation, preparing without over-scripting, delivering directly without being harsh, following through so the change holds, and the specific conversations leaders dread most. Find the phase where you break down and work that one.
Every practice ends with a coaching question and a conversation to have within 48 hours. Not homework — the actual talk. Because the point was never to understand hard conversations. It's to have the one you're avoiding.
How to use it.
This is a map, not a script. Don't try to fix every conversation at once — find the phase where you break down, read that one entry, run the experiment, and have the talk. One practice. One real conversation. Come back.
Then the next one.
Part of The Right Altitude Field Guides — see the full series or start with the flagship The Right Altitude