Intensive workshop · Leadership
The first sixty seconds
How a difficult conversation gets prepared, how it opens, and what to do when it goes off the rails.
- Duration
- 3 hours 30 min
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 6 to 14 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
A hard conversation starts long before the two people sit down. It gets rehearsed in the car, postponed another week, and by the time it finally happens it carries everything that accumulated while it waited. That is why so many of them start with a long detour and end up saying more than was needed.
The opening decides most of what follows. A sentence that begins by softening forces you to deliver the message three times, because the other person hears the preamble and not the subject. A sentence that begins by accusing closes the other person before the second minute. Either way the real matter is reached late, with the time gone and both people uncomfortable.
Then there is the part nobody prepares: what to do when the other person cries, gets angry, goes silent, or says something you did not expect. Most people who lead learn to deliver the first sentence and improvise everything after it, which is precisely where the conversation is won or lost.
What it covers
The workshop takes one conversation at a time, from beginning to end. It is not a general communication course: the unit of work is the whole conversation, preparation through closing, in a format where most of the time is practice rather than presentation.
Preparation has a shape of its own: what this conversation is meant to achieve, what is negotiable and what is not, which evidence will be named, and what the minimum acceptable outcome is if everything goes worse than expected. Out of that come the first two or three sentences, which get written down and said out loud, because a prepared opening and an improvised one are distinguishable from the outside.
The longest block is the conversation that goes off the rails. It is practised against real reactions: denial, silence, tears, the accusation turned back on you, the comparison with a colleague. The aim is not to control the other person, which is not available, but to stay in the conversation without hardening or withdrawing, and to reach a close that leaves something verifiable in writing.
What participants learn
- Prepare a difficult conversation by defining its objective, its limits and its minimum acceptable outcome.
- Open with a sentence that names the subject in the first few seconds.
- Hold silence and the other person's emotion without changing the subject.
- Answer denial, reproach and comparison without turning the conversation into an argument.
- Close with a verifiable agreement and a date, even when the conversation was tense.
Agenda
- What makes a conversation difficult: what is at stake for each side
- Preparation: objective, limits, evidence and minimum acceptable outcome
- The first sentences: naming the subject without preamble and without accusation
- Silence as a tool, and as a discomfort you have to tolerate
- When emotion arrives: tears, anger and withdrawal
- The accusation turned back on you, and the comparison with a colleague
- Conversations about decisions already made, where nothing is negotiable
- The close: a verifiable agreement, a date, and a written record
What the organisation leaves with
- A one-page preparation sheet, applied to a real conversation you have pending.
- The written opening for that conversation, rehearsed out loud.
- A set of responses for the three reactions you find hardest.
- A closing format with the agreement, the date, and who records it.
Programme details
- Format
- Intensive workshop
- Also available as
- Executive talk · Workshop · Corporate training day
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Owners and directors postponing a conversation that was due some time ago
- Managers who have to deliver decisions they did not make
- Supervisors who have to correct someone who has been in the company longer than they have
- Leadership teams that want one standard for these conversations
Frequently asked questions
- Is the practice done in front of the other participants?
- Yes, in threes, using the participants' own cases with no names. It is the part that meets the most resistance and the part that produces the change, so it is worth saying before anyone is enrolled: someone unwilling to practise in the room will get little from this workshop and is better served by the talk format.
- Does it help with a conversation that already went badly?
- It helps with the next one, which almost always exists. A conversation that went badly cannot be erased, but it can be picked up by acknowledging what happened, and the workshop covers how that second attempt opens without relitigating the first.
- What if the decision is already made and there is nothing to discuss?
- Then it is not a conversation, it is a communication, and it gets prepared differently: said plainly, not disguised as consultation, with no opinion invited on something that will not change. The workshop separates the two, because treating a communication as a negotiation leaves the other person expecting an influence they do not have.
Request this programme
Tell us the context and we will prepare a proposal tailored to your organisation. No obligation.
Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.