How to Have Hard Conversations as a Manager
David Buirs is an ICF-certified leadership coach based in Amsterdam, specialising in managers with 0 to 4 years of experience. This article explains why new managers avoid difficult conversations and what actually helps them stop. It draws on CoActive coaching principles and over 10 years of practical leadership experience.
She described herself as “the caring type.” And she meant it.
Her team liked her. She was warm, approachable, the kind of manager people felt comfortable talking to.
But she had not had a real difficult conversation in almost two years.
Every time something needed to be said, she found a softer version. Or she waited. Or she told herself it was not that serious. Her team picked up on it. Some started pushing boundaries. Others quietly stopped coming to her for feedback, because they knew she would just be nice.
She was not avoiding those conversations because she was lazy. She was protecting a story about herself. “I am the empathetic one. That is who I am.”
The story you protect
Most managers have a version of this. It shows up in one of two ways.
You protect the “I am direct and clear” story. Which sometimes means avoiding warmth.
Or you protect the “I am the caring one” story. Which sometimes means avoiding honesty.
Both feel like a strength. And they are, up to a point. The problem is when the story starts making decisions for you.
You know that conversation needs to happen. But you also know it might make you look less empathetic. So you wait. Or you soften it until it says almost nothing.
Leaving something unsaid is also a choice. And it has consequences.
Why the frameworks do not do the work
There is no shortage of good models for how to have hard conversations as a manager.
Radical Candor. Non-Violent Communication. Psychological Safety. They are all built on the same idea: clarity and care are not opposites. You can be honest because you care about someone, not despite it.
Most managers who struggle with difficult conversations already know this. They have read the books. They have taken the training.
Knowing the model does not change much on its own. The real shift happens when you start seeing yourself as someone who can actually do both.
That is where most training stops short. It teaches the technique. It skips the identity part. For organisations that want to address this at scale, a leadership program built around real behaviour change tends to land very differently than a one-day workshop.
How to have hard conversations as a manager: start with who you are
The conversation does not start in the meeting room. It starts in how you see yourself.
If you are more on the empathetic side, that feedback you have been postponing is not a threat to who you are. It is an expression of it. You say something because you want this person to grow, to succeed, to not be blindsided six months from now.
If you are more on the direct side, naming a problem is something you already do well. The upgrade is in how you do it. You speak like you are talking to someone you genuinely want the best for.
In the leadership guidance I do with new managers, this is one of the most consistent patterns we work through together. Not “how do I say this.” But “who do I want to be when I say this.”
Once that shifts, the actual conversation tends to get much easier.
A practical place to start
Think of one conversation you have been putting off. There is probably one.
Before you plan what to say, ask yourself one question: what story about myself am I protecting by not having it?
That question alone tends to open something up.
Curious whether this is the right fit? Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.
