How to Have Difficult Conversations as a Manager

David Buirs | Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

How to have difficult conversations as a manager in 6 steps

David Buirs is a leadership coach in Amsterdam. This article covers how to have a difficult conversation with an employee, in six concrete steps. You learn why you keep postponing the talk and how to handle it without your employee getting defensive.

You have a difficult conversation as a manager in six steps: prepare for your own part, name the behaviour concretely, check your assumption, allow a silence, agree on something specific, and follow up. The order helps. The real work sits before it, in how you look at the conversation before you walk into the room. I cover both below.

Why you have been postponing that talk for weeks

You know which conversation I mean. There is probably one that has been on your list for a couple of weeks now.

You postpone it because something feels at stake that is bigger than the conversation itself. Often you are protecting a story about yourself. "I am the one who keeps the mood good." Or the opposite: "I am direct, people know where they stand with me." That story feels like a strength. And it is one, until it starts making your decisions for you.

The moment you water a conversation down until almost nothing is left, or push it another week, you let the story win. That has consequences. For your team, and for the behaviour you actually want to change.

Leaving something unspoken is a choice too. Only one you pay for more dearly later.

The six steps

Models like Radical Candor and Nonviolent Communication already exist. They work. Yet many managers get stuck, because they know the technique but have no idea where to begin in the moment itself. These six steps give you that structure.

  1. Prepare for your own part. Before you work out what the other person is doing wrong, ask yourself one question: which story about myself am I protecting by avoiding this conversation? And: did I contribute something to this situation myself? A conversation where you put all the blame on the other person almost always stalls.
  2. Name the behaviour, not the person. Say what you concretely see. "The last three reports were late" lands differently from "you are unreliable." The first is about behaviour someone can change. The second is about who someone is, and every employee pushes back against that.
  3. Check your assumption out loud. You have an explanation in your head for the behaviour. It might be wrong. Ask about it. "I notice the deadlines are slipping. What is going on?" That way you make room for a story you do not know yet, and you avoid spending a whole conversation on the wrong cause.
  4. Allow a silence. After your opening you will want to fill the tension with words. Resist it. Stay quiet. The other person needs a moment to respond, and those few seconds of discomfort often produce the most honest part of the conversation.
  5. Agree on something concrete. A good conversation without a next step evaporates. Close with something measurable. What changes, from when, and how will you both see whether it is working. Vague optimism at the end feels nice, but changes nothing.
  6. Follow up. Come back to it briefly within a week or two. That shows the conversation was no one-off and that you mean it. And it gives you the chance to appreciate what did improve, which makes the next time easier.

Why the technique alone is not enough

You can learn these six steps by heart and still avoid the conversation. That happens because the brake rarely sits with the technique. The brake sits with how you see yourself. As long as you believe that being honest makes you less empathic, you keep postponing, however many step-by-step plans you know.

Real change happens when you start to see yourself as someone who can do both. Warm and clear. The feedback you keep delaying comes from the same care that makes you so likeable. You say something because you want this person to grow and not be caught off guard six months from now.

If you are more on the direct side, you already do the naming well. Your gain sits in the tone. You speak as if you are talking to someone whose best interest you have at heart.

In the business coaching for leaders I do, this is the pattern that comes back most often. The question is rarely "how do I say this." The question is "who do I want to be when I say it." For leaders at director level, executive coaching is a logical deepening of that same work.

Start small

Take that one conversation that keeps sitting on your list. Walk through the six steps once on paper. What do you concretely see, what is your assumption, what agreement do you want to make. And ask yourself that first question: which story about myself am I keeping alive by avoiding this conversation.

That preparation makes the conversation itself a good deal lighter. For a leader who wants to train these skills in a focused way, a 1-on-1 leadership program is a logical next step.

Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Difficult Conversations at Work: The 2 Pillars of Safety

David Buirs | Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

Difficult Conversations at Work: What the Loud and the Silent Have in Common

David Buirs is a leadership and executive coach in Amsterdam. This article explains why difficult conversations at work break down when arguments replace safety. Readers learn how mutual respect and mutual purpose, drawn from the Crucial Conversations model, bring a tense conversation back on track.

What does a colleague who raises their voice share with one who goes completely quiet?

More than you would think.

A manager in one of my trainings told me about a talk with a team member. It started fine. Then, halfway through, she crossed her arms and stopped speaking in full sentences. He did what most of us do. He explained his point again, slower this time, with better arguments.

It went nowhere.

Aggression and Silence Come From the Same Place

Aggression and silence look like opposites. Underneath, the same thing is happening. Both people feel unsafe.

Somewhere in the conversation, they started to believe one of two things. Either you don't respect them, or you don't have their interests at heart.

And here is what most of us do next. We keep talking about the content. The content is the topic itself: the deadline, the budget, the quality of someone's work. But the problem has moved to the context. The context is everything around the words: how the conversation feels, and what each person believes about the other's intentions.

The other person has stopped listening to your arguments. Their attention has gone to protecting themselves.

Why Better Arguments Stop Working

I love using the Crucial Conversations model for this. It makes one point beautifully clear. When safety disappears, the conversation about the content is over. Safety has to come back before anything else can continue.

In the model, safety rests on two pillars.

Mutual respect: the other person believes you see them as an equal. Mutual purpose: they believe you care about what they want, and that you are working toward something you both value.

When either one disappears, you get the aggression or the silence.

Name the Tension, With Curiosity

So you pause the topic. You name what you notice in the dynamic between you two, with curiosity and without assumptions.

This is where I see it go wrong most often, even with managers I have trained on the model. The manager from earlier tried exactly this. He said: "You seem mad." His words named the tension, but his tone turned it into an accusation. She heard an attack and pulled back further.

Compare that to: "I have the feeling something doesn't sit well with you. I might be wrong, but I'm curious to hear if something is bothering you."

The same elephant is on the table. The room feels completely different.

Two Ways to Rebuild Safety

Once the tension is out in the open, two things help restore safety.

First, repair respect. If something you said came across as disrespectful, say so, and apologize where it fits. A simple "that came out wrong, that was never my intention" does more than ten good arguments.

Second, rebuild mutual purpose. Say out loud what you both want. A project that succeeds. A team that works well together. A relationship that survives this conversation. You almost always share more purpose than it feels like in the moment.

When safety returns, you can pick up the content again. And now the other person can actually hear you.

One Exception: Bad News

For bad news conversations, leave this model in the drawer. When someone is losing their job or a project ends, share the news first, clearly and with care. People handle bad news far better than confusion.

A Quick Recap

When a difficult conversation at work turns loud or silent, safety has gone. Here is how you bring it back:

  • Read the signals. Raised voices and sudden silence both point to someone feeling unsafe.
  • Pause the content. Stop arguing the deadline or the budget for a moment.
  • Name the tension with curiosity, and watch your tone so it lands as an invitation.
  • Repair respect. Own anything that came across wrong and apologize where it fits.
  • Rebuild mutual purpose. Say out loud what you both want from this.
  • Then return to the content, once the other person can actually hear you.

What Safety Looks Like When It Returns

What still moves me, after years of doing this work, is seeing what happens when someone addresses safety well. The shoulders drop. The breathing slows. It is like watching a balloon full of tension slowly deflate. The other person feels seen, often for the first time in the whole conversation.

From that moment, you can talk about anything.

Most managers were never taught how to hold these conversations. That skill can be learned, and it changes how a whole team works together. This is a lot of what we do in leadership coaching. For leaders at director level, executive coaching takes the same work to the top of the organization. For a leader who wants to train these specific skills in a focused way, a 1-on-1 leadership course is a logical next step.

Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

Difficult Conversations Without Anxiety: Start With Your Body

David Buirs - Leadership Coach & Management Trainer

Why You Freeze During Difficult Conversations

David Buirs is a leadership coach in Amsterdam. This article explains why your body tightens during difficult conversations, and how body awareness and attention on the other person ease the tension. It covers the Crucial Conversations model for feedback, bad news, and conflict.

You know exactly which conversation you need to have. You have rehearsed the words in your head three times already. Then you sit across from that person and feel yourself lock up. Your voice changes. Your shoulders creep up. What you wanted to say comes out half-formed.

This happens to almost every leader. Having difficult conversations without anxiety looks like something reserved for people who never get nervous. That is not how it works. The calm comes from somewhere other than you expect. It starts in your own body, long before you say a word.

What Happens in Your Body

Before a tense conversation, your body drops into an old mode. Your brain reads the situation as danger. Not a threat to your life, but a social threat. Rejection. Conflict. Losing face.

Your body responds as if there is a predator in front of you. Your breathing turns shallow. Your jaw clenches. Your stomach contracts. For many people the shoulders climb toward the ears. Others feel it in their throat or their hands.

This happens automatically. You do not choose it. And that is exactly why it has such a grip on you.

Start With Body Awareness

This is where a piece of mindfulness helps. Practical, with nothing vague about it.

The first step is noticing where you tighten. Literally. Do you feel it in your shoulders? Your jaw? Your stomach? Most people have no idea, because they never pay attention to it. They live in their head, with the words, with everything that could go wrong.

Once you know where you lock up, you can do something with it. A deep breath into your belly. Letting your shoulders drop a centimeter on purpose. Softening your jaw. This sounds small. But your body and your mind talk to each other constantly. A calmer body sends a calmer signal back to your brain.

Try this before your next difficult conversation. Thirty seconds. Feel where the tension sits, and let that spot ease a little. This is the first building block toward difficult conversations without anxiety.

The Uncomfortable Discovery

Now comes the part that sounds strange, yet is true. And it really works.

When you are very nervous before a conversation, you are mostly busy with yourself. How do I come across? What does this person think of me? Am I going to fumble? Do I seem confident enough?

You think you are worried about the other person. But your attention is on yourself. On your own image.

This is confronting to read. It does not mean you are selfish or doing something wrong. Our brain is simply wired to focus on itself. That makes sense, it keeps us safe. It just does not help you in a conversation that matters.

And this insight is exactly what eases the tension. Because the moment you see it, you can turn it around.

Turn Your Attention Outward

Move your focus from yourself to the other person. Ask yourself two questions before the conversation.

What do I want to achieve here? And how do I communicate so that it actually lands with this person?

Once you are working on that, there is less room for the voice telling you that you will fail. Your mind has a job. You are focused on the outcome and on the human in front of you, instead of on your own insecurity.

This is no trick that makes the nerves vanish. The tension drops because your attention goes somewhere useful.

A Model That Gives You Something to Hold On To

I work a lot with leaders who have these conversations every day. Giving feedback. Delivering bad news. Addressing someone's behavior. A conflict in the team.

One of the models I teach is Crucial Conversations. It was built for exactly those moments when emotions run high and a lot is at stake. It gives you a structure to stay safe, to be honest, and to keep the other person with you without the talk escalating.

What I appreciate about this model: it works together with everything above. A calmer body and attention on the other person form the foundation. The model then gives you the words. For leaders from team lead to senior manager, this is one of the most valuable skills to master, and it is part of my leadership coaching. For leaders at director level, coaching for senior leaders is a natural deepening.

Practice in a Safe Setting

Nobody handles these conversations flawlessly from day one. It is a skill. And like any skill, it improves by practicing in a place where the stakes are not yet high.

That is exactly what we do in coaching. We look at what happens inside you during these conversations. We train the body awareness, the focus on the other person, and a model like Crucial Conversations. After that you practice it in real life, step by step. For a leader who wants to train these skills in a focused way, a 1-on-1 leadership course is a logical next step.

You become calmer. And your conversations become more honest and more effective.

Does this sound familiar, and do you want to start having these conversations with more calm and steadiness? Interested or curious? Let's chat. Plan your free introduction here. Zero obligation.

How to Have Hard Conversations as a Manager

David Buirs | Leadership & Executive Coach

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.

Why you freeze during tough conversations.

Leadership & Executive Coach | David Buirs

This article analyzes the physical stress response managers experience during difficult conversations. It provides practical self-regulation techniques based on neuroscience to reduce tension. The content establishes Personal Leadership as the foundation for effective communication.

You are standing at the door of the meeting room. You’ve rehearsed the script in your head three times, yet your chest feels tight and your breathing is shallow. You are about to deliver a confrontational message, and your body is in survival mode.

This isn’t a lack of preparation; it’s a biological reflex. Your system perceives social conflict as a physical threat. The urge to tense your muscles and shut down mentally is a defense mechanism that might protect you from pain, but it also isolates you from your team.

Personal Leadership starts with your own biology

Real leadership requires the courage to stay open when everything in you wants to armor up. We call this Personal Leadership. When you close your heart to protect yourself, you don’t just block the tension—you block the connection needed to achieve a result. You become a transmitter instead of a partner.

The key to less tension during difficult conversations lies in recognizing this physical constriction. The moment you feel your chest tighten, force yourself to release that tension. Relax your shoulders. Slow your breath. This is not a vague exercise; it is pure neuroscience to pull your brain out of ‘fight-or-flight’ mode.

The power of grounded confrontation

If you remain open, you unconsciously compel the other person to do the same. People sense whether you are speaking from fear or authority. By not suppressing the tension, but physically relaxing into it, you create space for an honest dialogue. You will notice team resistance decreases as soon as you stop building walls.

Whether it’s a performance review or correcting a senior expert, you don’t have to eliminate the fear. You only need to learn how to stay present with it without cramping up. That is the difference between a manager putting out fires and a leader who transforms.

Do you want to dive deeper into your own patterns? During a leadership coaching trajectory, we look together at what is still holding you back from facing confrontation with total composure.

Schedule a free introduction call here to discuss the possibilities for your context.