Guides · PDF
Leadership Conversation Guides
Short, structured guides to help you lead the hard conversations about performance, culture, and change—without freezing, over-explaining, or damaging trust.
$49
Instant digital download. Use a single guide to anchor a 1:1—or stack them across a season of change.
Why these guides exist
Most leaders don’t avoid hard conversations because they don’t care. They avoid them because:
- • They don’t know how to start without sounding harsh or vague.
- • They’re worried about saying the “wrong thing” and making it worse.
- • They’re tired and default to “we’ll talk about it later.”
These guides give you a simple structure, a few example lines, and clear outcomes so you can walk into the conversation with more clarity and less dread.
What’s inside the Leadership Conversation Guides
You get a focused set of conversation playbooks designed for real-world leadership—not theory. Each guide is 2–4 pages and can be used as a pre-meeting prep sheet or printed and kept in a folder.
1. Performance Drift & Expectations Reset
For the team member whose performance has slipped, but who you believe can recover. Includes framing, “what I’ve noticed” language, and a joint plan structure.
2. Chronic Misalignment on Role or Scope
For when a leader or staff member keeps stepping outside their lane—or not fully into it. Helps you reset boundaries, responsibilities, and decision rights without shaming.
3. Culture & Norms Conversation
A guide to address behaviors that are technically within policy but harmful to culture: cliques, side comments, resistance in meetings, or inconsistency with stated values.
4. Change Impact & Load Check-In
A 1:1 framework to talk honestly about change fatigue, workload, and what’s actually sustainable for the person in front of you.
5. “This Isn’t Working” Conversation
A structured guide for the moments when you need to say: “This isn’t working in its current form.” Helps you stay direct, humane, and specific about next steps.
6. Appreciation & Retention Conversation
Not every crucial conversation is negative. Use this to name impact, explore growth, and keep your best people anchored in the mission.
How to use these guides in real life
- Pick the guide that fits the real problem. Is this about performance, culture, scope, or change load?
- Spend 5–10 minutes with the guide before the meeting. Circle phrases that feel like your voice; cross out ones that don’t.
- Clarify your outcome. What would “a good 30-minute conversation” look like by the end?
- Use the openers and questions. You don’t have to read them word-for-word, but let them steady your start.
- Capture agreements in the moment. Each guide has a simple follow-up/action section you can jot notes into.
- Revisit. Use the same guide again when you check in 2–4 weeks later so the conversation doesn’t evaporate.
Want help building a coaching rhythm for your leaders?
We can use a short consult to look at your current culture and change load, then shape a simple coaching cadence your leaders can actually sustain.