Difficult Conversations For New Managers

There's a name in your head right now.

You know which conversation you've been putting off. You know roughly what you would have to say. And you know it has been getting bigger since about March.

Maybe their work has slipped and you have been quietly fixing it. Maybe their tone is flattening everyone else in the room. Maybe they want a pay rise you cannot give them. Maybe you tried once, it went sideways, and neither of you has mentioned it since.

Difficult Conversations for New Managers is written for people who were promoted because they were good at the job, and then handed situations nobody trained them for. Three weeks into your first management role or three years in, the problem is the same one. Knowing what to actually say.

This is not a communication framework. There are no bridges, no dances, no icebergs. It is the words. What to say first. How to name the problem without making it personal. What to say when they push back, and what to say when the conversation stops going the way you planned.

Inside:

• A fifteen-minute prep sheet that stops you writing a speech which will not survive the first nine seconds
• Word-for-word scripts for underperformance, attitude and tone, pay and promotion
• The four diagnoses that tell you which conversation you are actually having: can't, won't, didn't know, or not right now
• What to say when it goes sideways: anger, defensiveness, silence, tears, and going over your head
• How to manage former peers, and the person everyone tiptoes around
• The conversations you have upwards, with your own boss and the colleague quietly moving work onto your team
• Twelve opening lines for the situations new managers meet again and again
• A toolkit built to sit open on your desk on the afternoon you need it

The aim is not to make these conversations comfortable. They are not going to be comfortable. The aim is to shrink the gap between noticing a problem and saying it out loud, from months to days.

Book two of The New Manager's Playbook.

If there is a specific conversation waiting for you right now, start here.