Month: June 2025

Courageous conversations are discussions that may involve sensitive or uncomfortable topics, requiring honesty and vulnerability. They are often about addressing difficult issues, building trust, and fostering understanding. Successfully navigating these conversations can strengthen relationships and lead to positive change. Avoiding them can lead to relationships either flatlining or breaking down.

Why do we need to have Courageous Conversations?

Courageous Conversations should underpin how we lead, how we hold others to account and we create a culture of transparency so people know where they stand.

We use the 3 Cs to frame all of our training on this theme to build:

• Consciousness in being aware of and in nurturing psychological safety
• Confidence in modelling openness and in embracing vulnerability
• Competence in holding people to account and in handling the ‘emotional wake’

We already have muscle memory to activate and draw from as we have been trained to have safeguarding conversations – they are not easy to facilitate but we know we have to have them – the more we do them, the more skilled we become at initiating them.

As we learn more, and practise, having Courageous Conversations we will move from being unconsciously incompetent to consciously incompetent, we will become consciously competent over time and eventually we will become unconsciously competent. The key thing to keep doing is reflecting on our competence levels and exploring which ones go well and why, alongside which ones are less effective so we can unpack and learn from each interaction.

What is a ‘Courageous Conversation’?

In Courageous Conversations, whether in the context of performance appraisal, mentoring, or coaching, individuals are encouraged to express their views openly and truthfully, rather than defensively or with the purpose of laying blame. Integral to Courageous Conversations is an openness to learn.

Typical examples of Courageous Conversations include handling conflict, confronting a colleague, expressing an unpopular idea on a team, asking for a favour, saying no to a request for a favour, asking for a raise, or trying to have a conversation with someone who is avoiding you.

What are the benefits of having Courageous Conversations?

• We understand others’ perspectives
• We broaden our diversity and inclusion awareness and understanding
• We gain understanding of intent and impact
• We address biases and non-inclusive behaviors
• We become more open to and receptive of feedback
• We model the culture we want at our organisation
• We commit to having more effective, productive and collaborative conversations up, down and across organisational levels
• We build transferable skills you can use inside and outside of the workplace

Why can we find Courageous Conversations difficult?

A Courageous Conversation is one that is often difficult to have but necessary, and when done effectively, can have a dramatic impact on how we lead ourselves, the team or the organisation. It requires us to step out of our comfort zone to discuss a topic that might well cause an emotional response.

To leave our comfort zone, we have to enter our fear zone before we get to our learning and growth zones, so it sometimes feels easier to retreat and stay where we are, avoiding them. However, while often avoided, these Courageous Conversations can be instrumental in building an inclusive workplace.

How do we create psychological safety to enable courageous conversation?

We need to reflect on how we create a psychologically safe learning environment for our learners. There are things we naturally do whenever we meet a new group of pupils to co-create and agree our classroom protocols. This social contract holds everyone to account for their behaviour.

We then need to get curious as to why we do not do this with our colleagues. Anyone who line-manages an individual or a team, anyone who holds space for others, would benefit from spending some time co-creating the expectations of how we will show up for each other and to articulate what we are all committing to.

Which models are useful for building our Courageous Conversations toolkit?

There are 3 models we use in our training that we introduce participants to:

• The Radical Candor framework from Kim Scott
• The Fierce Conversation framework from Susan Scott
• The Courageous Conversation compass from Glenn Singleton

How do we build a script for Courageous Conversations?

Beware of over-preparing what you want to say and it becoming contrived and stilted as this will sound inauthentic and not land well with your conversation partner. Instead consider some sentence starters or curious questions to practise building into your dialogue:

• Do we need to talk?
• Can we address the elephant in the room?
• What’s going on for you?
• What’s your perspective?
• Do we need to/ can we have a fierce conversation?

In Daring to Lead, Brene Brown calls it ‘Rumble Language’ and here are some of her suggestions:

• The story I make up…
• I’m curious about…
• Tell me more…
• That’s not my experience…
• I’m wondering…
• Help me understand…
• Walk me through that…
• What’s your passion around this…
• Tell me why this doesn’t fit/ work for you…

We need to see Courageous Conversations as a testament to our culture. When people feel safe, they are more open to feedback. When we balance caring with challenging we receive feedback in a constructive way. When we commit to Courageous Conversations our relationships flourish and our culture is enhanced as we all feel more valued and more empowered.

Signposting

• Check out our Courageous Conversations toolkit.
• Check out our Courageous Conversations training.
• Check out our Courageous Conversations programme.