Management and Leadership

Mastering Critical Conversations

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• Traditional Classroom: ½-day
• Virtual Instructor-led: One 3-hour session or Two 90-minute sessions

Whether you’re providing feedback, navigating disagreement, managing competing priorities, or addressing sensitive issues, critical conversations are an essential part of working effectively with others. In this interactive session, you’ll develop practical tools to communicate with confidence, reduce defensiveness, and handle challenging conversations in ways that build trust, accountability, and collaboration.

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Target Audience

This course is designed for anyone at any level who wants to build both confidence and skills to successfully engage in critical conversations at work.

Course Objectives

• Diagnose what makes a conversation “critical” (not just uncomfortable).
• Explain how one’s mindset going into a critical conversation can impact its outcome.
• Separate facts, assumptions, impacts, and needs in real-life scenarios.
• Use a repeatable structure for high-stakes performance and peer conversations.
• Move from avoidance or emotional reaction to clarity, ownership, and next-step accountability.

Course Outline

Introduction

• Introductions, Objectives, and Opening Activities

What Makes a Conversation “Critical”?

• The Critical Conversations Triangle
• Questions to Ask: Relationship, Responsibility, Results
• Example Scenario: Missed Deadlines
• Individual Activity: Identify a Critical Conversation
• Why Critical Conversations Fail
• Successful Critical Conversations

Productive Conversation Mindset

• What Is a Productive Mindset?
• Conversation Derailers

Fact / Story / Impact / Need

• Separating Assumptions and Stories from Fact
• Practicing Empathy
• Active Listening

The C.L.E.A.R. Conversational Structure

• Clarify, Listen, Express, Align, Resolve
• Scenario Work: Revisit the Example Scenario
• Individual Activity: Utilize the C.L.E.A.R. Conversational Structure
• Group Activity: Share Your C.L.E.A.R. Steps

Class Activity: Critical Conversation Role-Plays

Course Summary and Next Steps

MDV4008b-3 Course Code