Difficult Conversations
What to say and how to say it
Most performance issues are not a policy problem, they are a conversation problem. In schools and trusts, these conversations get delayed because relationships matter, emotions are high, and you are juggling ten other fires. This session gives you a repeatable, time-efficient approach to the day to day conversations that protect standards and morale, without turning you into a full-time counsellor. Emma draws on 20 years of people work in education, including senior executive responsibility for over 1,000 staff and first-hand experience of a maintained school converting into a large MAT, to share what works in real settings, not theory. You will leave with a structure you can use across roles, sites and experience levels, plus practical ways to document and follow up so issues do not drift.
In this session we explore
• Why “hard chats” go wrong in schools, vagueness, delay, mixed messages, over-explaining, and trying to be liked
• A clear conversation framework you can reuse, how to open, hold the line, and close with an agreed action
• The difference between capability, conduct, wellbeing and attendance, and why mixing them makes situations harder to resolve
• What consistency looks like in practice when you manage across sites, teams, and different community norms
• How to document properly without sounding like a robot, what to capture, how to phrase it, and what a fair paper trail looks like
• The leadership habits that lift performance in tough contexts, including visible leadership behaviours and “seat at the table” presence when it gets uncomfortable
Take home points
• A ready-to-use conversation structure for common school scenarios
• Practical phrases that are firm, fair, and non-inflammatory
• How to stop issues drifting for months, and reset expectations quickly
• A documentation and follow-up checklist that protects everyone involved
• A consistency test for leaders managing multiple roles, sites, or settings
This session is for
SBMs and school business leaders
