By Pete Colby (Director)
Isn’t it wonderful when someone is promoted, and as soon as they sign the contract saying 'manager' the magic fairy appears to sprinkle leadership dust over them? 🧚♀️🧚♀️🧚♀️
Except of course it doesn’t happen like that. More often than not, nothing happens at all to prepare new managers for what lies ahead. No fairy dust, no toolkit, no development of skills and little guidance on how to handle the really hard stuff that comes with managing people.
If this sounds like your organisation, please know you are not alone. It’s the reality for so many workplaces, I see it constantly.
So many managers out there are promoted because they’re technically brilliant at what they do, but technical expertise doesn't translate to the people skills needed when:
- Supporting a team member through a difficult time
- Dealing with conflict between colleagues
- Addressing performance concerns
- Having crucial conversations that shape workplace culture
- Having any kind of ‘difficult’ conversation that really matters
When managers find themselves in tricky situations, unable to resolve team issues or stuck in difficult relationships with team members – I genuinely don't blame them. It makes perfect sense. Having tough conversations is a skill that must be learned and practised.
We don’t often teach these skills properly within HR professional development frameworks either. This can leave well-meaning HR professionals feeling frustrated with managers for not having conversations that the HR team couldn't have themselves. Again, it's not their fault as many of them haven’t had the training or don’t have the confidence to do so themselves.
When we deliver management training on 'difficult' conversations, we always ask delegates what they find most challenging. The responses are remarkably consistent:
- 😱 Fear of saying the wrong thing
- 😱 Concern about making the situation worse
- 😱 Simply lacking confidence
It’s not laziness or indifference, it’s usually fear which for me changes how we should be thinking about support.
I wholeheartedly believe that if managers could attend just one course to launch their management journey, or help them while already on it, it should be our two-day programme on managing ‘difficult’ conversations.
We teach some of the skills we use as workplace mediators, not to turn managers into mediators, but to equip them with practical tools to:
- ✅ Have the right conversations at the right time
- ✅ Conduct these conversations skilfully and confidently
- ✅ Create more positive workplace cultures
- ✅ Reduce the need for formal escalation
The result? Managers who can handle challenging situations with confidence and workplaces with more trust, more understanding and much less conflict.
That's the closest thing to magic fairy dust I've found 🙂
