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Health and Wellbeing

How to Have Difficult Conversations

Stay calm and helpful when a conversation gets hard, by listening well and knowing when you're too stretched to do it.

  • 14 minutes
  • 6 modules
  • 0.5 CPD hours
  • Certificate

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What you'll learn

  • Balance empathy and assertiveness to suit the conversation
  • Use the six ingredients of good listening, including summarising and clarifying
  • Follow the four A's to approach, acknowledge, allow time and point to support
  • Offer support instead of rushing to solve the problem
  • Recognise when you're outside your window of tolerance

About this course

Most of us want to fix things. A colleague, pupil or parent starts to explain what's wrong, and before they've finished you're offering advice, reassuring too soon or filling the silence. They come away feeling you didn't quite hear them.

You'll learn when to lead with empathy and when you need to be assertive. Then there are the six ingredients of good listening: open questions, reflecting back, summarising, checking what words mean to them, small words of encouragement, and thanking them for telling you. The four A's give you a simple structure to follow, and the watchword is support, not solutions.

You'll also look at your own window of tolerance. If you're already overwhelmed or shut down, it's very hard to be there for someone else. Knowing your warning signs helps you pick your moment.

  • For early career teachers, governors and 7 other roles. All phases.

6 modules

Open in order

  1. Introduction

    1 min

  2. Consider how to approach conversations with empathy and assertiveness

    2 min

  3. How to actively listen

    5 min

  4. How to respond compassionately

    2 min

  5. Recognise our own window of tolerance

    4 min

  6. What Next?

    3 min