Handling Difficult Conversations in HE: The Step Changes from Grade 6 Upwards

A key indicator of readiness or potential for career progression in the eyes of senior leaders is when you stop avoiding difficult conversations. That’s because there’s a certain level of emotional maturity that is required to willingly tackle potential conflict situations. It’s not even that you want to have the difficult conversations but you understand that unaddressed tensions erode trust, derail projects, and damage relationships far more than honest, skilful conversations ever could.

This shift in approach to difficult conversations is one of the most telling indicators of progression readiness in The Hidden Curriculum of Progression. Yet it's also one of the least discussed, with many professionals hoping they can advance without having to master these uncomfortable but essential interactions.

They can't. Senior roles are filled with conversations nobody wants to have: performance concerns, budget constraints, policy changes, restructuring decisions, competing priorities and delivering the dreaded ‘no’. Your ability to navigate these conversations skilfully determines whether you're seen as leadership material or someone who needs protecting from complexity.

Why Difficult Conversations Matter

Higher Education is built on relationships. Academic-professional partnerships, student-staff interactions, institutional-external collaborations. When these relationships hit obstacles, it's usually senior Professional Services leaders who need to address the tensions whilst preserving the underlying partnerships.

This requires sophisticated communication skills: the ability to name difficult realities whilst maintaining emotional and nervous system regulation, to challenge problematic behaviours whilst preserving dignity, and to negotiate competing interests whilst finding sustainable solutions.

These aren't just "soft skills." They're the practical tools that determine whether policies get implemented, whether changes stick, and whether your leadership creates more trust or less.

How Conversation Skills Shift as You Progress

From Team Member to Manager: From Avoidance to Engagement

Team member: You provide a consistent and professional service, using judgement to resolve non-routine queries. You show awareness of different stakeholder needs and respond flexibly when things don't go to plan. You’re also quite likely to escalate issues to your manager to advise on or even take forward for you.

Manager: You balance competing needs and manage expectations across multiple stakeholders. You handle complaints or complex requests with diplomacy and fairness.

The key shift: Actively addressing tensions rather than managing around them. Managers recognise that avoiding difficult conversations often makes situations worse in the long run. They develop skills to address concerns directly whilst maintaining relationships. There’s a key identity shift here from identifying most strongly with the needs of the team towards representing “the management”.

From Manager to Senior Manager/Grade 8: Institutional Conversations

Manager: You balance competing needs and manage expectations across multiple stakeholders. You handle complaints or complex requests with diplomacy and fairness.

Senior Manager: You maintain strong relationships with stakeholders and resolve tensions thoughtfully. You anticipate stakeholder needs and act proactively to address them. You spend time with Managers, coaching them through how to approach tensions further down the team structure.

The key shift: Moving from reactive to proactive. Senior Managers don't wait for tensions to escalate. They spot emerging issues, have conversations before problems become crises, and create conditions where difficult topics can be discussed constructively. Importantly they don’t step in to have all of the conversations themselves but support intermediary line managers to lead those conversations at the appropriate level.

From Senior Manager to Leader: Leading Through Complexity

Senior Manager: You maintain strong relationships with stakeholders and resolve tensions thoughtfully. You anticipate stakeholder needs and act proactively to address them. You spend time with Managers, coaching them through how to approach tensions further down the team structure.

Head of Service/leadership level: You lead engagement strategies for complex stakeholder groups. You balance institutional goals with individual needs and manage sensitive or political relationships. Your focus is more outward looking than internal to team dynamics because you trust your senior managers to handle behaviour and performance issues in the team appropriately.

The key shift: Navigating institutional politics whilst maintaining integrity. Leaders handle conversations that have institutional implications, often with external stakeholders or in highly charged internal situations. They need to balance multiple agendas whilst staying true to institutional values.

The Most Common Conversation Challenge

The Avoidance Instinct

Many professionals postpone difficult conversations hoping situations will resolve themselves. Or they think we’ll just get through x project or deadline and tackle it when things calm down. But unaddressed tensions usually escalate, making eventual conversations more difficult and relationships harder to repair. 

It also postpones any follow-on processes, e.g. if a Performance Improvement Process is required, you (and your team) might be 6 months into experiencing the issue before HR will authorise formal proceedings if you haven’t tackled the informal stages effectively early on. Overall that creates a much larger volume of stress and anxiety for everyone involved than the immediate, more intense anxiety the manager might feel in the moments of handling the difficult conversation at an appropriate moment. 

When this is done well, senior leaders and HR will notice. You shift from avoiding conversations, and potentially even covering for individuals involved, letting issues drag on for months and months, to tackling things head on: sensitively and professionally, but directly, calmly, firmly and fairly. This attracts much more respect from the team and professional esteem from any onlookers (senior leaders, HR, stakeholders, peers, colleagues and your wider team).

How to Prepare Yourself

1. Practice the COIN Method

Context: Set the scene and explain why the conversation is needed.
Observation: Share specific, factual observations without interpretation.
Impact: Explain the effect of the behaviour or situation.
Next: Agree on next steps and follow-up actions.

This framework helps structure difficult conversations in ways that focus on issues rather than personalities.

2. Develop Your Emotional Regulation

Notice your physical and emotional responses when entering difficult conversations. Practice breathing techniques, grounding exercises, or other strategies that help you stay calm and present when tensions arise. Get help if you’re experiencing significant stress or anxiety.

3. Study Skilled Practitioners

Observe how senior colleagues handle difficult situations. What language do they use? How do they maintain relationships whilst addressing problems? How do they follow up after challenging conversations?

4. Seek Feedback on Your Approach

After significant conversations, reflect on what worked and what didn't. Ask trusted colleagues for feedback on your communication style and effectiveness in handling sensitive situations.

The Courage Dimension

Difficult conversations require courage, but it's not the courage to be confrontational. It's the courage to prioritise long-term relationships over short-term comfort or what feels easier, to address issues when they're manageable rather than waiting until they're crises, and to trust that honest conversations strengthen rather than damage professional relationships.

Many professionals have the skills to handle difficult conversations but lack the courage to initiate them. They wait for others to take the lead or hope that problems will resolve naturally.

Senior roles don't offer this luxury. You become the person others turn to when conversations need to happen, when tensions need addressing, and when difficult decisions need explaining.

Building Your Conversation Confidence

Start with low-stakes situations to build your skills and confidence. Practice giving feedback, addressing minor conflicts, or having clarifying conversations when expectations aren't aligned.

Pay attention to how these conversations affect relationships. You'll often find that honest, respectful dialogue strengthens professional connections rather than damaging them. This positive reinforcement builds the confidence to tackle more challenging situations.

Remember that difficult conversations are skills that improve with practice. Every challenging interaction is an opportunity to develop capabilities that are essential for senior leadership success.

Conversation skills are one element of the Hidden Curriculum. Discover what else panels look for when assessing readiness for senior HE roles by downloading the Hidden Curriculum Grade Guides here

Also in this series:

From Delivery to Strategy: How Leadership Expectations Evolve Across Grades

Decision-Making in Professional Services: What Panels Look for at Each Grade

Communication in Higher Education: How Expectations Shift from Grade 6 to 9

Influence Without Authority: Hidden Skills for Progression in HE