Activity: Leading Difficult Conversations

Instructions: Broken into 3 or 4 groups, students will read their assigned scenario and prepare a 5-minute briefing on how you would approach and lead this difficult conversation. Use the worksheet from Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most to assist your planning. 

You have 20 minutes to prepare your presentation.

Group 1

At a commander’s call, Lt Col Stone declared the squadron building’s condition “shameful” and directed that all members would be coming in at 0500 on Saturday mornings to clean the building from top to bottom for the next month.

You are new to the squadron and have just been given the additional duty of facility manager. In going through the program paperwork, you’ve discovered that the contracted cleaning company has been receiving payment even though they haven’t cleaned the building for months. It seems the previous facility manager was fraudulently signing the cleaning team’s timecards and the worst part is that Lt Col Stone has been blindly signing off on the expenses.

With the First Sergeant gone on TDY, morale running low, and Saturday fast approaching, you must engage with Lt Col Stone.

How will you prepare for and lead this difficult conversation?

Group 2

You have a friendly peer relationship with a fellow Technical Sergeant, TSgt Brand. At a recent squadron picnic, you were chatting with them when they began to make inappropriate comments about disabled people. You were uncomfortable with the conversation and left, but several Senior Airmen and Staff Sergeants overheard the comments. They may also have been uncomfortable but no one else spoke up.

Upon reflection, you realize that not speaking up when the comments were made may have made it seem like you had no problem with them. You decide to approach TSgt Brand in private the next week and share why you felt their comments were inappropriate.

How will you prepare for and lead this difficult conversation?

Group 3

You have just become the Deputy Flight Chief for a flight of more than 50 Airmen. The Flight Chief is very nice and competent, but continuously invites you to things after work and on the weekends, insisting that it’s “important for morale” to “get away every now and then.”

You sense that the Flight Chief’s intentions aren’t malicious, but all these activities are draining your emotional stamina—and your bank account. You need to tell the Flight Chief that you have no desire to go out all the time and that you have a life outside of work.

How will you prepare for and lead this difficult conversation?

Group 4

You must mediate a discussion between your troops, SrA Burnett and SrA Smith, who dislike each other intensely. They both distrust each other and are antagonistic and rude to one another—so much so that your First Sergeant has told you to “get a handle on them” and implied that if the situation continues, you may be held responsible for not properly supervising your troops.

When sitting down with them individually, you discover much of their dislike for each other stems from religious differences they are not able to reconcile.

Complicating the situation further is the fact that you share similar religious values with one of them, though you have a good working relationship with both troops.

How will you prepare for and lead this difficult conversation?