Rethinking Difficult Conversations: Beyond Skills Training

Introduction

Most people recognise that certain workplace conversations are necessary but profoundly uncomfortable. Whether raising a concern with a manager, giving feedback to a colleague, or disclosing a personal issue, these moments are often described as “difficult conversations”. They are common, consequential, and, more often than not, avoided. When avoidance becomes the norm, issues fester, relationships suffer, and both individual wellbeing and organisational performance are compromised (Detert & Edmondson, 2011; Morrison & Milliken, 2000).

In practice, organisations have typically responded with skills training. Employees are offered workshops in communication, managers learn structured feedback models, and leaders rehearse scripts for delivering bad news. These interventions are well-intentioned, but their impact is often limited. Research continues to show that even after training, many employees fail to act on the conversations they know need to happen (CIPD, 2022).

This article draws on insights from my doctoral research into difficult conversations at work, alongside published organisational psychology and behavioural science. I argue that we need to move beyond a skills-based framing and consider difficult conversations as behavioural phenomena shaped by motivation, opportunity, and relational context, not just by communication ability. By doing so, occupational psychologists can play a critical role in designing interventions that address the deeper barriers to dialogue.

Why conversations matter, and why they are avoided

Workplace conversations are the medium through which relationships are built, problems are surfaced, and trust is sustained. They matter not only for productivity but also for inclusion and wellbeing. In healthcare, for example, failures to speak up have been linked to patient harm (Francis, 2013). In corporate settings, silence about unethical behaviour has enabled scandals to escalate unchecked (Detert & Burris, 2007).

Despite this importance, avoidance is strikingly common. In a recent UK survey, more than half of employees admitted they had avoided at least one necessary workplace conversation in the last year, most often with their manager (CIPD, 2022). Avoidance arises because these conversations carry perceived risk. They may threaten relationships, status, or identity. One employee described this dilemma clearly: “It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say, it was the fear of how it might land, and what it would mean for me afterwards.”

The dominant explanation has been communication competence. If people lack skills, they will struggle to express themselves, so the remedy is training. This framing, however, neglects the wider behavioural, relational, and systemic barriers that occupational psychologists are well placed to address.

The limits of skills-based approaches

Skills training assumes that knowledge of how to have a conversation translates directly into action. Decades of behavioural science suggest otherwise. Knowing what to do rarely guarantees that people will do it (Michie, van Stralen, & West, 2011).

Organisations typically provide structured communication tools. Feedback models such as “situation, behaviour, impact” or scripts for performance reviews are designed to give clarity. Leadership programmes often teach difficult conversations through role-play and rehearsal. Yet when individuals return to their daily work, they frequently report that these tools feel artificial or unsafe to use in real relational contexts.

There are several reasons why. First, training focuses narrowly on capability. It may improve confidence in expression but does little to address opportunity, such as lack of privacy or organisational climates that discourage openness. Nor does it address motivation, such as fear of reprisals or concern for relationships. Second, it treats difficulty as inherent to the topic. A conversation about underperformance is labelled as “difficult”, yet whether it feels manageable depends heavily on who is involved and the level of trust between them (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). Third, training often ignores the anticipatory burden.

Many employees describe the lead-up to a conversation as harder than the dialogue itself. The emotional labour of rumination, rehearsing, and worrying is largely absent from training models (Hochschild, 1983). Finally, the responsibility is placed squarely on the individual. If employees fail to speak up, they are seen as lacking courage or skill, when in fact organisational norms of silence and inequities of power often constrain voice (Morrison, 2011).

Occupational psychologists, by contrast, are trained to examine the interaction between people, their environment, and their behaviour. Understanding difficult conversations through this broader lens allows us to move beyond narrow capability-building and towards more holistic, systemic interventions.

A behavioural lens

A more promising way to conceptualise difficult conversations is through a behavioural perspective. This recognises that conversations occur when capability, opportunity, and motivation align. The COM-B model (Michie et al., 2011), widely used in health psychology, provides a useful framework.

Capability refers to the knowledge, skills, and emotional regulation required for dialogue. Opportunity relates to the external conditions that support action, such as time, privacy, and organisational safety. Motivation involves the internal processes that drive behaviour, including values, emotions, and anticipated consequences.

From this perspective, conversational avoidance is not simply a deficit of competence but a behavioural outcome of reduced motivation, limited opportunity, or both. Consider the employee who knows exactly how to raise a concern but chooses silence because their manager has punished dissent in the past. Here, capability is intact, but opportunity and motivation are suppressed.

This framing is consistent with theories of employee voice, which emphasise the role of implicit beliefs (“speaking up is futile”) and contextual cues (“managers do not want to hear bad news”) in shaping silence (Detert & Edmondson, 2011; Morrison, 2011). It also resonates with research on power and inhibition, which shows that hierarchical asymmetries constrain upward feedback even when individuals are articulate and knowledgeable (Keltner et al., 2003).

Relational and emotional dimensions

The behavioural perspective also highlights the relational and emotional risks that define conversational difficulty. Difficulty is not fixed in the content of a discussion but in the threats it poses to the self and to the relationship. Disclosing a health condition to a peer may feel manageable, but disclosing it to a manager introduces power dynamics and potential career implications.

The emotional weight of anticipation complicates matters further. Employees often carry conversations in their heads for weeks, repeatedly rehearsing what they might say. One described it as “like a stone in my pocket that just got heavier the longer I ignored it.” This accumulating burden shows how avoidance becomes self-reinforcing. By delaying, individuals not only maintain the problem but also increase the psychological effort required to eventually address it.

Psychologists recognise this cycle as avoidance coping (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989). Avoidance may reduce immediate anxiety but prolongs distress and prevents resolution. Helping employees to interrupt this cycle requires more than teaching conversational scripts. It requires supporting motivation and emotional readiness, while also reducing the risks perceived in the relational context.

Conversations are also closely tied to identity. For employees who need to disclose issues related to health, disability, or personal identity, conversations can trigger fears of stigmatisation or exclusion. Research on inclusion has shown that where organisations fail to provide safety and genuine support, employees learn that silence is the safer path. Occupational psychologists therefore have a responsibility to highlight how difficult conversations are also equity and inclusion issues, not just communication challenges.

The organisational context

The organisational context is decisive in determining whether difficult conversations occur. Psychological safety, the shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, has consistently been shown to predict speaking up (Edmondson, 1999; Edmondson & Lei, 2014). In low-safety environments, even well-trained employees remain silent.

Similarly, organisational silence (Morrison & Milliken, 2000) describes the collective withholding of concerns due to fear of negative consequences or perceptions that voice is futile. Once established, silence becomes a self-reinforcing norm. Employees assume others also choose silence and conclude that raising issues would be socially or professionally risky.

Training employees to speak up in such climates without addressing systemic barriers can do more harm than good. Individuals may be encouraged to take interpersonal risks but find themselves punished for doing so, further entrenching silence. For psychologists, the challenge is to help organisations confront and shift the systemic conditions that constrain dialogue.

Implications for occupational psychology practice

What does this mean for practice? First, assessment must be broadened. Instead of asking only whether individuals know how to have conversations, psychologists should ask what prevents the conversations from happening. Lack of skill is only one possibility. Barriers may also lie in the relational context or in the motivation of those involved.

Second, interventions should target systems as well as individuals. Organisational culture, leadership practices, and inequities of power must be addressed if individuals are to feel able to speak. This may involve leadership development, policy changes, or redesigning feedback systems to encourage openness rather than compliance.

Third, supporting emotional readiness is crucial. Coaching and reflective practice can help employees work through anticipatory anxiety and build confidence in the value of dialogue. Creating peer networks where individuals can test out conversations in a low-risk environment also helps to reduce the emotional burden.

Fourth, leaders must be equipped. Managers have disproportionate influence over whether others feel able to speak. Their responses can either reinforce silence or foster trust. Training leaders to listen, to respond without defensiveness, and to repair relationships after difficult conversations is therefore vital.

Finally, psychologists can help frame conversations as values-driven. When dialogue is linked to identity and purpose, such as doing the right thing, protecting wellbeing, or fostering inclusion, motivation is enhanced. Employees are more likely to engage in difficult conversations when they see them not just as obligations but as meaningful actions aligned with their values.

Conclusion

Difficult conversations are unavoidable in organisations, yet they are too often framed as problems of communication skill. This narrow perspective misses the deeper behavioural, relational, and systemic dynamics that determine whether conversations happen at all. By adopting a behavioural lens, occupational psychologists can shift the focus from individual competence to the interplay of capability, opportunity, and motivation.

This reframing opens richer possibilities for practice: diagnosing barriers, supporting readiness, and designing organisational systems that enable safe and constructive dialogue. Importantly, it challenges the tendency to treat conversational difficulty as a personal failing. Instead, it recognises it as a predictable outcome of the contexts in which people work.

Occupational psychologists are uniquely positioned to lead this shift. By moving beyond skills training and addressing the real drivers of avoidance, we can help organisations replace silence with dialogue. In doing so, we not only support performance but also foster cultures of trust, inclusion, and resilience.

References

Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(2), 267–283. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.56.2.267

CIPD. (2022). Good Work Index 2022. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Detert, J. R., & Burris, E. R. (2007). Leadership behavior and employee voice: Is the door really open? Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 869–884. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.26279183

Detert, J. R., & Edmondson, A. C. (2011). Implicit voice theories: Taken-for-granted rules of self-censorship at work. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 461–488. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2011.61967925

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999