Talking About the Hard Stuff: Why Difficult Conversations at Work Matter More Than We Think

Setting the Scene

Almost everyone has a story about a difficult conversation at work. It might be the moment you had to tell a colleague they’d let you down. It might be disclosing a health condition to your manager. Or it might be the uneasy decision to challenge behaviour that clashed with your values.

These moments carry weight. They rarely start with words; they begin in the body, the knot in your stomach, the restless night of half-rehearsed sentences, the quiet voice telling you to stay silent because it feels safer. And they rarely end when the conversation does. They follow you home, replayed on your commute, relived in sleepless hours, second-guessed for days or even weeks.

Difficult conversations are not side issues in organisational life. They sit at the heart of trust, wellbeing, and culture. When handled well, they can deepen relationships, increase inclusion, and make workplaces more human. When avoided, they create silence, distance, and disconnection.

My doctoral research set out to understand why these conversations feel so heavy, how people navigate them, and what helps or hinders them. The findings confirm what many already sense: difficult conversations are not only about communication skills. They are about risk, personal, relational, and structural. They involve emotional labour, often invisible but draining. And they test the culture of our organisations in ways that policies and values statements rarely capture.

Think back to the last difficult conversation you had, or avoided. Did it leave you feeling more connected, more isolated, or simply exhausted? What do you remember most: the words themselves, or the feelings before and after?

Rethinking What Counts as “Difficult”

When organisations talk about “difficult conversations,” they often mean the formal ones: performance reviews, disciplinary meetings, delivering bad news. Books and training programmes reinforce this framing. It’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete.

The people I listened to described something broader. The conversations they found most difficult weren’t usually about deadlines or performance. They were about personal matters: health, mental wellbeing, identity, fairness, or values.

These conversations are harder precisely because they are more intimate. They ask people to reveal something vulnerable, to disclose part of themselves, and to trust that the response will be safe. Once shared, these truths cannot be taken back.

One person explained: “I knew my manager would probably want to be supportive, but I kept thinking, once I say this, I can’t unsay it. It changes how they see me.”

That sense of irrevocability, of shifting how you are perceived, makes these conversations feel profoundly risky. And yet, these kinds of conversations are rarely included in training or policy. We prepare managers to give feedback, but not to respond when someone says: “I’m struggling,” or “This isn’t in line with my values,” or “This is who I am.”

What kinds of conversations in your workplace fall through the cracks of policy and training? Which ones matter deeply but remain unspoken?

Alt text: A Venn-style diagram with two overlapping circles. The left circle, shaded blue, is labelled “Prepared For (Formal/Procedural)” and lists performance reviews, conflict resolution, and delivering bad news. The right circle, shaded red, is labelled “Actually Difficult (Personal/Intimate)” and lists mental health, identity, fairness, and values/wellbeing. The small overlapping space highlights the contrast between what organisations prepare for and what employees find most challenging.

Why Some Conversations Feel Riskier Than Others

Not all conversations feel equally daunting. Some we enter with ease, even when they are slightly uncomfortable. Others feel so charged that we hesitate for days, weeks, or even months. Through my research, three conditions consistently shaped how difficult a conversation felt:

1. Who it is with — is it a peer, a direct report, or a manager?

2. What it is about — is the topic primarily work-related, or does it touch on something personal?

3. Who it concerns — are you speaking on behalf of yourself, or raising something about another person?

When these three conditions converge — a conversation with a manager, about a personal issue, concerning yourself — the difficulty amplifies. These were consistently rated as the most daunting conversations. Why? Because they bring together three intertwined layers of risk: structural, relational, and emotional.

Let’s take each in turn.

Structural Risk: The Weight of Power and Hierarchy

The first risk is structural. This is about the power dynamics embedded in organisational hierarchies. Managers hold formal authority: they assess performance, allocate opportunities, recommend promotions, and sometimes influence job security.

When we speak to a peer about a missed deadline, there may be discomfort, but the structural stakes are low. When we disclose something deeply personal to a manager, the calculation changes. There is always an implicit question: “Could this affect how my performance is rated? Could it harm my career prospects? Could it make me seem less capable?”

For example, telling a manager about struggling with workload might be interpreted as honesty and self-awareness, or it might be seen as weakness or poor resilience, depending on the cultural lens of the organisation. These possibilities weigh heavily in employees’ decision-making.

Organisational research shows that this perceived career risk is one of the strongest inhibitors of upward voice. Even in supportive cultures, employees often assume that managers will interpret disclosures through a performance lens.

In your context, how safe would you feel sharing a personal difficulty with someone who formally assesses your work? What signals have you received, directly or indirectly, about whether disclosure harms or helps careers?

Relational Risk: The Fragility of Trust

The second layer is relational. This is about the quality of the relationship itself. Work relationships carry emotional significance, trust, closeness, mutual respect. They shape our sense of belonging.

When you consider raising a difficult issue, one of the key questions is: “How will this affect how they see me? Will it change our closeness, our ease of working together, the balance of trust we’ve built?”

Imagine you’ve worked well with your manager for years. You share a rhythm, perhaps even a sense of camaraderie. Then you need to tell them something personal, for example, that you need adjustments due to long-term health issues. Even if you believe they’ll want to help, you can’t predict how the disclosure might subtly shift the relationship. Will they become overprotective? Less likely to give you challenging projects? Will they start second-guessing your resilience?

This is the relational risk: that the act of speaking changes the relationship in ways that cannot be undone. Unlike structural risk, which is about formal power, relational risk is about emotional closeness and the invisible threads of trust that hold working relationships together.

Think of someone at work you trust deeply. How would you feel if you had to disclose something that might alter how they see you? Which feels riskier to you, damaging the relationship itself, or the consequences of staying silent?

Emotional Risk: The Vulnerability of Exposure

The third layer is emotional. This is about what it costs us internally to reveal something tender, personal, or identity-shaping.

When we talk about mental health, chronic illness, values, or experiences of exclusion, we are not just sharing information, we are exposing part of ourselves. This exposure can feel raw, because it opens us up to being misunderstood, dismissed, or judged.

Even if the manager responds well, the act of disclosure itself can feel destabilising. It demands courage to say out loud what you’ve perhaps held inside for a long time. It requires you to let go of control over how the information will be received, interpreted, and remembered.

One participant in my research described it this way: “The hardest part wasn’t what they would say, but that I had to put words to something I barely had words for myself. Saying it out loud made it real, and that was terrifying.”

This emotional risk is often invisible to others. Managers might underestimate how much it costs someone to open up, focusing instead on the “content” of the message rather than the vulnerability required to voice it.

When have you hesitated to share something because it felt “too personal” or “too risky to expose”? What emotions held you back, fear, shame, uncertainty, and what would have helped you feel safer?

Stacking Risks: When the Three Converge

The most daunting conversations are those where these three risks converge. Telling a peer about a task mistake may involve some relational tension but little structural or emotional risk. By contrast, telling a manager about a personal difficulty stacks the risks:

• Structurally, they hold authority over your career.

• Relationally, the trust between you could be altered.

• Emotionally, you are exposing something deeply personal.

When risks stack in this way, the weight of silence can feel lighter than the risk of disclosure. This is why so many important conversations remain unspoken.

Consider a conversation you’ve delayed. Which of these risks, structural, relational, or emotional, feels most salient for you? And which could be lessened if the other person, or the organisation, created different conditions?

Alt text: A diagram titled “The Three Risks of Difficult Conversations” shows three stacked boxes. The first box reads “Structural Risk – Power, hierarchy, job security” with examples such as disclosing mistakes to a manager or asking for flexible work. The second box reads “Relational Risk – Trust, closeness, reputation” with examples such as challenging a peer’s behaviour or sharing concerns with a colleague. The third box reads “Emotional Risk – Vulnerability, identity, exposure” with examples such as talking about mental health or disclosing values. A note beneath the boxes says: “When all three risks converge → High Difficulty Zone (Conversations with managers about personal issues concerning yourself).

The Hidden Emotional Labour

What struck me most in people’s stories was not simply what they said, but the effort behind the words. The unseen energy. The weight of preparation. The restraint in the moment. The rumination afterwards.

Alt text: A digital illustration of an iceberg floating in calm water. A small tip of the iceberg is visible above the surface, while a much larger section lies submerged beneath. The visible part represents the conversation itself, while the larger hidden part symbolises the unseen emotional labour of preparation, regulation, and aftermath.

This is emotional labour, the regulation of feelings and expressions to meet workplace expectations. In many settings, it means presenting calm professionalism even when you feel anything but. In the context of difficult conversations, this labour multiplies: it is shaped by power dynamics, personal identity, and the vulnerability of disclosure. And it is carried by both employees and managers, though often in different ways.

1. The Preparation Phase: Rehearsal and Delay

Long before the conversation begins, people are already working hard. Many described drafting and redrafting messages, sometimes dozens of times, before hitting delete and deciding to speak face-to-face. Others reported rehearsing conversations in their heads at night, trying out different phrasings, anticipating every possible response.

Preparation could stretch for weeks. Some delayed because they feared the fallout; others because they needed time to summon courage. One participant admitted, “I rewrote that email at least twenty times. In the end, I didn’t send it. I just sat on it until the problem got worse.”

This stage is emotionally draining. Even before a word is spoken, the body carries the load: knotted stomachs, tense shoulders, restless nights.

Think of the last difficult conversation you prepared for. How much energy did you spend before you even walked into the room?

2. In the Moment: Holding It Together

The conversation itself is often the most visible part, but even here, what appears simple is usually underpinned by significant regulation.

Many participants spoke about the effort required to “keep it professional.” For some, that meant holding back tears; for others, swallowing anger or frustration. One described monitoring their tone word by word, fearing that a slip could shift the entire outcome.

In hierarchical contexts, this regulation intensified. Employees felt pressure not only to manage their own emotions but to protect their manager’s comfort. “I didn’t want to come across as too emotional,” one participant explained. “If I cried, I thought they’d see me as weak. If I got angry, I thought they’d see me as difficult. So I just tried to stay neutral, even though I was breaking inside.”

Managers, too, carried emotional labour. They worried about saying the wrong thing, about balancing empathy with organisational responsibility, about holding someone’s vulnerability with care while also thinking about the bigger picture. One manager reflected, “I was terrified that one wrong phrase might shut them down forever.”

When you are in the middle of a hard conversation, how much attention goes to your feelings versus the mask you present? And if you are the listener, how do you balance empathy with responsibility?

3. Aftermath: The Lingering Weight

Emotional labour doesn’t end when the words stop. For many, the hardest work came afterwards.

Some described lying awake at night, replaying every phrase, wondering if they had said too much, too little, or the wrong thing entirely. Others described relief at finally having spoken, but also the vulnerability hangover that comes with exposure: the sense of, “I can’t take it back now. What will they do with what I shared?”

For managers, the aftermath often carried a different burden: the responsibility of response. They recognised that how they reacted might have lasting consequences, perhaps building trust, or perhaps closing a door permanently.

This phase shows how difficult conversations are never just “moments.” They are processes with echoes, rippling across nights, relationships, and sometimes careers.

After your last difficult conversation, did you feel lighter, heavier, or simply exhausted? What lingered most, the words, or the emotions?

Emotional Labour as Shared but Unequal

The hidden work of these conversations is shared, both employees and managers experience it, but it is not always equal. Employees often carry the weight of disclosure, fear, and exposure. Managers often carry the weight of response, responsibility, and relational repair.

Both kinds of labour, the labour of disclosure and the labour of response, are real. Both take energy, and both have consequences. Yet in most organisations, neither is openly acknowledged. We design training programmes around words, feedback models, conversation scripts, frameworks for difficult conversations, but these often skim over the emotional effort that underpins them.

We ask employees to be “open” without acknowledging the courage it takes. We ask managers to “listen well” without recognising the strain of responsibility they carry. By failing to name and value this hidden work, we leave people to carry it alone, often in silence.

How often do we name, validate, or support the unseen emotional labour it takes, not just to speak, but to listen well, in these moments? What would change in your workplace if emotional labour was not invisible but named, validated, and supported as part of the conversation process?

Why Avoidance Is So Common

If difficult conversations matter so much, why do we so often avoid them? It’s a question that surfaced repeatedly in my research. The answer is rarely about laziness or a lack of communication skills. Instead, avoidance tends to follow a predictable rhythm, what I call the resistance–avoidance loop.

Alt text:A circular diagram with four stages connected by arrows: Awareness at the top, Appraisal on the right, Hesitation at the bottom, and Avoidance on the left. Thin black lines link the circles, indication their connection and the recurring cycle people follow when they avoid difficult conversations.

The Resistance–Avoidance Loop

1. Awareness — You sense that something needs to be said. A problem nags at you, a value is crossed, or a truth sits unsaid.

2. Appraisal — You begin to weigh the risks. How might they respond? What could this mean for me? What happens if I stay silent?

3. Hesitation — The risks start to feel heavier than the potential gains. The knot in your stomach tightens. You tell yourself, “Maybe it will resolve itself… Maybe this isn’t the right time.”

4. Avoidance — Silence feels safer. You convince yourself the conversation isn’t worth the fallout, and the moment passes.

This loop is familiar to many, a cycle of noticing, weighing, stalling, and retreating. Some people described it as “talking themselves out of talking.”

If you feel stuck in hesitation, try naming the risks you’re imagining. Which are evidence-based? Which are assumptions? What could make even one of them feel safer?

Avoidance as Protection, Not Apathy

It is important to recognise that avoidance is not a sign of apathy, weakness, or incompetence. It is often a protective strategy. Staying silent may feel like the least dangerous choice when speaking feels laden with risk.

This aligns with research on organisational silence, which shows employees frequently withhold concerns not because they don’t care, but because they fear negative consequences, damaged relationships, career setbacks, or simply futility.

In other words, silence is not the absence of voice; it is the outcome of a calculation of risk.

Think of a time when you avoided saying something important. Were you protecting yourself, protecting the other person, or protecting the relationship?

The Costs of Silence

While silence can feel safer in the moment, it carries its own costs. Over time, avoidance can create distance in relationships, erode trust, and leave problems unresolved. Employees who remain silent often report feelings of frustration, disengagement, and even burnout, the emotional cost of carrying unspoken truths.

One participant described it this way: “I thought keeping quiet would protect me. But the longer I stayed silent, the heavier it became.”

The irony is that silence, while protective in the short term, can undermine connection and wellbeing in the long term.

Breaking the Loop

So how do we loosen the grip of the resistance–avoidance loop? The first step is awareness. Recognising the pattern gives us a chance to pause and ask: What is driving my hesitation?

 If you feel stuck in hesitation, try writing down the risks you’re imagining. Which are supported by evidence? Which are assumptions? Which could be eased with preparation, support, or timing? Even reducing one risk, real or perceived, can make the conversation feel more possible.

Breaking the loop doesn’t always mean speaking immediately. Sometimes it means finding a safer way to speak, choosing the right timing, or seeking support to lessen the weight. The goal is not to eliminate risk, that is rarely possible, but to make speaking feel just possible enough.

In your workplace, what signals do people receive about whether silence is safer than speech? And what would need to change for the loop to bend toward conversation rather than avoidance?

The Tipping Point: Motivation Matters Most

So what helps people break free from the resistance–avoidance loop? What moves someone from hesitation into action, even when the risks feel daunting?

My research drew on the COM-B model of behaviour change, which suggests that any behaviour depends on three conditions: Capability (skills and knowledge), Opportunity (external conditions), and Motivation (the internal drive to act).

All three matter in difficult conversations. People need the capability to express themselves clearly, and the opportunity to do so safely, for example, in a culture that won’t punish honesty. But across the data, one factor consistently tipped the balance: motivation.

This wasn’t just visible in personal accounts. It was also borne out in survey analysis: regression modelling showed that motivation was the strongest predictor of whether people spoke up, outweighing both skills and conditions. In other words, what mattered most was not just could people speak, or were they allowed to speak, but did they feel moved enough to do so?

Three Sources of Motivation

Motivation drew strength from three interconnected sources:

1. Emotional readiness — the sense of being able to handle the feelings involved. This didn’t mean feeling calm or fearless, but having strategies to ground oneself: breathing, rehearsing, or simply accepting that nerves were part of the process.

2. Values alignment — the recognition that the issue at hand touched something deeply important, such as fairness, integrity, or care for others. When people connected the conversation to their values, silence felt like a greater cost than speaking.

3. Belief it’s worth it — the conviction that speaking could make a difference. If people believed their words would be ignored or dismissed, motivation waned. If they trusted their voice might change something, even a little, they were far more likely to speak.

These three sources often worked together. Values alignment could spark the motivation, emotional readiness could sustain it, and belief in impact could make it feel worthwhile.

When Motivation Tips the Scale

Stories showed that when motivation aligned with values, people often chose to speak even in daunting contexts. For example, an employee who feared disclosing a health condition to their manager still did so, because “If I didn’t, I’d be pretending. And that’s not who I am.”

Survey data mirrored this: when people reported strong value alignment and a belief that their voice would matter, they were significantly more likely to engage in a difficult conversation, even when risks were high.

What value of yours is at stake in the conversation you are avoiding? And how might connecting with that value help you move from hesitation to action?

Next time you face a difficult conversation, ask yourself three questions:

• Am I emotionally ready enough to handle what might come up?

• Which of my values does this connect to?

• What difference might speaking make, for me, for them, for the wider system?

Even one “yes” can be enough to tip the balance.

Conversations as a Process, Not a Moment

One of the clearest findings of my research is that difficult conversations are rarely just conversations. They are processes that unfold across time, shaped by anticipation before and reflection after. To think of them as single moments is to miss much of the emotional weight they carry.

I came to understand this process in six distinct stages, each with its own challenges, risks, and opportunities for support.

Alt text: An illustration shows a winding road with six colourful signposts in order: Awareness, Appraisal, Preparation, The Conversation, Aftermath, and Learning. The design highlights that difficult conversations are not single events but journeys with distinct stages over time.

1. Awareness — Realising Something Needs to Be Said

The process begins quietly, often long before any words are spoken. It’s the nagging sense that something isn’t right: a boundary crossed, a commitment unmet, a value unsettled. People described it as a “gut feeling” or a low hum of unease that built over time.

This stage matters because awareness is the moment where silence and speech begin to diverge. Without it, nothing happens. With it, the internal conversation begins.

Reflection tools like journaling or coaching conversations can help clarify whether something genuinely needs to be addressed, or whether it might pass without intervention.

2. Appraisal — Weighing Risks and Benefits

Once awareness has surfaced, appraisal begins. People mentally weigh the risks: What could I lose if I speak? What might happen if I stay silent?

Here, the resistance–avoidance loop often takes hold. Many assume the risks of speaking are greater than the costs of silence, even when evidence suggests otherwise.

Risk-mapping exercises can help. Simply writing down the imagined risks, alongside the possible benefits of speaking, creates perspective. Cost–benefit thinking helps test assumptions and can reduce imagined threats.

3. Preparation — Rehearsing and Regulating

If appraisal tips toward action, preparation begins. This is often the most labour-intensive stage. People rehearse conversations in their heads, draft and delete emails, and practice phrases in front of the mirror. They also regulate emotions: calming themselves, bracing for tears, or softening anger.

Preparation can be empowering when supported. Without support, it can spiral into delay and overthinking.

Role-play, peer rehearsal, or coaching can help people prepare without getting stuck. Asking “How do I want them to feel at the end of this conversation?” shifts the focus from fear to relationship.

4. The Conversation — Dialogue in Action

The conversation itself is the visible tip of the iceberg, but by this stage much has already happened. Here, people carry the burden of saying enough but not too much, being honest yet careful, present yet self-protective.

Perfection is impossible, but presence matters. Time and again, participants said what they valued most was being listened to with curiosity, not defensiveness.

Train leaders and employees not to chase perfect phrasing but to cultivate presence, curiosity, and openness in the moment.

5. Aftermath — The Lingering Echo

When the conversation ends, the process is not over. People carry the aftermath with them: relief, regret, exhaustion, or lingering uncertainty. For some, replaying the interaction becomes a nightly routine, wondering if they said too much or too little.

For managers, the aftermath brings its own weight: the responsibility to check in, to follow up, and to show that the conversation mattered. Silence afterwards can undo trust as quickly as poor handling during.

Simple follow-up gestures, a message, a check-in, a thank-you, can sustain trust and signal that the door remains open.

6. Learning — Shaping the Future

Finally, each conversation becomes part of a person’s learning history. A supportive experience can build courage for future openness; a negative one can shut people down for years.

As one participant put it: “That one bad experience taught me never to bring something personal to work again.”Conversely, another shared: “I felt terrified, but my manager’s response made me realise it was safe. That changed everything.”

Encourage reflection after conversations, individually and organisationally. What was learned? What would be done differently next time? How can positive patterns be reinforced?

Seeing the Whole Process

When we reduce difficult conversations to the dialogue alone, we miss the majority of the labour. Support is needed at every stage, not just in “what to say,” but in helping people notice, weigh, prepare, recover, and learn.

After a difficult conversation, how do you show the door remains open? Do you signal safety, or do you leave silence in its place?

Towards More Supportive Practice

So how do we make difficult conversations less daunting, less isolating, and more possible? My research suggests that support must operate on three levels, individual, managerial, and organisational. Each has a role to play, and none can carry the load alone.

For Individuals: Building Inner Grounding

Difficult conversations begin with us. The more prepared and anchored we are, the less overwhelming they feel.

• Prepare emotionally as well as verbally. Many people over-focus on what to say and underprepare for how they want to feel. Emotional grounding, through breathing, centring practices, or even simply naming your own anxiety, can help prevent being swept away in the moment.

• Anchor in values. Ask yourself: Which value of mine is at stake here? Whether it’s fairness, integrity, or compassion, values can act as steadying guides. People often found courage when they framed the conversation not as a performance, but as an act of living their values.

• Remember silence has costs too. Avoidance may protect you in the short term, but over time it erodes trust, breeds resentment, and can impact wellbeing. One participant reflected: “Staying silent felt safer, but it also kept me stuck. Speaking, even badly, helped me move.”

When you prepare for your next conversation, what would it look like to prepare your nervous system as well as your words?

For Managers: Responding with Presence

Managers are often the first line of response when employees speak up, and their reaction can shape whether people ever do so again.

• Listen with openness, not defensiveness. You don’t need the perfect answer. What matters most is whether the other person feels heard, taken seriously, and respected. Defensive responses, however subtle, can shut the door quickly.

• Notice the signals you send. Words matter, but so do tone, timing, and body language. A distracted glance at your phone, a sigh, or rushing to end the meeting can undo trust. Presence, leaning in, pausing, staying with discomfort, is often more powerful than eloquence.

• Follow up. A simple check-in afterwards can carry disproportionate weight. For example: “I just wanted to see how you’re feeling since we spoke.” This signals that the conversation mattered and that the door remains open.

How do people feel after they’ve spoken to you? Do they feel lighter and supported, or heavier and unsure?

For Organisations: Creating the Conditions

No matter how skilled individuals and managers become, conversations will remain fraught unless organisations create the right climate.

• Build psychological safety. As Amy Edmondson’s research (1999) shows, people only speak up when they believe it will not be held against them. Psychological safety is not built by slogans but by consistent experiences: when someone raises a concern, what happens next? Are they thanked, dismissed, or penalised?

• Support informal dialogue. Many of the hardest conversations do not fit neatly into formal HR processes. If people only wait for appraisals or formal meetings to raise concerns, opportunities for early repair are missed. Everyday openness, the “small conversations”, matters most.

• Acknowledge emotional labour. Speaking up takes energy. So does listening well. Yet in most organisations, this labour is invisible. Naming it, validating it, and even making space for it (through debriefs, peer support, or training) can make the burden lighter for everyone involved.

What do employees in your workplace learn when they speak up? Do they see change, or do they see silence?

Pulling It Together

The ability to have difficult conversations is not an innate trait some people have and others lack. It is the product of preparation, response, and culture. Individuals can steady themselves. Managers can listen with care. Organisations can create climates where voice is possible.

When these three levels align, difficult conversations shift from being moments of dread to moments of possibility, opportunities for connection, trust, and growth.

Which of these three levels, individual, managerial, organisational, feels most in need of attention where you work?

Closing Thoughts: The Courage of Conversation

Difficult conversations will never be easy. And perhaps they shouldn’t be. They are threaded with risk, vulnerability, and emotional labour precisely because they touch what matters most, our identities, our values, our sense of belonging.

To pretend these moments can be made “simple” is to miss their weight. But to leave them unsupported is to miss their possibility. Because alongside risk, these conversations also hold the potential for trust, inclusion, and connection. They are the moments when culture becomes visible, not in posters or policies, but in how we respond to one another when it matters.

What my research made clear is that the goal is not to strip away the difficulty. It is to support the difficulty, to make these conversations less lonely, less costly, and more human. That means recognising the labour they require, naming the risks they carry, and creating the conditions that make them possible.

And it means courage. Not the Hollywood version of bravery, but the quieter kind: the courage to reveal something vulnerable, to stay present in discomfort, or to hold another person’s trust with care. Courage that is often unseen, but transformative in its impact.

One participant described this poignantly: “The hardest conversations were also the ones that changed everything. They were never easy. But they were always worth it.”

A Final invitation: What conversation are you holding back right now? And what would it take, personally, relationally, or organisationally, for it to feel possible?