11 minutes

A conversation guide you can run

The practical tool: six things to settle before a difficult conversation, the sentences that keep it open, and the follow-up date you write down first.

What you’ll be able to do

Prepare and run a feedback-response conversation using a written guide that covers preparation, access, receiving, the limits of your authority, and the follow-up contact.
Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should the manager settle before the meeting?
Draft a feedback-response conversation guide for your work, including before the conversation, how the person wants to take part, what you will say first.

What the guide is for

Under pressure, people do not forget their values. They forget the practical things: to ask how someone wants to meet, to find out beforehand what they are allowed to offer, to say when the person will hear from them again. A conversation guide is a short written answer to those questions, prepared while you are calm, so the version of you being criticized does not have to invent one.

It is not a script and should not be read aloud. A script makes a conversation sound procedural at exactly the moment a person needs it to sound like someone is listening. What the guide holds is the six things that get lost: what you know and do not know going in, how the person wants to take part, how you will open, how you will receive without interviewing, what you can and cannot decide, and the date of the second contact.

The guide below is built for a conversation with someone outside the division — a family member, a community organization, a county or provider partner. Nearly all of it works for a concern raised by a colleague, a supervisor or another division too, with one adjustment: internal conversations tend to skip acknowledgment entirely and jump to the fix, and the acknowledgment line is the part worth keeping.

A feedback-response conversation guide

One page to fill in before a conversation about a concern, and to finish after it.

Before the conversation What I know, and where it came from. What I do not know. What has already been promised to this person, by whom, and whether it happened. What went wrong the last time we talked, if there was a last time — and a plain account of it, including if the answer is that their feedback was not carried forward.

How the person wants to take part Asked in advance, not waited for: setting and time; phone, video or in person; interpreting or other language support; materials in a format they use; who they want with them; whether they want a written summary afterward and in what form.

What you will say first Purpose in one sentence. How long we have. Who is here and why. What I can decide today. What I will do with what I hear. Then the acknowledgment line, if something is already confirmed: what happened, and that it should not have worked that way.

How you will receive it Two questions: what happened, step by step, and what did you need to happen. Their words written down before I summarize. Reflect back and check — have I got this right, what did I miss? No interview, and no asking them to produce documentation to justify the concern.

What you can decide, and what you cannot Inside my authority, with a date. Outside it: who decides, what they will consider, when the person will hear. The formal routes that exist, named plainly and without steering — appeal and hearing rights, the grievance route and its coordinator, the independent ombudsman office, the state human rights process.

The second contact The date I will come back to them, written in my calendar before this conversation starts and said out loud during it. What I will report: what changed, what did not, and why. Sent even when the honest answer is that nothing changed.

Copy the six fields into a one-page note. Fill the first three before your next difficult conversation and the rest during it, and put the second-contact date in your calendar before you start.

Browse and download only. Staff notes are not typed or saved on this page.

Sentences worth having ready

“Tell me more about what happened at that point.” Use it the moment you feel an explanation rising.
“Let me read back what I have, and you tell me what I got wrong.”
“I can decide this part today. This other part is not mine, and here is who decides it.”
“I do not know yet. I will know by Friday, and I will tell you either way.”
“That should not have worked that way.” When something is confirmed, say it in plain words and stop hedging.
“What would have made this work for you?” Asked as a real question, with the understanding that designing the fix is separate, scoped, compensated work.
Worth avoiding: “I am sorry you feel that way,” “that is not typical,” “the policy requires it,” and anything that opens by correcting their account.

Preparing yourself, not only the meeting

Settle your own authority before anyone asks

Most of the pressure in these conversations comes from not knowing what you are allowed to offer. Find out beforehand what you can extend, waive, reopen, re-send or arrange without approval. Staff routinely have more room here than they assume, and the moment to discover it is not while a person is sitting in front of you waiting for an answer.

Bring the right number of people

Three staff and one family member is not a conversation; it is a panel. Match the numbers roughly, tell the person in advance who will be there and why, and ask whether they want anyone with them. If an interpreter is working, plan for the extra time that good interpreting takes and speak to the person, not to the interpreter.

Separate the person from the process, out loud

If an employee's conduct is part of the concern, that part is supervision and will not be settled in this meeting. Say so plainly: “I am not going to discuss a personnel matter with you, and I am going to take what you told me seriously.” Then keep both halves of that sentence.

Expect the first question to be about the silence

If this concern has been raised before and nothing visibly happened, that is what will come up first. Have a true answer ready, including “it was not carried forward, and here is how I know.” An honest account of a failure is recoverable. A vague one confirms everything the person already suspected.

Write the follow-up date before the conversation

What you can change

You control one thing completely: whether a date for the second contact exists in your calendar before you walk in.

What to watch for

Do not end a difficult conversation with “I will be in touch.” It is the sentence people have heard before, and it is a large part of why they stopped raising things.

Your next step

Before your next conversation about a concern, put the follow-up date in your calendar and say the date out loud during the meeting.

You are preparing to meet a family who raised a concern about a service decision. Which preparation step does the most to make the conversation useful?

Drafting a clear written explanation of the policy, so the family understands the constraints from the start.

Finding out in advance how the family wants to meet, what language support they need, and what you are able to decide without approval.

Inviting two colleagues who know the program well, so every question can be answered on the spot.

Asking the family to send their concerns in writing first, so the meeting can be efficient.

Try a situation

A DSD program manager has agreed to meet a culturally specific community organization that wrote to say a new service application is unusable for the families it works with — and that it raised this during an engagement session months earlier and never heard back. The manager has ninety minutes, a colleague who would like to attend, and a draft explanation of the application's design constraints.

What should the manager settle before the meeting?

The explanation: a clear, well-organized account of why the application is built the way it is, so the meeting can start from shared facts.

How the organization wants to meet — setting, interpreting, who attends on each side, what will be shared afterward — what the manager can decide alone, and what actually happened to the earlier feedback, including a plain account if the answer is that it was lost.

A list of the changes the organization should propose, so the meeting produces concrete recommendations.

Carry this forward

A conversation guide is not a script. It holds the practical things people forget under pressure: how the person wants to take part, what you are actually allowed to decide, and when they will hear from you again.
Access and language belong in the preparation, not in the recovery. Offer interpreting, a format and a choice of setting before the person has to ask for any of it.
Have one sentence ready for the moment an explanation starts to rise: a question that returns the conversation to what happened.
Do not hand the design work to the people who did the unpaid work of noticing the problem. Asking someone to propose the fix is reasonable only if they want to, with a scope and compensation as advisory work.
The guide ends where most responses end too early: the second contact, on a date written in your calendar before the first conversation began.

A conversation guide you can copy and adapt, a scenario about preparing to meet a community organization, a knowledge check on preparation, and private reflection prompts that are never collected.

Copy the guide, fill it in for one real conversation you have coming up, and put the second-contact date in your calendar before the first conversation happens.

Your next step

Think about one conversation about a concern that you have coming up, or one you have been avoiding.

Write down what you can decide alone, what needs someone else, and exactly who that someone is

Write the one question you will ask when you feel an explanation rising

Put the follow-up date in your calendar now, before the first conversation happens

Browse and download only. Course notes are not typed or saved on this page.

Mark this lesson complete

Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.