Intercultural Practice and Equity · Internal leadership

Leading Difficult Dialogue

Conversations about disability, ableism, racism, identity, power and exclusion fail in predictable ways, and most of what decides them happens before anyone speaks. Four lessons on preparing and holding a conversation that examines the work without requiring anyone to agree or to disclose anything, ending with a discussion plan you can take into a real team meeting.

40–45 minutes · 4 lessons · Voluntary learning

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Course outline

What the hour is actually for
Four different conversations arrive wearing the same clothes. An hour that tries to hold all of them settles into whichever one has a deadline behind it.
10 minutes
Conditions, not courage
What people are willing to say is set by the invitation, the room, the record and the opt-out. A skilled facilitator cannot repair conditions in the room that were set badly outside it.
11 minutes
The five moments in the room
Hard conversations turn on the same handful of moments every time. Under pressure you will use whatever move is nearest, so choose the moves in advance.
11 minutes
Your discussion plan
Eight lines for one issue your team is actually carrying: purpose, power, what is open, how people take part, the opening frame, three prepared moves, the record, and who hears what changed.
10 minutes

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What you’ll be able to do

Explore and practice

Name what a particular hard conversation is for before you open it, and say out loud what is already decided and what is genuinely open.
Set the conditions that decide what people are willing to say: the invitation, who is in the room, the record, the opt-out, access, and who facilitates.
Write ground rules that describe observable behavior rather than attitudes, and that nobody has to disclose anything in order to be covered by.
Respond to the five moments that decide a hard conversation without shaming anyone, requiring agreement, or asking one person to speak for a group.
Write and use a discussion plan for one real team issue, with an opening frame, three prepared moves, and a report-back that has an owner and a date.

What you can take into your work

Four worked scenarios from internal division work — a notice that a paid advisory group called accusatory, an all-staff session planned after a staff engagement round, a review that turns toward a step the supervisor approved, and a plan that is really a defense plan — each with a recommended response and the reasoning behind it.
A knowledge check in every lesson with feedback that explains the usable answer.
Sorting practice that separates a request to disclose from an invitation to examine the work, and that shows where a single sentence sends a conversation.
A completed discussion plan for one real issue, with the opening frame written out in full and the report-back already on somebody's calendar.

Choose one issue your team is actually carrying. Write the eight lines, read the opening frame aloud once before you use it, hold the conversation within the month, and give the report-back a name and a date before anyone leaves the room.

Read the introduction

Almost every hard conversation in public work is lost before anyone speaks. It is lost in an invitation that asked people to reveal something instead of examine something, in a note-taker whose summary goes somewhere nobody was told about, in a room where the person with the most at stake has the least protection, and in an opening that never said whether anything could still change. This module takes those conditions apart in order: what the hour is actually for, what you set before it starts, the five moments in the room that decide it, and how to write an eight-line discussion plan for one issue your team is really carrying. It never asks anyone to agree, and it never asks anyone to talk about themselves.

Leading difficult dialogue

One page for any supervisor, manager or senior leader preparing a conversation nobody wants to lead

Declaring a room safe does not make it safe. Saying what the hour is for, what is already decided, what gets written down and what nobody has to disclose comes much closer.

Keep the four purposes, the conditions and the five moments in view while you plan a hard conversation, write an invitation, open a session, or decide what to do in the moment it turns.

Four conversations arrive wearing the same clothes: settling a decision, accounting for what happened, examining the effect of the work, and repairing something. Say which one this hour is.
Say what is already decided in the first two minutes. People find out anyway, and finding out late is what teaches them not to bother next time.
A dialogue asks people to examine the work. It never requires agreement, and it never requires anyone to describe an identity, a diagnosis, a belief or a private experience.
Power in the room is a fact, not a mood. Name the asymmetry, provide a route that does not run through you, and behave well the first time somebody uses it.
Say what the notes carry, who receives them and what stays in the room. Unclear recording terms produce careful sentences, and careful sentences are not what you need.
Ground rules that describe attitudes cannot be checked and favor whoever is already comfortable. Write ones anybody could point at, including on the days you are the one who missed them.
Acknowledge before you explain. The explanation is still owed, and it is heard far better second.
Treating everyone identically is Minimization, not fairness. Acceptance begins when a real difference in how people meet the same process is allowed back in as information about the design.
A conversation with no report-back happened once. Owner, date, and one sentence about what changed and what did not.

Write the eight discussion-plan lines for one issue your team is carrying, read the opening frame aloud once, and put the report-back on somebody's calendar before you send the invitation.

The discussion plan, in short

The issue in one sentence and what the conversation is for — including what it is not for.
Who is in the room and what power is in it, said out loud rather than discovered later.
What is already decided and what is genuinely open.
How people take part, and what nobody has to disclose.
The opening frame and the first question, written out in full.
Three moves for when it goes sideways, chosen before you need them.
What is recorded, who receives it, and what stays in the room.
What happens afterward: owner, date, and the sentence people will hear about what changed.

Before the invitation goes out

Name the purpose and what is already decided; a consultation that turns out to be a notification is remembered for a long time.
Ask about the process, not about people's lives. Replace any request for personal experience with a question about the work.
Say what is recorded, who receives it, and whether anybody is named.
Make taking part optional, make declining cost nothing observable, and offer a written route as well as the room.
Build access in by default: materials ahead as real text, captions on, an interpreter booked before the schedule hardens, a reachable room, a pace that allows thinking.
Decide whether you should facilitate at all, and arrange compensation for anyone taking part who is not staff.

The first ninety seconds

What this hour is for, and what it is not for.
What is already decided, who decides the rest, and by when.
What the notes carry, who sees the summary, and what stays in the room.
How to take part, including the route that is not speaking in a group.
That nobody is being asked to agree, and nobody is being asked to talk about themselves.
Your own part in whatever is being examined, if you have one, and the date of the report-back.

Five moments in the room

Harm or an uneven effect is named: acknowledge, then explain. Never the other way round.
A colleague becomes defensive: return their standing, then move the subject back to the rule and the evidence.
The room goes quiet: ask a narrower question, offer the written route, and let three seconds pass before you fill it.
One person is asked to speak for a group: take it off them, and treat a specific account as specific evidence about a step.
Somebody presses for agreement: say what was decided, who decided it, what is open, and where the disagreement is written down.

When it is your decision on the table

Say your own part out loud early; it tells the room the cost has already been paid.
Stay in the moment, ask one clarifying question, and say what you heard before you say why it happened.
Hand the facilitation to somebody with no stake when the conversation is substantially about you.
Come back with what you found, including when what you found is that the concern was mistaken.

Who this helps

Supervisors and managers, who hold most of these conversations and set the conditions for all of them — this module goes deepest here, and it is a good place to start.
Executive and senior leaders, whose presence changes what can be said in a room and who decide whether a report-back survives a busy quarter.
Policy, program and operations staff who lead a workgroup or a project team without a supervisory title.
Quality, complaints and incident staff, whose reviews depend entirely on people being willing to say something early.
Community engagement staff, who carry what partners and paid advisors say into rooms where it is inconvenient.
Training, communications and learning-design staff, who are often asked to facilitate a conversation somebody else designed.
Fiscal, contracts, grants and procurement staff, who hold conversations about templates, formats and requirements that decide who can take part.
Data, research and evaluation staff, who can show a room what an average is hiding.
Administrative and support staff, who see who gets interrupted, who never gets the materials in time, and who absorbs the rework.

Related modules

Leading a reflective DSD team
Inclusive workforce and team culture
Quality, complaints, and incident learning
Co-design and compensated partnership
Equitable policy and procedure governance

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.

Sources and further reading

Minnesota Framework for Universal Multicultural Instructional Design
The design reference for this curriculum: multiple ways to engage, culturally responsive materials, and instruction that never requires a participant to disclose a personal experience in order to take part.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National CLAS Standards
National standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services, including the governance and leadership standards, the workforce standards, and the standards on community engagement, conflict and grievance resolution that frame these conversations.
Minnesota Management and Budget, statewide human resources policies
The statewide policies that frame a Minnesota supervisor's responsibilities, including respectful workplace expectations and where a formal personnel matter belongs rather than a team conversation.
Minnesota Department of Human Rights, Your rights
Minnesota Human Rights Act protections in employment and public services, and the boundary between an internal learning conversation and a formal complaint of discrimination, harassment or retaliation.
Minnesota Council on Disability
Minnesota's advisory council on disability policy and access, including practical guidance for state agencies on accessible meetings, materials and notices — the basis for the access conditions built into the discussion plan.
ADA.gov, Title II primer for state and local governments
U.S. Department of Justice explanation of what Title II requires of state and local government programs, meetings and communications, which keeps a legal obligation clearly distinct from the optional practice in this module.
Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities
Public Minnesota materials on disability history, self-advocacy and community participation, useful background for why people expect to be involved in decisions about them rather than described in their absence.
plainlanguage.gov, Federal plain language guidelines
Practical guidance for writing an invitation, an opening frame or a ground rule that a colleague can act on without interpreting it first.

All research and sources across the program

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Leading Difficult Dialogue

40–45 minutes · 4 lessons · Voluntary learning

Course outline

What the hour is actually for

Four different conversations arrive wearing the same clothes. An hour that tries to hold all of them settles into whichever one has a deadline behind it.

10 minutes

Conditions, not courage

What people are willing to say is set by the invitation, the room, the record and the opt-out. A skilled facilitator cannot repair conditions in the room that were set badly outside it.

11 minutes

The five moments in the room

Hard conversations turn on the same handful of moments every time. Under pressure you will use whatever move is nearest, so choose the moves in advance.

11 minutes

Your discussion plan

Eight lines for one issue your team is actually carrying: purpose, power, what is open, how people take part, the opening frame, three prepared moves, the record, and who hears what changed.

10 minutes

Sources and further reading

Minnesota Framework for Universal Multicultural Instructional Design

The design reference for this curriculum: multiple ways to engage, culturally responsive materials, and instruction that never requires a participant to disclose a personal experience in order to take part.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National CLAS Standards

National standards for culturally and linguistically appropriate services, including the governance and leadership standards, the workforce standards, and the standards on community engagement, conflict and grievance resolution that frame these conversations.

Minnesota Management and Budget, statewide human resources policies

The statewide policies that frame a Minnesota supervisor's responsibilities, including respectful workplace expectations and where a formal personnel matter belongs rather than a team conversation.

Minnesota Department of Human Rights, Your rights

Minnesota Human Rights Act protections in employment and public services, and the boundary between an internal learning conversation and a formal complaint of discrimination, harassment or retaliation.

Minnesota Council on Disability

Minnesota's advisory council on disability policy and access, including practical guidance for state agencies on accessible meetings, materials and notices — the basis for the access conditions built into the discussion plan.

ADA.gov, Title II primer for state and local governments

U.S. Department of Justice explanation of what Title II requires of state and local government programs, meetings and communications, which keeps a legal obligation clearly distinct from the optional practice in this module.

Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities

Public Minnesota materials on disability history, self-advocacy and community participation, useful background for why people expect to be involved in decisions about them rather than described in their absence.

plainlanguage.gov, Federal plain language guidelines

Practical guidance for writing an invitation, an opening frame or a ground rule that a colleague can act on without interpreting it first.