The conversation you keep moving down the calendar

Everyone has one. A good person in the wrong seat, a peer who undermines you in front of the board, a promise you made and cannot keep. Here is how to write it, when to have it, and what to do in the hour afterwards.

Overview

The cost of a delayed conversation is paid by the person you are protecting. They carry on doing the thing, and the day they find out, they find out it has been true for a year.

Write four sentences

What is happening. What it costs. What needs to change. What happens if it does not. Four sentences, said out loud before the meeting so you hear your own tone.

Pick a Tuesday morning

Not a Friday afternoon, not before a break. Give them the rest of the week to ask you the follow-up questions they will think of at eleven that night.

Do not soften it afterwards

The hour after is when good managers take it back. Say the same four sentences again if you have to, and then be genuinely useful about what comes next.