Hard Conversations: Leadership and Organizational Dialogue

Catalog description

Every leader has conversations they’d rather avoid. It might be the performance review that could change a relationship, the boundary that needs to be named, or the truth that no one has said aloud. These conversations are often challenging not because leaders lack information or technique, but because dialogue and difficult feedback require something harder: the willingness to be changed by the practice. This course develops students' capacity for courageous leadership and hard conversations, which require honest engagement with difference, power, discomfort, and risk. Students will learn how to initiate dialogue and hard conversations with clarity and care, how to receive challenging information without defensiveness, and how to create the conditions where honest exchange becomes possible—within teams, organizations, and communities. A defining feature of the course is a semester-long peer coaching partnership. Each student will bring a difficult situation that is personally relevant and will use the partnership to prepare, rehearse, and debrief real conversations. These partnerships are designed to model sustained, honest exchange in service of mutual growth. Non-DYNM students: please include a job description in your permissions request.