Navigating Tough Talks: Managing Challenges with Confidence

 Course Description​​

Difficult conversations are part of leadership—whether you're managing tension or disagreements among colleagues, with your boss, or a direct report or you may be addressing complicated dynamics with parents and guardians. This one-week course is designed to strengthen your confidence and skills in navigating conflict as you work to fulfill your school’s mission and uphold its values and culture.

Choose the pathway most relevant to your role: one focused on building truly collaborative working relationships with colleagues, your boss, and your direct reports or the other on partnering more effectively with even the most challenging parents and guardians. Both tracks offer real-world strategies, guided reflection, and practice scenarios to help you lead with clarity and integrity.

You’ll learn how to deliver hard messages with candor and care, set boundaries that support a student-centered culture, and assess when flexibility aligns with your values—and when it risks undermining them. You’ll explore how to lean into your authority, use empathy to build trust, and engage conflict productively across all levels of the school community.

No matter which path you take, you’ll leave with actionable strategies to strengthen communication, reduce avoidance, and lead through tough moments with purpose and professionalism. This isn’t about managing difficult people—it’s about showing up as the leader your school needs when it matters most.

Course Objectives

• Develop the confidence and clarity to lead high-intensity conversations with empathy, candor, and authority—whether with colleagues, your boss, or direct reports or parents and guardians.

• Apply actionable strategies for setting boundaries, delivering hard messages, and choosing when flexibility supports or undermines your school’s mission and values.

• Strengthen your leadership presence by building relational trust and addressing conflict in ways that promote a student-centered, collaborative school culture.

Course Facilitators