Difficult Conversations Training in London

Who This Training Is For

This page is for people who want to book training, not read a framework. Typically that is an HR director, a head of learning and development or an operations lead. The brief usually sounds the same: capable managers are postponing the conversations that matter, and the cost shows up later.

The training itself is for the managers who hold those conversations. That means line managers, team leads and senior leaders, including newly promoted managers who have never had to deliver bad news. Every programme is built for one organisation. We do not run open courses, and we do not issue certificates.

If you are preparing for one conversation yourself, start with our guide on how to handle difficult conversations at work. It sets out a four-step framework you can use tomorrow. This page describes the training that makes such a framework hold under pressure.

Several of our pages touch the same ground. The table shows where each one fits, so the brief lands on the right programme.

Why Difficult Conversations Go Wrong in the Room

Many managers know what a good difficult conversation looks like. They can describe it in a workshop. The problem appears when the other person reacts: the defensive answer, the tears, the silence, the counter-accusation.

Acas has measured how common this ground is. Its survey Prevalence of conflict at work was published on 20 November 2025 and drew on 4,558 respondents. It found that 44% of working-age adults in Great Britain experienced conflict at work in the previous 12 months. Capability and performance issues were the most common topic, at 38%.

People most often reported conflict with colleagues (34%) and with their line manager (32%). A separate survey, the CIPD Good Work Index 2026, found that "a quarter (25%) of employees have personally experienced some conflict at work, with a majority (51%) saying they just let it go".

The bill is large. Acas puts the total annual cost of conflict to UK employers at around £28.5 billion, including management and resolution. The figure comes from its report Estimating the costs of workplace conflict (2021).

Acas also says where the cheapest fix sits. Its guidance on dealing with a problem raised by a worker opens with a plain line: many problems at work can be resolved informally, for example through an informal chat. That makes the conversation an early, low-cost route for an employer. In our experience, it is also one that few managers have rehearsed.

Knowing the Framework Is Not the Same as Holding the Conversation

The behaviour-change model we work from is COM-B, set out by Michie, van Stralen and West in Implementation Science (2011), in which capability, opportunity and motivation interact to generate behaviour. Capability covers both knowledge and skill. A slide deck on difficult conversations addresses the knowledge half and leaves the skill half untouched.

Skill is performed under load. When someone becomes upset in front of you, your attention narrows and you fall back on habit. If the clear, steady version has never been tried under that pressure, it is not there when the pressure arrives.

Memory research points the same way, with a caveat. In Roediger and Karpicke (2006), students who repeatedly recalled a prose passage remembered 61% of it a week later. Students who repeatedly reread it remembered 40%. After five minutes, rereading was ahead (83% against 71%). That is a finding about recall, not about conversations, so we treat it as a pointer rather than proof.

The Method: Professional Actors and Your Own Scenarios

Sidestream is a behaviour change consultancy based at 58 Malden Road, London NW5 3HG. Most of this work is delivered in-house at client offices across London. The other seat in every scenario is a professional actor, not a colleague reading a brief.

The actor is briefed on the organisation's own material. A short diagnostic first establishes which conversations keep going wrong, and where. The actor then plays the direct report, the colleague at risk or the person raising a complaint, and responds the way that person plausibly would.

Each attempt is stopped, coached and run again. Feedback comes from the actor in role, from the facilitator and from peers. The first attempt shows what someone does by default. The second and third show what they can do deliberately.

Most scenarios are role play in the strict sense, written by a designer. Some participants bring a conversation from their own week instead, which we call real play. The difference is set out in real play vs role play.

In a randomised 2020 UCL study by co-founder Ben Laumann (n = 57), rehearsal with a role-play coach produced significantly better feedback delivery than an instructional slideshow or video. Two independent assessors rated it blind. The effect sizes were Cohen's d = 0.75 against the slideshow and d = 1.08 against the video. The rehearsal condition was a short online coaching session, not our programme, and the study is unpublished. Details and limits are on our research page.

The Conversations We Rehearse

Every programme starts from the conversations the organisation is actually avoiding, established in the diagnostic rather than taken from a catalogue. In practice, briefs often draw on the five below. Each is written into a scenario and rehearsed more than once.

The performance conversation

This is the conversation about a gap between what was agreed and what is happening. It is also the most common ground for conflict: capability and performance issues topped the Acas 2025 list at 38%.

A typical design would have the actor play a direct report who disputes the facts, then reveals a reason. The manager practises naming the gap with specific examples, staying with the reaction, and agreeing a next step the other person owns.

The redundancy conversation

Here the decision has been made and the manager has to deliver it. The risk is hiding in process language, or softening the message until it is no longer clear.

A typical design rehearses the opening minutes, when the message has to land plainly, and the reaction that follows. The actor may go quiet, become angry or ask questions the manager cannot yet answer. The manager practises staying present without promising what the process cannot deliver.

Where redundancy is one part of a wider restructuring, our change management training in London covers the change conversation across a whole programme.

The feedback conversation

Feedback is the conversation the UCL study measured. Participants delivered feedback using the SBI model, short for Situation, Behaviour, Impact, in a simulated conversation that was recorded and rated blind.

A typical design pairs a feedback model with an actor who receives the feedback badly: defensive, dismissive or too quick to agree. The manager practises keeping the feedback specific and observable when the other person pushes back.

The same study found no relationship between participants' confidence and their blind-rated performance. Self-rated confidence rose after every format, with no significant difference between them, even though blind-rated behaviour did differ significantly. That is why we do not use confidence as the measure.

The grievance conversation

Many grievances start as an informal complaint to a line manager. Acas advises that a problem raised informally should still be taken seriously, because otherwise it might be raised as a formal grievance later.

A typical design has the actor raise a complaint about a colleague, a decision or the manager. The manager practises listening without defending, establishing the facts, and saying clearly whether the issue stays informal. The Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures is taught as the frame around that decision.

Acas is updating the Code to promote early resolution; its 2026 consultation (closed 23 September 2026) puts the cost of formal disciplinary and grievance procedures to UK employers at an estimated £2.36 billion a year, with the cost of informal resolution ten times lower.

Where the problem is a dispute between two colleagues rather than a complaint, our conflict resolution training in London is the better fit.

The speak-up conversation

Speak-up has two seats. One person raises a concern, often to someone more senior. The other receives it, and the first reaction decides whether anyone raises the next one.

Amy Edmondson (1999) described psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. Google's Project Aristotle research listed it first, in order of importance, among the dynamics of effective teams.

A typical design rehearses both seats. Participants practise raising a concern clearly and early, and receiving one without dismissing it, defending or over-promising. For an organisation-wide programme, see our speak-up culture training in London.

How an Engagement Runs

The sequence is the same for every brief. What changes is the length of delivery and the number of cohorts.

1. First call. A free 30-minute call with a founder about the conversations that keep going wrong and the managers who hold them.
2. Diagnostic, one to three weeks. Interviews, focus groups and a behavioural diagnostic establish which conversations recur and where they break down.
3. Design, weeks four to seven. Scenarios are written from the organisation's own material, and the actors are briefed on them.
4. Delivery. From a half-day workshop to two or three days, or a multi-session programme over weeks or months.
5. Embedding, six to eight weeks. Manager toolkits and 15-minute weekly check-ins protect the new behaviour after delivery.
6. Measurement. Observed behaviour is re-read three to six weeks after delivery and again at around 90 days.

A typical engagement runs 12 to 16 weeks from the first call to the follow-up measurement, depending on format. Work is priced per engagement, because the effort sits in the scenario design. The six phases are described in full on our client journey page.

Group sizes follow the rehearsal. A single team trains as a group of 8 to 12; cohorts of several teams from one organisation are 12 to 25. Everyone needs a turn in front of the actor, which is why cohorts stay at that size.

How the Result Is Measured

Measurement sits at Kirkpatrick Level 3, meaning observed behaviour back at work, rather than at Level 1 satisfaction. A feedback form tells you whether people enjoyed the session. It does not tell you whether the next performance conversation went differently. Download our four-level measurement framework (PDF), with a worksheet for your own programme.

Before delivery we agree a small number of behavioural indicators with the client. They are re-read three to six weeks after delivery and again at around 90 days. Typical indicators include:

• How long a known performance issue waits before the first deliberate conversation about it.
• The share of complaints settled informally before a written grievance is raised.
• Whether the grievances that are raised arrive earlier and smaller than before.
• How the people on the other side of these conversations describe them, collected in short structured check-ins.
• Repeat issues involving the same manager or the same team.

None of these move because a workshop happened. They move when a specific behaviour changes in a specific group of managers. That is why the design starts from the behaviour and works backwards to the scenario. Background is in the Kirkpatrick model explained.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does difficult conversations training in London involve?

It involves rehearsal rather than presentation. Professional actors play the direct report, the colleague at risk of redundancy or the person raising a complaint. Managers hold the conversation live, stop, take feedback and try again. Programmes are delivered in-house at client offices across London, for one organisation at a time, with scenarios built from that organisation's own material.

How is this different from conflict resolution or communication skills training?

Difficult conversations training focuses on one-to-one conversations in which a manager has to deliver or receive something hard: a performance gap, a redundancy, critical feedback, a complaint or a concern. Conflict resolution training focuses on disputes between people before they become formal. Communication skills training covers how a team talks more broadly. The method is the same, the scenarios differ.

Do you run open difficult conversations courses?

No. Every programme is built for one organisation, with scenarios drawn from the conversations that organisation is actually avoiding. We do not run open or public courses, and we do not issue certificates. The first step is a free 30-minute call about the managers involved and the conversations that keep going wrong.

How long does it take, and how big are the groups?

Delivery runs from a half-day workshop to two or three days, or a multi-session programme over weeks or months. A typical engagement runs 12 to 16 weeks from the first call to the follow-up measurement, depending on format. A single team trains as a group of 8 to 12; cohorts of several teams from one organisation are 12 to 25.

Will managers who dislike role play cope with this?

In our experience, much of the resistance to role play comes from performing in front of colleagues with an untrained partner who is either too soft or a caricature. Professional actors change that. The actor carries the difficulty and stays credible, and the debrief targets one specific behaviour rather than a general verdict. Why some discomfort is part of the point is set out in our post on why role play feels uncomfortable.

Is there evidence that rehearsal works better than a slideshow?

In a randomised 2020 UCL study by co-founder Ben Laumann (n = 57), rehearsal with a role-play coach produced significantly better feedback delivery than an instructional slideshow or video. Two independent assessors rated it blind. The rehearsal condition was a short online coaching session, not our programme, and the study is unpublished. What it shows and what it does not is set out on our research page.

How do you measure whether the training worked?

Measurement sits at Kirkpatrick Level 3, meaning observed behaviour at work rather than satisfaction scores. Before delivery we agree a small number of behavioural indicators with the client, such as how long a known performance issue waits before the first real conversation. They are re-read three to six weeks after delivery and again at around 90 days.

Where in London do you deliver, and how is it priced?

Most programmes are delivered in-house at client offices across London. Sidestream is based at 58 Malden Road, London NW5 3HG, and works from London, Milan and Berlin. Work is priced per engagement, because the effort sits in the scenario design and the actor briefing rather than in the delivery day.