Difficult conversations

How to encourage people to productively disagree while maintaining mutual respect.

It can be particularly roiling when your know-it-all coworker is actually right.

Articles and podcast episodes on speaking up, employee activism, and politics.

How companies can choose when — and whether — to act on employees’ concerns.

Today's employees, particularly young ones, expect their employers to speak out about the social, political, and environmental issues they care about....

Upper management sometimes makes choices you don’t like. How can you navigate your disappointment with grace and resilience?

Choose your words as carefully with people as you do with generative AI.

It can evoke feelings of uncertainty and apprehension. But it can also be an opportunity to grow.

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The key to fostering a trusting, receptive team environment? Constructive feedback.

When faced with tough feedback, take time to process the information you received before you decide to act on it.

Ready to give handling emotional responses a try? Navigate a tricky feedback conversation by putting yourself in Simon's position and deciding how best...

Ready to give delivering feedback a try? Help team members improve by deciding which path to take to address Mark's performance.

These tips will help you learn how to ask for and get quality feedback, how to react to feedback, and how to grow from it.

Five steps to take when you learn that others’ perceptions don’t match up with your own.

Five steps to help you pick your battles, prepare for the conversation, and advocate for yourself.

How to maintain your high standards while respectfully pushing back.

Ten steps for turning constructive dissent into the change necessary for innovation.

Advice for leaders on how to balance multiple interests and agendas.

What to do next time you get a request you’re not sure whether you and your team can pull off.

Coley Andrews could never have anticipated when he cofounded Pacific Lake Partners, a search fund investment firm, in 2009, that he would spend as much...

Navigate the complex decisions and critical relationships necessary to create and sustain a healthy family business--and business family. Though "family...

The founder and CEO of Veranda Brands, a designer and marketer of home furnishing products, is preparing to coach three department managers so that they...

After finishing a PhD in immunology and working for a few years for a large pharmaceutical company, Eric Lafferty entered an executive MBA program intending...

Mary Jones was the CEO of the Richardson County Community Association (RCCA), a nonprofit with assets of $250 million and annual grants totaling $50 million...

The ConvenientMD case highlights the role of emotion and ambiguity in business interactions. ConvenientMD, led by co-CEOs Gareth Dickens and Max Puyanic,...

Michael Lester, a consultant with Lachlan, was frustrated by his client's unwillingness to provide key data for an important presentation. Lester must...

Your stomach's churning; you're hyperventilating -- you're in a badly deteriorating conversation at work. Such exchanges, which run the gamut from firing...

"The diversity lady has a label on her forehead and talks about the standard message," one senior executive at a large corporation said. "It's the same...

The "HBR Women at Work" series, based on the popular HBR podcast of the same name, spotlights the real challenges and opportunities women experience throughout...

This case details the challenges Kiana Nelson faced at Central Valley Towing, a fictional towing company Nelson acquired. In the case, Nelson must decide...

This case is divided into A, B, and C cases. See OB85 Dealing with a Toxic Boss for an expanded version of the full case. A Case: Ned was an upper middle...

Stay on top of your leadership game. Leadership isn't something you're born with or gifted as a reward for an abundance of charisma; true leadership stems...

Get your best work done, no matter where you do it. Video calls from your couch. Project reports in a coffee shop. Presentations at your kitchen table....

Are you a good boss--or a great one? Good bosses can handle the day-to-day work of running a team. Great bosses go beyond that, finding ways to help employees...

PENDING

Make yourself heard. Having your voice heard at work can be challenging, whether you're confronting a colleague about an inappropriate comment or trying...

Pro tip: Practice mindfulness.

Denial dogged my travels around the world these past weeks. At a World Economic Forum gathering in Dubai just before Dubai World’s debt problems made headlines, the head Sheikh touted Dubai’s superiority over the West for problems that Dubai had seemingly avoided. But the idle cranes and empty buildings I saw were monuments to denial […]

Teaching Note for cases IN1225 and IN1226.

Coley Andrews could never have anticipated when he cofounded Pacific Lake Partners, a search fund investment firm, in 2009, that he would spend as much...

Teaching Note for case E567.

This one little word can dramatically shift the tone of a conversation.

In this fictional case, an associate director of business development at a gaming company is selected for a prestigious cross-functional innovation group....

Do you work with a jerk? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Stanford management professor Bob Sutton, an expert in dealing with difficult co-workers. They talk through what to do when your colleague is a bully, when your boss never takes the blame, and when your direct report gets on everyone’s bad side — but still brings in the money.

Choose your battles wisely but be willing to fight for yourself.

Navigate the complex decisions and critical relationships necessary to create and sustain a healthy family business--and business family. Though "family...