Managing Conflict and Challenging Conversations
for Leaders
Virtual via Zoom
Fee: $15 full members; $60 partial members & non-members
Continuing Education Hours: 3.5
Course Description
Difficult conversations are an inevitable part of leadership, yet concerns are often delayed until problems escalate. In this interactive session, participants build practical skills for navigating conflict and challenging conversations with confidence, clarity, and respect. Drawing from Crucial Conversations, leaders explore how differing goals, priorities, values, generational perspectives, cultures, and organizational roles influence behavior and communication. Participants learn how to maintain dialogue when stakes are high, emotions are strong, and opinions differ while building mutual understanding and productive solutions.
Through discussion and application exercises, participants develop practical skills for navigating conflict with employees, colleagues, community partners, and clients. The session emphasizes creating conditions where honest dialogue can occur, allowing leaders to address concerns constructively while preserving relationships and improving outcomes.
Learning Objectives:
- Explain common sources of conflict and communication breakdowns within behavioral health organizations.
- Recognize how differing roles, priorities, experiences, cultures, and perspectives influence motivation and behavior.
- Identify conditions that lead conversations to become "crucial" and increase the risk of misunderstanding or conflict.
- Apply key Crucial Conversations skills to maintain productive dialogue during high-stakes discussions.
- Use active listening, curiosity, and fact-based communication strategies to improve mutual understanding.
- Address disagreements and concerns with employees, colleagues, community partners, and individuals served in a respectful and effective manner.
- Navigate emotional reactions and defensiveness while maintaining professionalism and focus on shared goals.
- Develop an action plan for applying crucial conversation skills within their leadership role.
About the Trainer
Tess Parker, LMSW
Tess Parker is an accomplished trainer, clinical therapist, and educator. As a former program director in behavioral health, she leverages her Master of Social Work from the University of Denver in a career dedicated to serving individuals experiencing mental health emergencies in both outpatient, and residential settings. Tess believes authenticity and vulnerability are at the core of human connection, and this belief is the foundation of her clinical and consultative approach. Tess has an uncanny ability to strategically identify critical gaps in care and then create programs to bridge those gaps and truly save lives. She is also an avid writer, a minimalist at heart, and values meaningful connections with persons served, customers, and her community.