Difficult Conversations - Say the Thing

You’ve rehearsed it in the shower. You’ve drafted the message and deleted it twice. And it’s still sitting there.

In this episode of the Psych Leadership Podcast, host Luke UpChurch covers the full arc of difficult conversations — from the psychology of why we avoid them, to staying regulated when things get tense, to repairing the relationship when it does. Grounded in research on conflict avoidance, the neuroscience of emotional regulation, and what actually drives relational repair, this episode gives you the tools to say the thing you’ve been putting off.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why more than 80% of workers are currently avoiding at least one hard conversation — and what that avoidance is actually costing them over time

•  The neuroscience of the amygdala hijack — why you say things in heated moments you wouldn’t otherwise say, and how to interrupt it before it takes over

•  Why cognitive reappraisal works when suppression doesn’t — and how to use it in real time

•  How to open a difficult conversation so it invites dialogue instead of defensiveness

•  The rupture and repair framework: what to do after a conversation gets tense anyway

The conversation you’re avoiding is costing you more than the conversation itself ever will.

Research cited in this episode:

•  Overton, A.R. & Lowry, A.C. (2013). Conflict management: Difficult conversations with difficult people. Clinics in Colon and Rectal Surgery, 26(4), 259–264.

•  Yoon, S. et al. (2023). The VLPFC-engaged voluntary emotion regulation: Combined TMS-fMRI evidence. Journal of Neuroscience, 43(34), 6046–6060.

•  Pierce, J.E. et al. (2022). Reappraisal-related downregulation of amygdala BOLD activation. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience.

•  Giacumo, L.A. et al. (2025). The ORANGE framework for facilitating difficult dialogues. TechTrends, Springer Nature.

•  Gottman, J.M. Rupture and repair theory. The Gottman Institute. (Note: Originally developed in couples research; applied here to professional relationships based on general relational psychology principles.)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, and welcome to the Psych Leadership Podcast, the show that helps you understand the psychology of growth, leadership, and making big moves in your life and career. As always, my name's Luke Upchurch, and I'm so glad that you took time out of your day to hang out with me. To get us started today, I want you to think about a conversation that you've been putting off. And you know the one I'm talking about, right? It's it's with a manager, maybe with a coworker. They've been doing something that's just getting under your skin, right? That that repeated pattern of bad behavior or just leaving you holding the bag, right? Maybe it's some somebody that just kind of needs to hear a truth and you need to say it. They probably need to hear it, but man, they don't want to hear it, right? So typically these are the conversations that we put off. And I don't know about you, I tend to rehearse them to my steering wheel, or I kind of type out the message and delete it. And maybe I ask OI AI to rewrite it a couple dozen times, and it never just lands right, right? It's just sitting there like the elephant in the room. And and by the way, in this context, you know, typically in this podcast, we always focus on work relationships. I want you to expand your thought process just a little bit wider. Here today, we're talking about any relationship. So this can be your spouse, this can be your boss, it can be your grandma for all I care. Um, but the concepts are universal. We tend to put these things off and they just build over time. The the research tells us that roughly 80% of workers are actually holding on to something, uh, holding on to that challenging conversation right now. Okay. So it's not that you're just bad at these conversations or that that you're not uh, you know, haven't had the training, et cetera. This is human nature. And so today we're gonna cover the complete arc, why we avoid the conversations in the first place, how to stay clear-headed, regulated, emotionally relevant so that we can still have the conversation. And if it gets real, how to how to repair that damaged relationship, right? So the whole arc from avoidance to repair, start to finish. So, first off, why do we avoid the conversation? You know, I'm gonna go over this just in case you weren't thinking about it this way. Um, but I'm really hoping that as we unpack this, you'll think to yourself, gosh, Luke, I already knew that, right? This is kind of common sense stuff, folks. Um, but again, maybe you just haven't thought about it this way. So conflict research describes what they call uh crucial conversations as a discussion where stakes are high, opinions differ, and emotions run strong. All three conditions have to be present, and when they are, your brain is going to treat that not like a logistics problem, but more like a threat. Okay. So fight or flight here, folks, that's what your brain goes through. And so it's completely predictable that your normal response to that situation is to avoid it, right? It's it's it feels rational in that moment, and that removes the immediate discomfort. But I mean, obviously, that doesn't take care of it, right? Avoidance doesn't resolve the underlying issue, it just postpones the inevitable. And that postponement it comes with a cost. Workplace conflict research shows that when we when we fail to address something like that, the tension doesn't stay neutral. It actually builds, it escalates. Uh, it it's a resentment compound, if you will. And the trust quietly erodes during this time. So the conversation that you're avoiding today is more difficult tomorrow and and three months from now, et cetera, et cetera. And again, I'm hoping that you're hearing this and you're saying, well, no kidding, Luke. That's common sense. This is logical stuff, right? If I'm if I am avoiding having that conversation with my significant other about their dirty dishes or their laundry, or maybe just the way that they respond to something that I say. Shit, it can even be just that they're chewing loudly and it irritates you. If you don't say something about it, then eventually it becomes something little. And I bet you've dealt with this on the other end, right? How many times have you maybe carried something at work? You've dealt with it for weeks, it's driving you crazy. And then your kid does something that kids will do, right? They they spill something, they leave the milk out of the refrigerator, something like that. And you kind of lose your mind, right? You yell at them or or you lose your temper, and then you look back on the situation and you realize that you weren't really mad at them. You were dealing with emotions left over from some other circumstance, and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Okay. So that's that's kind of what we need to deal with here because I mean, obviously that can un that can impact your personal relationships, but what about your boss? Right. I I'm gonna take you back to there. There's an episode of How I Met Your Mother, if you're familiar with that show, where Marshall is dealing with uh this content at work, dealing with his boss and the way his boss treats people. And then he eventually kind of blows up on his boss, probably says some things that that were uh not thought out well, and ultimately quits his job. Right. And I mean, again, sometimes those things need to happen. Sometimes that that falls the way it should, but most of the time that's not really the outcome that you wanted. And and what I see early in career professionals do is uh they they let this go so long because they're trying to balance things, right? There's this dynamic when I'm new in role, especially when I'm trying to prove myself, that I don't want to seem difficult. I don't want to be the guy that challenges my boss all the time. I don't want to make it weird. So instead I say nothing. And this goes on for months and months, just you know, we're just absorbing it. And so I'll give you an example from my personal career. You know, when I first started out, I had the exact same thing, right? I got got promoted and I was in a role that it normally requires uh at least an associate's degree. And here I was without any degree. And so I was dealing with a little bit of that imposter syndrome to begin with. And frankly, I thought, man, if I rock the boat too much, are they going to look a little bit deeper and realize that maybe, you know, again, I was probably overthinking this, but are they going to realize that maybe I don't belong here in the first place? As or early in early in high or early in career, like right out of high school. Um, I wasn't even in college at this point. That's what was going through my head, right? I I didn't want to rock the boat. And so as a result, not only did I not fix the problem, but I got to the point that my boss, I'm not, I'm not gonna tell you that they didn't know that what that they were what they were doing was wrong, um, but I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt here. In some cases, a person is treating you in a way that doesn't land right with you. And it's not that they're just intentionally being an ass, that sometimes they genuinely don't realize that they're cat dancing on your toes, right? They don't realize the situation that you're putting that they're putting you in. And so in this case, you know, my boss would ask me to stay late, and a lot of the times it was with little or no notice. Um, or, you know, he would forget that there was a deadline, and instead of taking ownership of that, he would dump that on me. And so it'd be a Friday night, and it's, you know, hey, I know it's six o'clock, we need this by Monday, and we're closed on the weekend. Can you stay late? And I, you know, yeah, sure, of course, I'll do it. And so over time, right, that erodes my trust with that individual, but it also just put me in an awkward spot repeatedly because now I'm getting walked all over. I haven't set the boundaries, and we've talked about this in other podcasts. I didn't set the boundaries, and so now that trust completely erodes. Now you get to the space that if my boss genuinely needed me to stay, am I likely to do it? Well, maybe if I'm still stuck, but maybe not. Okay. So what that experience taught me, and I've carried this throughout my career, is that the discomfort of saying the thing is almost always smaller than the cost of not saying it. It it doesn't feel that way in the moment, folks, because the discomfort of speaking up is immediate, and the cost of saying staying silent is delayed. So your brain weighs this. It's that that um kind of the opposite of instant gratification, right? The immediate cost is heavier than the the delayed request. And so even though the delayed one is buser, is bigger, right? That's tomorrow's problem, right? So that's just how we're wired, folks. And and it's important to recognize that and recognize that it's not an even trade. So next, let's pivot a little bit. You finally got the the gall to say the thing that needs said, right? Now, what if it gets tense? Well, that that might happen. Let's let's be candid here. Just because you have thought about this doesn't mean the person that you're approaching has thought about this. So it's a careful balance. When you finally do decide to speak up, I want you to really step back and evaluate the situation. Is that person ready to hear the thing? When something needs to be spoken up, when something needs to be said, you have to evaluate the individuals in the room. Is this the right time? Are they mentally, emotionally ready to hear what you have to say? Or are you just going to throw gasoline on the fire? So for example, if I came to my boss and and he's, you know, he's asking me, Hey, can you stay late, Luke? It's another Friday night and it's six o'clock, but I need you to cancel your plans and stay late and finish this project that I forgot, right? Am I going to approach him after he's just had a death in the family? Am I going to approach him after his boss just screamed at him for missing a deadline? Or, you know, even to take that a little bit more simplistic, right? If you just saw your boss, your boss spill their drink all down their blouse, do you think that's the best time to say, hey, quit being a jerkwad? Probably not. And if you come at it in that aggressive tone, is it going to help the situation? Well, no. No, right? So I want you to, when it is time to speak up, I want you to first off make sure that you've had time to really ruminate on this for a minute. Don't come in half cocked. Don't, you know, immediately storm in your boss's office and start, you know, throwing your weight around. I want you to think about where was their headspace? Was this intentional? It is, you know, all those factors. And then I want you to pick your moment. So ideally for me, I like to bring it up when we've just had a win. And you've heard this too, like even if your boss is giving you negative feedback, you've heard of the compliment sandwich where they tell you something that you're doing really well, then something you need to improve, and then something else you're doing well. It's really the same thing, right? So I'm going to wait, not too long, but frame it up when they've just had a win or a good day or something like that. So for example, let's say my boss asks me to stay late, and this is not a this has become a pattern, right? So it isn't the exception to the rule. It's the third, fourth Friday in a row, and I'm starting to really get fed up about it. Well, let's say I stay late and I do the thing, and and it now the next Monday he says, at a boy, Luke, this is what I needed. Thank you for staying late. Or, or maybe he doesn't even throw in the thank you, but at least he's excited, he or she is excited about the outcome. Right then, that is your moment. If you wait, then then they, you know, at this, at that moment, even at a subconscious level, there is a level of gratitude there, right? You just bailed them out. You just did a thing that made their life a little bit easier. That's the perfect time to approach that. And hopefully you've had the weekend to calm your butt down, right? And so that's a great time to come back to them and say, well, you know, I'm really glad that it landed well. Going forward, what can we do to get ahead of this? Because that that put me in a really awkward situation. And and this is where I want you to frame it up. You want to first off stick to the facts, right? So I'm not gonna come in and say, hey, boss, you completely screwed up my weekend. I guess you get to call my wife and tell her that you're the reason I had to cancel dinner, right? You you don't wanna you don't want to come in hot like that. You want to stick to the facts of this was the action. This is how it made me feel, this is the result, etc. And this is how I would like it to play out next time. Okay. So let's let's rewind a touch. Let's play that back. So, hey, I'm glad that the uh I'm glad that the presentation landed really well. Um, I wanted to see what we can do to pivot a little bit on the timing. Um, when when you ask me to stay late, that sometimes impacts my plans. You know, once in a while, as an exception to the rule, it isn't isn't a horrible thing, but this has been pretty consistent. And the last X number of Fridays, I've had to cancel my plans, or I've had to XYZ thing, right? I stayed late, therefore I missed this. Or, you know, at the end of the day, I guess you don't have to give a reason, but it helps them to understand because of their action, this was the consequence, and this is how it made me feel, right? So I felt uh I felt um out of sorts, or I felt bad because I needed to call my XYZ person and change plans, right? So you asked me to stay late. This was the result. I had to change plans, and to be candid, I feel taken advantage of. Or I I'm not sure that that that's the best use of our time. Um, because earlier in the week, maybe we had a lot of downtime, right? So, what did they do? How did it make you feel, or what was the consequence of that? And then what is the thing that we can do differently? So, you know, going forward, is there any way that we like we know that this presentation is going to come up on Mondays? Can we touch base, say on Wednesday or Thursday and get our heads right around what we're gonna present or or what reporting we need to have in hand so that it doesn't sneak up on us on Friday, right? And that's the the other thing is I want you to make sure that you're taking ownership for what is really yours. So in this case, you know, in that example, yes, my boss may be presenting this stuff. And to be clear, if my boss is listening, this is an old boss from years ago. So I'm not talking about anything recent. Um, but uh, but in any case, uh we we want to frame that up as you did a thing, this was the result. Here's how we can avoid it going forward. And so if your boss is doing the presenting, well, if your boss is doing it right, then they're not just presenting this as their win, they're presenting this as their department's win, right? So hopefully you're you're getting some of that goodwill from this as well, right? You benefit from that situation as well in this example. What about a situation that just completely doesn't sit right? And and I'll give you one, uh, this one has been a couple years ago. I had a gentleman that um he constantly talked over me. And guys, that's a pet peeve of mine. If I'm trying to make a point and you just constantly interrupt me, I'm gonna give you grace once or twice, and and eventually I'm I'm gonna fire back a little bit. Um, and so, you know, in my youth, I'm I'm sure that I snapped back more than once, right? That they interrupt you two or three times and you come back at them with, you know, can I finish my thought? Would you, you know, be quiet long enough for me to get two words out? That's not the way to handle it, right? So all I did is this guy continues to speak over me. And in this case, mind you, there is no benefit for me. It's I'm trying to make a point, you're talking over me. So, first off, I approached it after the call. I'm not going to call them out right there in front of everybody. I just sent them a message on the side, hey, do you have two minutes? The guy says, Yeah, sure. Let's get on a call. And and I said, and again, I'm framing it up the same way. I'm going to use Bob as our as our example person. I just said, you know, hey, Bob, as we're presenting in those meetings, I'm not sure if I have a phone delay or if it's intentional or what the disconnect is. But you'll ask me a question, and when I'm in mid-response, you talk over me. That makes me feel that you either aren't listening or don't care. Um, that you don't care what I have to say or that you're not listening. And again, maybe it's a technological glitch, right? We're in the world of Zoom. Maybe I've got a delay on my system. And I'm just trying to understand how we can get past this. Now, when I laid it out there, first off, come to find out, in this case, the guy actually had a hearing impairment. He was using a device. And so I had kind of, you know, given the benefit of the doubt, I had said maybe there was a delay. Well, as it turns out, there actually was a delay. It had nothing to do with the, you know, a technological glitch that I thought. It was because he was using a different device that was hooked to his computer to relay. So he's literally hearing what I'm saying a couple seconds after I've said it. So when he is what he believes, or what I perceived as cutting me off, he thought that I was pausing, you know, as just part of my sentence structure. He thought that there was a legitimate pause there. So once we said that, I realized that I was speaking a little fast, that his system was having trouble catching up. And so I slowed the candor of my speech. And then he realized that there was, in fact, a delay. And so he started being a little bit more patient with his follow-up questions. Right. So in this case, it wasn't that he was trying to maliciously just be a jerk, right? It wasn't anything malicious. It was just the the circumstances. And by saying it out loud, we got past it. Now, again, in my youth, maybe I would have blown up, maybe I would have yelled at the person, destroyed that relationship. Maybe I would have let it fester. And we've already discussed those outcomes, right? So the neuroscience behind this, and and I think this is genuinely useful to understand, is that when you feel threatened, even just socially threatened, like being criticized or contradicted, your amygdala, the brain's threat detection center, can trigger a response before your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain used for responsible, rational thought, your self-control space, it can trigger that response before it has a chance to actually weigh in. Right. So your amygdala kind of hijacks things and says, This guy keeps interrupting me, scream at him, yell at him, tell him he's a jerk, right? And if we don't slow down, that that processed threat signal takes roughly 200 milliseconds to just for for your conscious reasoning to catch up. And that's not a big amount of time. But that's, I mean, you've heard people say things like count the 10. That's that's science, folks. That isn't just an old wives' tale. A reason that you count the 10 or just pause for a minute before you fire back. So that is the good news here, folks. That's a trainable system. Research on emotion regulation, uh, this was actually published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used combined brain imaging and stimulation techniques. It confirmed that a specific region of the prefrontal cortex can actively downregulate the amygdala activity through a process called cognitive appraisal. So repraisal just means consciously reinterpreting what's happening in a way that reduces the emotional charge. And the research shows that this is different from your from a suppression reaction. Suppression masks the response. Reappraisal actually just changes the signal at the source. Okay. So here's how here's how to use this when you're in the room. When you feel your heat rising, right? Your heart is pounding in your chest. You get that fight or flight. I'm gonna smack this full if they keep going the way they're going. Your thoughts are narrowing to a defensive script. That's your amygdala, right? The intervention isn't to push that through by force. It's a conscious reappraisal. So silently reframing what's happening. This person is reacting from their own stress, not necessarily attack on me, or this discomfort means the conversation matters. It's not that it's going badly. That signal, that mental move engages your prefrontal cortex. It basically gives the uh decision maker in your head, it gives them, it gives that part of your brain a chance to catch up. And it's not a trick, it's neuroscience, right? So it's a skill that you can practice, and just like any other skill, folks, you can improve it over time. Okay. So the other thing I'm gonna tell you is is first off, we're all human. So I'd love to I'd love to paint this fairy tale for you and say that I have always thought before I reacted. We all know that's not true, right? That's just not real. Um, so if you step in it, right, if you react suddenly, it's okay to come back tail between your legs and just, you know, apologize for stepping on their toes. Don't apologize for the thing that you pointed out. Don't apologize for the behavior you were trying to address. Apologize for the way you addressed it. Okay. So for example, if I yell at my kids for doing something and it was out of sorts, right? I let that tension build or I carried it from a different environment and my kids or my spouse caught that backlash, it's okay to say, you know, hey son, I'm I'm sorry for the way that I came at you for not cleaning your room. That was wrong of me. I should have thought about it. I do still need you to take responsibility for cleaning your room. I'm not saying that that piece was wrong. I'm saying the way I deliver the message, that's where I failed and that's where I'll do better. And and folks, when we talk about repairing that damaged relationship, just having the guts to say, I screwed up and I'm working on that, it allows them at least to hear you, assuming you didn't, you know, really screw up, right? That's that's a conversation for another day. All right. So finally, how to actually start the conversation. So back in episode 48, we talked about the feedback loop. So you already know how to have an open that that having an open conversation determines almost everything about what will happen next. Same principle, same principle applies here, just in the other direction. Instead of asking for feedback, you're the one delivering something hard. So conflict research consistently recommends a specific opening move. Describe the gap between what's expected and the observed behavior, rather than opening with your conclusion or your judgment, right? It sets the wrong tone if you start with the verdict, especially if it's a harsh one. Instead, I want you to lead with the gap itself, not you don't respect my time, but hey, we agreed on a Tuesday deadline, and the last three have come in after Thursday. I'd like to better understand what's happening, right? The first version, I come off very accusatory. And the second is more I observed a situation and I'm genuinely seeking to understand. The first one, it invites them to be defensive, and the other one opens us up for a conversation. All right. So, folks, I think we have covered this topic at length here. I think we're in a good spot. Um, you know, what I want to close with today is that the conversation that you are avoiding is costing you more than the conversation itself ever will. When you're in it and things get tense, I want you to recognize that your amygdala is hijacked, that it needs a little bit of time to catch up. So count to 10, walk away, just step, take yourself out of that situation, open the gap, uh, open with a gap, the expected behavior, what was observed, not your verdict. And again, if it does get messy, I want you to repair it quickly. Okay. Just like the the conversation you were avoiding, if you handle things wrong or they react wrong because you didn't wait for the right moment, I want you to acknowledge it, own your part in it, and then reaffirm the relationship. All right, so folks, that's avoidance to repair the whole arc. I want you to say the thing. Thanks for being here, folks. And if this landed with you today, I hope that you share it with somebody that needs to hear the same thing. Have a great day, and we'll talk again soon.