I hope you will be able to join me this Thursday as I host Managing Difficult Conversations, a one-hour webinar event with leading labour and employment lawyer Kelly VanBuskirk.
Kelly and I will explore why managers, whose job is to communicate with employees, don’t actually do it or do it effectively, even knowing that the consequences of avoiding difficult conversations can loom large and prove costly.
Third in the Confronting Today’s Unique HR Challenges series sponsored by Vision Coaching, this special interactive live webinar event with Kelly will tackle one of the important issues in the workplace.
Legal risks
“The fact is that feedback – especially negative feedback – is difficult to give in any context. In a study of people who were simply asked to provide truthful, face-to-face feedback about the physical appearance of others, participants often lied, even when doing so resulted in a cost to both the person giving the feedback and the one receiving it,” Kelly says.
“Since communication about even something obvious can be difficult, how much more challenging is the obligation of managers to conduct hard discussions that present legal liability risks for their employer?”
With more than 25 years of experience as a lawyer, Kelly has practised extensively in the field of civil litigation, focusing primarily on labour, employment and human rights. He represents employers, employees, administrative tribunals and unions, and also serves as an arbitrator and mediator.
Difficult dilemmas
Kelly frequently teaches law courses and seminars, and has written books, articles and other materials related to the law.
His book, Why Employees Sue: Rethinking Approaches the Resolution Employment Conflicts, was published by Thomson Reuters in 2017. It examines how problems like negative feedback can cause employees to take legal action.
In this webinar, Kelly and I will break down four difficult workplace dilemmas and demonstrate concrete, step-by-step communications for leaders to use in response.
The four dilemmas:
This employee isn’t working out. They just aren’t what we need, and we’re going to let them go.
The employee who isn’t working out just brought in a doctor’s note: they’re “out sick for 2 months.”
During our COVID-19 reopening phase, only one employee said they weren’t ready to come back to work yet and they’ll come back “later.”
An employee has just told me, during a “confidential meeting,” that her supervisor is sexually harassing her. She doesn’t want me to say anything just yet, though.
The webinar is complimentary but you must register in advance through Eventbrite.
For more information on Vision Coaching events, including some limited-availability virtual training sessions for leaders, visit the Events page of the Vision Coaching website.