No one likes having to deliver negative feedback to an employee, colleague, or boss. (Or, if you do, you need to do some deep thinking on that.) Yet unpleasant as it may be, it is incumbent upon good leaders to be able to give this sort of feedback constructively.

One way to feel more comfortable in these situations is to effectively prepare for them. Today, we’ll get advice on how to get ready for these tough conversations.

How to prepare for tough conversations

Clinical professor Brooke Vuckovic, who also works as an executive coach, offered up her advice in a recent The Insightful Leader Live webinar.

She acknowledged that, too often, leaders try to simply avoid these difficult conversations. But avoidance not only abdicates your responsibility to develop a specific employee, it also risks letting down your whole team. That’s because the culture of an organization isn’t what you say it is—it’s the “behavior that you consistently tolerate,” she says.

Vuckovic offered advice on how to prepare for these conversations so you stop avoiding them and instead approach them with confidence. Here are a couple of her tips:

Be prepared to learn something new: Leaders often fail to anticipate learning something from the other person that could change their own view of the issue. She advises considering in advance what information might make you reconsider your own position—and then, in the conversation itself, taking care to solicit the employee’s perspectives directly. “When you say, ‘I’m interested in your perspectives on this,’ simply by asking the question, you are less likely to defend against things that they raise, and you’re giving them space for having that conversation,” she says.

Have an exit strategy: If your colleague freezes up—or becomes very emotional—it can be helpful to suggest taking a break (“let’s put a pin in this”) and then set a time in the future to discuss again. Even if the conversation is going smoothly, it’s important to wrap up in a way that feels complete. “You want to ensure that by the end of your conversation all agreements are completely clear to all parties—and that may simply be that you are going to talk about this again tomorrow,” she says. “You’ve clarified next steps and your commitments to one another.”

You can read more of Vuckovic’s advice and watch the full webinar here.

What leaders should know about AI

Large-scale language models like ChatGPT have taken the world by storm, dazzling users with their ability to pen convincing marketing copy, suggest recipes, and converse a lot like humans. But these models, for all their strengths, have some hefty (and concerning) limitations.

What should we make of them—as business leaders and as citizens? And what other kinds of AI could be on the horizon? In tomorrow’s The Insightful Leader Live webinar, Kellogg faculty David Ferrucci, the AI researcher who started and led the IBM Watson team from its inception through its landmark Jeopardy success in 2011, and Brian Uzzi, a professor of management and organizations, will walk us through the inner workings and social ramifications of today’s AI—and tomorrow’s.

The free webinar takes place tomorrow at noon central time. You can register here.