Full-Day Classroom Seminar
Managing People, Performance & Difficult Conversations
Practical Leadership Skills to Build Accountability, Handle Conflict and Lead Toda y’s Teams More Effectively
A highly interactive workshop to help managers balance empathy with accountability while handling underperformance, resistance, conflict, and difficult conversations.
The Programme
Programme Overview
Introduction
Course Overview
Managing people has become increasingly challenging as employee expectations, working styles, and attitudes towards authority continue to change. Managers are expected to deliver results while handling underperformance, resistance, interpersonal conflict, communication gaps, repeated follow-ups, and difficult workplace behaviour.
This workshop helps participants build practical leadership approaches for managing employee behaviour, conducting difficult conversations, resolving conflict, and building greater ownership within teams. Participants will practise realistic workplace situations and develop tools they can apply immediately.
Outcomes
What You Will Learn
- Understand changing employee expectations from managers.
- Manage Gen Z and multi-generational teams without stereotyping.
- Balance employee expectations with organizational requirements.
- Move employees from dependence to ownership.
- Set clear expectations, responsibilities, and performance standards.
- Conduct difficult performance conversations with confidence.
- Handle defensiveness, denial, silence, and emotional reactions.
- Respond to resistance, pushback, and unreasonable expectations.
- Resolve conflict and manage team tensions constructively.
- Build a collaborative and high-accountability team.
Methodology
How We Teach
- Highly interactive workplace discussions.
- Realistic workplace situation practice.
- Difficult conversation role plays.
- Conflict resolution scenarios.
- Performance and accountability conversation practice.
- Practical tools for immediate workplace application.
- Team communication, review, and accountability planning activities.
The Outcome
Impact & Audience
For the Organization
Organizational Impact
- Improve accountability and ownership across teams.
- Reduce repeated follow-ups through clearer expectations and structured accountability.
- Strengthen manager capability in handling underperformance and difficult behaviour.
- Improve communication between managers and team members.
- Reduce workplace conflict, gossip, blame, passive aggression, and hidden resentment.
- Build stronger collaboration across functions, generations, and personalities.
For the Individual
Personal Impact
- Build confidence in handling difficult people situations.
- Learn how to communicate concerns firmly without becoming aggressive or accusatory.
- Improve your ability to give constructive feedback that leads to corrective action.
- Handle disagreement and resistance without damaging relationships.
- Stay calm and constructive during emotionally charged situations.
- Develop practical leadership behaviours for better team performance and accountability. </ul
Audience
Who Should Attend
- Managers: To handle performance, people issues, conflict, accountability, and difficult conversations more effectively.
- Team Leaders: To improve communication, follow-up, delegation, ownership, and team discipline.
- Supervisors: To manage day-to-day employee behaviour, resistance, and performance issues.
- First-Time Managers: To build confidence in leading people, giving feedback, and setting expectations.
- Functional Heads: To strengthen accountability, collaboration, and leadership consistency across teams.
- People Leaders: To balance empathy with accountability while maintaining positive working relationships.
Curriculum
Course Outline
Session 1: Today’s Employees and Changing Workplace Expectations
- Understand how employee expectations from managers are changing.
- Manage Gen Z and multi-generational teams without stereotyping.
- Understand what employees expect, including clarity, respect, feedback, flexibility, and growth.
- Recognise different personalities, motivations, and working styles.
- Balance employee expectations with organisational requirements.
- Adapt leadership behaviour without compromising performance standards.
Session 2: Moving Employees from Dependence to Ownership
- Understand why employees avoid responsibility or wait for constant instructions.
- Set clear expectations, responsibilities, and performance standards.
- Move from repeated follow-ups to structured accountability.
- Delegate outcomes instead of merely assigning tasks.
- Address excuses, blame-shifting, and lack of initiative.
- Create an ownership culture without micromanaging employees.
Session 3: Conducting Difficult Performance Conversations
- Prepare for conversations involving underperformance or difficult behaviour.
- Separate facts, assumptions, emotions, and personal opinions.
- Communicate concerns firmly without becoming aggressive or accusatory.
- Give constructive feedback that leads to corrective action.
- Handle defensiveness, denial, silence, and emotional reactions.
- Conclude conversations with clear actions, responsibilities, and timelines.
Session 4: Handling Resistance, Pushback and Unreasonable Expectations
- Understand why employees resist instructions, feedback, or change.
- Respond to disagreement without damaging the relationship.
- Say “no” professionally while explaining boundaries and priorities.
- Handle demands related to workload, recognition, flexibility, and promotion.
- Influence employees when formal authority alone is insufficient.
- Manage difficult employees without labelling or avoiding them.
Session 5: Resolving Conflict and Managing Team Tensions
- Identify the real causes behind workplace conflict.
- Differentiate healthy disagreement from destructive behaviour.
- Manage conflict between employees before it affects the wider team.
- Address gossip, blame, passive aggression, and hidden resentment.
- Mediate disagreements fairly without taking sides prematurely.
- Stay calm and constructive during emotionally charged situations.
Session 6: Building a Collaborative and High-Accountability Team
- Establish clarity around team goals, roles, and decision rights.
- Build trust through consistent and fair leadership behaviour.
- Encourage open communication and healthy challenge.
- Improve collaboration across functions, generations, and personalities.
- Recognise performance while correcting non-performance promptly.
- Create practical team rituals for communication, review, and accountability.
Faculty & Inclusions
Your Trainer
Faculty
Instructors Details
The programme is designed to be led by instructors with practical understanding of people management, performance conversations, difficult conversations, conflict resolution, accountability building, Gen Z and multi-generational workforce dynamics, team collaboration, and leadership behaviour in real workplace situations.
What's Included
Certificates & Inclusions
- Certificate of course completion
- Course material
- Lunch
- Tea/Coffee
- Interactive workplace practice and role plays
- Practical tools for managing people, performance, and difficult conversations
Need Assistance?
Talk to a Programme Advisor
Have questions about your specific industry, or want to enquire about group discounts? Reach out to our programme coordinators directly.
Or register by e-mail
register@princetonacademy.co.inFor Teams
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Upcoming Managing People, Performance & Difficult Conversations Sessions
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
This workshop is designed for managers, team leaders, supervisors, first-time managers, functional heads, and people leaders who manage teams and handle performance or behaviour-related conversations.
Yes. The programme covers changing workplace expectations, Gen Z and multi-generational teams, different personalities, motivations, working styles, and leadership adaptation without compromising performance standards.
Yes. Participants will practise realistic workplace situations involving underperformance, difficult behaviour, defensiveness, emotional reactions, resistance, and accountability conversations.
Yes. The workshop covers workplace conflict, healthy disagreement, destructive behaviour, gossip, blame, passive aggression, hidden resentment, mediation, and staying calm during emotionally charged situations.
Yes. The programme covers setting clear expectations, delegating outcomes, addressing excuses and blame-shifting, creating ownership, and building collaborative high-accountability teams.
