MI-Lead

A Leader’s Guide for Difficult Conversations

Effective leadership can be challenging, especially when addressing problematic behaviors with team members. Leaders often struggle with the following questions: How do I manage difficult team member behaviors? Where does taking disciplinary action fit in? When should I just fire my employee? Through many rewarding discussions with leaders, we have had the opportunity to really challenge the notion of “difficult team members”. MI-Lead: A Leader’s Guide for Difficult Conversations serves as a supplement to book one on MI-Lead, Motivational Interviewing for Leadership: MI-Lead, and focuses specifically on addressing problematic team member behavior. While we provided some general ideas and strategies for addressing problem behaviors in book one, this supplemental guide builds upon the foundational strategies outlined in book one and includes a specific 4-step MI-Lead method for approaching difficult conversations with members of our teams. This guide also provides examples of common scenarios with ideas for effectively addressing the problematic team member behaviors while maintaining a spirit of partnership, acceptance, compassion, and evocation.