Free tool · for managers and team leads
The First Performance Concern — One Whole Script
Managers do not put this conversation off because they lack courage. They put it off because they can picture the opener and cannot picture what happens after the other person answers. What if they cry. What if they say nobody ever mentioned it before. What if they turn out to be right, and the thing you were about to raise is your own department’s fault. This is one whole card out of the fifteen in the Script Bank — not an extract — so you get the opener word for word, all four branch replies with the exact line to say next for each, the close, and the documentation note. It is a conversation script and general management guidance — not legal or HR advice, and not a substitute for either.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- The word-for-word opener, deliberately shorter than feels comfortable — with the question it ends on, and the instruction to stop talking after it.
- All four branch replies: they agree and are embarrassed, they explain and the explanation is real, they deflect onto a colleague, they deny it flatly. Each with what it sounds like, what it usually means, the exact next line, and the trap managers fall into in that branch.
- A Stop — route it to HR box naming the six conditions under which you involve HR or an employment lawyer before you go any further. On this script the conversation is still yours to hold; what changes is the order you do things in. Read it before you book the room.
- The close, what has to be agreed before anybody leaves, and a documentation note to write within the hour and send them the same day.
- The same conversation played out in full for an invented company — turn by turn, with the note the manager actually wrote and why it went the way it did.
- Prefer to read it first? The Ardent Workshop tutorial “How to start a performance conversation” walks the same conversation through step by step — what to gather, when to route it to HR instead, and how to close it.
- One PDF, laid out for US Letter and scaling cleanly to A4. No signup, nothing saved anywhere, nothing to log into.
Own it, don't rent it
Which one are you actually putting off?
This free sheet is one conversation. The full Manager’s Difficult-Conversations Script Bank is fifteen — this one, plus missed deadlines, the long-tenured employee whose work has slipped, attendance, a hygiene issue, attitude in a room, mediating a conflict, a complaint about a colleague, a declined raise, a passed-over promotion, being promoted over a friend, a performance-improvement plan, a termination, a resignation, and a layoff notification — with 60 branch replies in all, each script played out turn by turn with the note the manager wrote. Plus a Start Here playbook carrying 24 sentences managers say and what to say instead, a 19-row handle-it-or-route-it table and the escalation ladder; six prepare-and-document worksheets that are fillable and printable from the same file; a plain-text file per conversation; and a searchable index whose route-it-instead column puts the judgment call in front of you before you book anything.
A one-time purchase you keep and hand to the next person you promote — the owned script library between rehearsing in the car and a per-seat management platform.
Conversation scripts and general management guidance, not legal advice and not HR advice for your organization. What counts as a protected characteristic, what a performance or disciplinary process must contain, whether somebody has a right to be accompanied, and what makes a dismissal lawful are set by law and by your own employer’s policy and vary sharply between countries and between states. Read the Stop — route it to HR box before you book anything, and where health, disability, an accommodation, a complaint, a protected characteristic, or any formal step is involved, talk to your HR team or an employment lawyer first. Free to use and to share; please don’t resell or redistribute.