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Handling Difficult Professional Conversations

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  • Communicative Objective: Develop the ability to address sensitive workplace issues, communicate criticism constructively, clarify expectations, and propose corrective action without creating unnecessary conflict.
  • 5 Core Functional Sentences:
    1. I wanted to raise this issue because there appears to be a recurring gap between the agreed deadlines and the actual delivery dates.
    2. Had this happened only once, I would not regard it as a significant concern.
    3. What I would like us to focus on is how we can prevent the same problem from recurring.
    4. I appreciate that there have been circumstances beyond your control, but greater communication would have allowed us to respond more effectively.
    5. Going forward, I would expect any potential delay to be communicated as soon as it becomes apparent.
  • Grammar Focus: Mixed and third conditionals, cleft sentences, hypothetical evaluation, modal perfect constructions, and participle clauses for future-oriented framing.
  • Vocabulary Focus: recurring, deadline, circumstance, apparent, effectively
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