What does it mean having difficult conversations in the workplace?: An exploratory literature review

Difficult conversations in the workplace are conversations that can potentially make people feel uncomfortable, generate conflict or detrimentally affect relationships and productivity in work settings. While this topic has been significantly researched from a healthcare organisation's perspective, there is a paucity of scholarly works on difficult conversations that can be applied to other types of workplaces. This paper paves the way for this kind of research by providing a literature review that highlights prominent themes relating to difficult conversations in the healthcare field, and also in the few existing works that analyse this phenomenon from a management studies perspective.