Melbourne October Meeting – We Can’t Fix What We Can’t Talk About: Rethinking Performance Conversations

Emma Gibbens, Global Speaker, Facilitator & Author

Topic:      We Can't Fix What We Can't Talk About: Rethinking Performance Conversations - A practical session for HR leaders who are tired of walking on eggshells

Feedback is supposed to grow people. So why does it keep breaking them?

Most performance conversations replay what psychologist Stephen Karpman called the Drama Triangle: the business or manager becomes the persecutor, the employee slips into victim, and HR jumps in as rescuer. It is not malicious, but it is predictable. And the cost of getting it wrong is steep, with mental health claims in Australia rising 161% in the past decade and a median payout of $67,400 per psychological injury claim (Safework Australia Oct 2025).

No wonder HR leaders are jumpy. But avoiding the conversation is not the answer.

Here's what most people miss. Feedback has two sides, and you have more control than you think. When you're giving feedback, you can shape how you say it. The conduct over the content. The message stays the same, but how you open the conversation, how you frame it, how you hold the space; that determines whether it lands as growth or as threat. When it comes to receiving feedback, that's harder, especially in a culture where discomfort is increasingly treated as harm. The best antidote is not to soften the message, it is to lower the stakes and increase the frequency of friction. This normalises feedback conversations in everyday interactions.

The goal is to help people start conversations they'd rather avoid. Say it sooner. Say it smaller. Say it kindly.

What we'll unpack together:

• Lower the stakes, raise the frequency. Gallup research shows 15 to 30 minutes of feedback weekly produces better outcomes than a big conversation that builds up all year. We will explore how to design feedback processes that reduce the threat response and stop the annual review from becoming the main event.
• Shift from What to How. Move the conversation from outcomes alone to the behaviours that drive them. This is where coaching questions do their best work.
• A simple framework of five short feedback conversations anyone can start.

You will walk away with:

• Practical coaching questions and phrases you can use straight away
• Strategies for giving honest, kind, firm feedback without the fallout
• A shift in how to approach performance management

About the speaker:

Emma Gibbens has facilitated conversations across continents and cultures, from Obama's 2008 campaign and Silicon Valley to the Australian marriage equality movement, pandemic response and co-founding Acknowledge This!, which trained over 30,000 people in authentic leadership and deep listening. She is the author of Anatomy of a Conversation and brings a campaigner's urgency, a systems thinker's precision and a facilitator's warmth. Her sessions are not polite, but powerful. They are energising, thought-provoking and loaded with tools you can apply on Wednesday morning.

This session will shift how you approach feedback conversations and give you practical tools to apply right away.

We can't fix what we can't talk about.

If you want to dive in now, here are some relevant articles:

Why Feedback Keeps Breaking People

The $1B Conversation We’re Not Having

Conversations are Cultural Infrastructure: The 7 Convos that Shape Org Culture