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How to communicate effectively with difficult people
A 68-minute podcast episode on speaking honestly with difficult people, and why kind isn't nice
Why it’s worth your time
A lot of hard moments at work turn on what we say before we've thought, and this conversation offers a short way to pause. Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg and host Dan Harris turn an old Buddhist teaching into a few questions to ask yourself before you speak. It's especially useful if you tend to soften everything, or to say it all.
How to talk to difficult people at work
- Listen to the episode.
The four questions start about twenty minutes in, after some Buddhist background and a plug for a meditation series. The difference between kind and nice comes around the fifty-minute mark, and her habits for remembering any of this mid-conversation come near the end.
- Reread your next tense email as the person receiving it.
Before you send anything sharp, a pushback, a no, a correction, read it once as if you were them. Ask whether it's true, helpful, timely and kind, then edit it, or wait.
Good moments for this: before you send a sharp emailahead of a meeting with someone you clash withwhen office gossip starts
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Salzberg describes how often we're busy wondering what someone thinks of us instead of taking them in. Before a hard conversation, asking yourself what the other person needs from it can change what you say first.
What might make this harder
Lead with what you've noticed and a question rather than a verdict: here's what I saw, is there something I'm missing? It keeps the door open and usually tells you more than a confrontation would.
Questions people ask
What are the four questions to ask before you speak?
Whether it's true, whether it's helpful, whether the timing is right, and whether it's kind.
What's the difference between kind and nice?
In Salzberg's account, kindness lives in your intention not to harm, while nice is about how you come across. Being kind can mean being firm or saying no.
Is it ever OK to gossip?
Salzberg doesn't give a flat rule. She suggests asking what saying it would achieve, and how it would feel if the person walked in a couple of minutes later.
Do you have to be Buddhist to practice right speech?
No. Salzberg says you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice the eightfold path, which right speech is part of.
What it says, and how it holds up
We spend our days talking to each other and are almost never taught how, as Dan Harris puts it about 17 minutes in. His guest, Sharon Salzberg, co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and has taught loving-kindness meditation for decades. The episode treats right speech, part of the Buddhist eightfold path, as a set of learnable skills rather than a rulebook.
Her version of is it true goes deeper than not lying. She describes watching two communication coaches help one staff member move from calling a colleague a terrible person to saying, in effect, I hoped we'd be closer and felt let down when you walked past me, which she hears as the real truth of what was going on. Harris raises the view, heard in some progressive circles, that impact matters more than intent. Salzberg doesn't pick a side: intention is the seed, and skillful, context-aware delivery is where impact gets decided.
Near the end she describes two habits. Since early in the pandemic she has reread every email from the recipient's side before sending it, and usually ends up editing. And she tells of a friend who couldn't say no and learned to notice the panic rising in her stomach, which came before the worry that people wouldn't like her if she said no.
Right speech is about your side of a conversation. If a colleague is harassing you, or the problem is a pattern of mistreatment, choosing your words more carefully isn't the remedy. That belongs with HR, or with someone outside the situation who can act on it.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.