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At the 2025 TECHLeadership Conference, keynote speaker Tony Pannone asked attendees to rethink how they communicate at work. While work meetings don’t involve tantrums, he explained how the same tactics we used as children to avoid conflict often show up in the workplace today. And they may be holding us back.
Tony, chief information officer of Highmark Federal Credit Union, worked through conflict and emotions in difficult conversations. He presented examples of common workplace issues and how to solve them using the Crucial Conversations framework.
Understanding crucial conversations
Tony broke down a crucial conversation into three ingredients: high stakes, high emotions, and opposing opinions. Remove any one of those pieces, and it’s simply a conversation. But when all three collide, people often freeze, avoid the issue, or soften the truth to spare someone else’s feelings.
He illustrated this with an example involving children asked to compare two batches of brownies, one made with salt instead of sugar. When sampling both brownies, the children chose the salted brownies as better to avoid hurting the feelings of the baker.
Tony explained this is a common occurrence at work, but we often do not realize it. Instead of speaking their minds, many people choose to stay quiet and avoid conflict even if they do not agree. They get stuck choosing between respect and honesty, even though both are possible.
Resolution with dialogue
Tony introduced the content, pattern, and relationship (CPR) categories as a simple way to identify the right conversation to have with someone. Addressing the issue at hand usually falls into one of these categories and will prevent coworkers from moving on until then.
“Anytime you feel stuck, chances are you need a crucial conversation,” Tony said. “Content is the single instance of a problem such as an employee arriving late, a pattern could be arriving late every week, and the relationship could be arriving late only on days that the employee is working with me.”
Productive story shifting
Tony also explained how our perspectives may be causing an issue as well. He encouraged attendees to pause and separate fact from story. Strong emotions can cause people to avoid taking responsibility. People often react emotionally, make assumptions, and negatively respond when a conversation hasn’t happened.
Rewriting the story can shift the emotion, and shifting the emotion can bring people back to healthy dialogue. When people learn how to frame their own story, they can address the issue instead of feeling helpless, treating others as the villain, or feeling victimized.
See others as people, not problems
Tony ended with an example explaining how people often treat coworkers differently than friends or family. Not because they care less, but because they don’t know them as well. Building stronger relationships can make crucial conversations less intimidating and more productive.
Watch Tony Pannone’s full speech from the 2025 TECHLeadership Conference here.