The three tools you actually need.
Most "difficult conversation" training drowns the practitioner in frameworks. In our coaching we strip it back to three artefacts: an opener script, an objection-handler list, and one quiet refusal sentence the manager can reach for when the conversation tilts.
None of them is clever. All three of them are practiced out loud, in role-play, until the manager can deliver them without looking at the page. That's the bit most programmes skip.