Holding Steady
Staying honest under pushback
They pushed back. Hard. The defensiveness is a wall and your instinct is to apologize and retreat. But backing down now means the friendship survives — and so does the problem.
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Part of this story
The Hard Truth
→Your best friend's startup is failing and they can't see it. Deliver the truth they need to hear without destroying the friendship — balancing honesty with compassion.
Part of the quest
Difficult Conversations
→Face the conversations everyone avoids. From delivering hard truths to addressing elephants in the room, build the courage and skill to say what needs to be said — with honesty and heart.
What you'll learn from Holding Steady
This scenario focuses on Staying honest under pushback — a critical skill inside the broader difficult conversations domain. You'll face a decision where the instinctive response is often the wrong one. After you make your choice, you'll see exactly what happened in the other person's head and why it mattered. The scenario is part of The Hard Truth, a full interactive story inside the Difficult Conversations quest.
Skills you'll build in Difficult Conversations
More scenarios in this quest
Your best friend keeps canceling plans, deflecting questions, and pretending everything's fine. You can see the cracks they can't — and the longer you stay quiet, the harder the conversation gets.
You know what needs to be said. Now you need to figure out when and where — because the truth delivered wrong does more damage than the lie it replaces.
You open your mouth and the first sentence will set the tone for everything that follows. Lead with too much softness and they won't hear you. Too much bluntness and they'll shut down.
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