Lessons from the MU’s Courageous Conversations Workshop

On 2 October 2025, 15 members of the Musicians’ Union arrived at its headquarters near London Bridge to attend a one-day training workshop entitled Conducting Courageous Conversations.

The workshop was organised by the MU’s London Regional Office and was run by Guildhall Ignite, the executive and professional performance consultancy of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (GSMD).

The aim of the workshop was to help musicians prepare and manage difficult conversations in the workplace so that they can get the results that they want and need. At the same time, the course focused on how to maintain a positive and healthy environment for communication to happen in, while upholding the integrity of the working relationship.

What the workshop offers

The workshop was organised by MU Regional Organiser for London, Jamie Pullman. While the workshop offers skills and techniques to help empower salaried and freelance musicians, Pullman believes that freelance players in particular could find it particularly useful.

“I think a lot of the time when you're a freelancer and you find yourself in positions where you have difficult relations with the people that you have to work with, you don't have an HR department to say, ‘help me with this’. And so it's up to you. If you don’t have those skills, you can just find yourself either walking away from the work because you don't want to do it – and that leaves you in a financial peril – or just having to put up with situations which could be resolved if you've got the skills.”

Challenging conversations

The kind of difficult conversations freelancers face could include how to negotiate payment, says Pullman, but they could span a broad range of scenarios. Ultimately, he says, the skills acquired on the course focus on “how to frame those conversations that, as British people, we find very difficult”.

The MU members who attended were asked in advance to “come prepared to try out new skills in a safe, confidential and supportive environment”. Members were also asked to bring examples of challenging conversations they have had or were planning to have in the future. These real-life scenarios provided context for them to practise the psychological models and skills they were being taught.

The whole aim of the workshop was to help musicians achieve open, honest and action-focused conversations at work so that they get the outcome that they want and need.

Building communication skills

“Essentially we're looking to build skills in effective communication,” says Jane Booth, head of Guildhall Ignite and one of two executive coaches working with the MU members at the workshop. “What this course does is it begins to equip people with the understanding, with the language, and with the skill to be able to voice their concerns more effectively.”

All workplaces can be challenging when it comes to communication but it can be particularly prevalent within the music industry, says Booth.

“I think there are situations in the music industry where people feel they don't have a voice. And they feel it's difficult to get their points across. Or they feel that the working conditions can be ambiguous or unclear or perhaps falling short of what an ideal, respectful and healthy workplace environment could look like.”

Musicians are often treated less than professionally, says Booth, whether it’s by a colleague, someone in a position of authority, somebody who is supposed to be organising an event or somebody from a podium. “Whenever people are treated badly, then that's on top of potentially already difficult, challenging circumstances.”

Shared experiences in the workplace

The MU members who attended the workshop came from a diverse range of genres, but most were inspired to attend the event due to experiencing similar problems in the workplace.

“We had orchestral players like myself there, DJs, producers, songwriters and jazz musicians,” says Helen Paskins, a freelance clarinettist who works with orchestras including the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Royal Ballet and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

“But we were all running up against the same problems: people feeling marginalised, people feeling they were not being listened to, people feeling not heard. The people that were drawn to the course included people who came knowing that they had a difficult conversation that they needed to have. That they were scared of having. So for a lot of people, it was about learning how to address difficult situations that they were struggling with in their own life.”

Reframing the narrative

Much of the focus of the Guildhall Ignite one-day workshop is about reframing the narrative between the individuals who are having difficulties communicating effectively. Listening to and empathising with the other person is paramount.

One of the exercises involved each person within a group being allocated a role, says Paskins, and then being afforded the space to talk about their problem while the others listened, without interrupting.

“Instead of trying to give advice, the focus was on listening and then reflecting back what had been said. Thereby helping the speaker to find their own solutions. It’s about creating a value-based environment where everybody is allowed to be heard positively and where things like honesty and respect can come to the table and bring about shifts in communication that you might not expect.”

Learning to listen

Active listening is vital in these situations, says Natasha Zielazinski, cellist, composer and one of the Guildhall Ignite executive coaches facilitating at the workshop, along with Jane Booth. “The way we listen, the way we ask questions, the way we communicate and respond. These very basic core skills are part of what we're working with and then we introduced a few different kinds of practical models.”

Difficult conversations in the workplace will inevitably provoke emotional responses. The workshop focused on how to regulate emotions within a communication environment.

“Some of the models we looked at were around emotional maturity, emotional understanding or emotional awareness,” says Zielazinski. Musicians often find it difficult to deal with interpersonal issues, she says, due to the toxic behaviour of others, difficult working cultures, bullying and discrimination within the workplace.

Assessing your emotions 

Staying calm is key to navigating difficult conversations and the course addressed the emotional mechanics that drive our most challenging exchanges.

“First of all, there’s the self-awareness of your own emotional responses and what's happening for you,” says Zielazinski, “And then an ability to tune into what's happening for some someone else. If you can start to raise both of those, then the quality of your communication will be much better.”

Building empathy for the other person and appreciating the problems they may be facing can be integral to building more constructive conversations, says Anna Drysdale, a horn player with Scottish Opera who also freelances and was one of the MU members who attended the one-day workshop. Drysdale highlights the importance of attaining a sense of calm during difficult conversations and respecting the person and their sense of pride in what they do.

“Ultimately, everyone who works in an orchestra, from the management to the back of the second violins, wants it to be good,” she says. “So it can be useful to work out what the other person might be feeling… you are basically aiming to build rapport and to appeal to your shared human nature.”

One of the tools learnt on the course was how best to phrase questions. “So, often that means asking non-leading questions and leaving lots of space,” says Drysdale. “Open questions, like asking somebody what their ideal outcome is from the situation you’re both trying to solve, or if they’re concerned about anything in particular, or even just nodding and leaving silence gives the other person space to speak...and often gives you a better understanding of where they’re coming from.”

Making a change

Drysdale says she found the one-day workshop valuable and sensed that other MU members on the day had similar experiences. “I could tell a lot of people around me had brought a problem and came away with a solution they weren’t expecting, that wasn't something they'd already tried and that seemed achievable.”

It’s a view echoed by Helen Paskins. “What was so impressive about the course is that it covered a lot of different psychological models as well as practical exercises to show how they work in practice. It’s a really progressive course that Jane and Natasha are running and the consensus on the day was that it had been a very enriching experience.”

For the 15 MU members who attended the course, the day was all about acquiring the skills of good communication. The next stage is to put them into practice in their working lives, as Jane Booth explains.

“The wonderful thing about doing this kind of work with musicians is they understand that if you practise a technique or a tool or an idea or a statement or a response, that you can actually build up the muscle to make that more available to you and more effective for you.

“So people are building up their skills in effective communication and building up those skills incrementally that they can practise. So it might not go right tomorrow, it might not go right next week, but you might feel slightly better about how you handled that conversation.”