FirstSpar
The friend who fell behind
Give critical feedback to someone who was your peer last quarter.
Giving feedback
FirstSpar
You’ve rehearsed it in your head for days.
Say it out loud once — to someone who pushes back like they will.
- 28 written scenarios
- 97 languages you can spar in
- 3–10 min one spar, start to debrief
- 0 recordings kept, ever
The part nobody rehearses
You already know the conversation you need to have.
- “My heart races before every 1 on 1.”
- Have it once at your own kitchen table first. The dread is mostly not knowing how it goes.
- “I planned it. I practised it. I still panicked.”
- Planning is not rehearsing. One happens in your head, and your head never interrupts you.
- “I know what I want to say — until they push back.”
- So they push back. That is the exercise, and it is the part no amount of reading can hand you.
- “I keep replaying it at 2am.”
- The debrief tells you what actually happened, scored, so you are not the only witness.
Reading advice is not the same as saying the words out loud.
How it works
Three steps, then do it again.
01
Build the simulation
Tell FirstSpar what is happening, who you are facing, and what you need to walk away with. That takes about a minute, and it is free every week.
02
Say it out loud
Speak naturally to a counterpart who answers back — deflecting, disagreeing, interrupting, and giving ground only once you have earned it.
03
Get the debrief
Scored on your approach, with the strongest sentence you said quoted back to you and exactly one thing to try differently.
Then spar again.
The counterpart
They will not all respond the same way.
- Defensive
- Skeptical
- Quiet
- Frustrated
- Confident
FirstSpar builds a counterpart around the situation you are actually preparing for — with a history, a reaction style, and something specific to defend. So you do not just practise what you want to say. You practise what happens after they answer back.
Training, not chat
A flight simulator for hard conversations.
Pilots do not wait for an emergency to find out how they will respond. Neither should anyone walking into a conversation that decides something.
Set the level of pushback, how long you have, and the voice you are facing — before you walk in. Lose your train of thought, back off when you should have held, and try it again. Nothing here is on the line.
Pre-flight
- Pushback
- Realistic
- Time
- 5 min
- Voice
- Default
Realistic — responds the way this person probably would.
The library
Some conversations are hard everywhere.
Twenty-eight written scenarios across the four that come up most: giving feedback, setting boundaries, saying no, and asking for what you want — facing your team, your peers, and your own manager.
Let someone go without falling apart
Say the decision is final, once, and stay in the room after you have said it.
Giving feedback
Ask for the raise you keep putting off
Say a number out loud, and do not walk it back the first time she goes quiet.
Making the ask
Messages at eleven at night
Set a boundary with someone who does not think it is one.
Setting boundaries
One more project
Tell your manager your team cannot absorb more work.
Saying no
Build your own
Practise the conversation you are actually facing this week, in your own facts. This one is free.
Free, every week
The debrief
You do not just finish. You find out what happened.
Every spar is scored on your approach, never your phrasing. FirstSpar will not write your lines for you — it tells you where you were clear, where you softened, and the one thing to change next time.
- Clarity
- Empathy
- Specificity
- Holding the line
- Composure
Recommended for you
Hold your ground under pushback
Last time, you softened the expectation the first time it was challenged.
The alternative
What you would do otherwise.
Read about it
A framework you will remember right up until they interrupt you with something you had not considered.
No pushback
Ask a friend to play them
They are kind to you, they do not know the facts, and now somebody at work knows.
Costs a favour
Spar it
Out loud, against someone with a case to make, on your facts. Scored, and repeatable until it stops being frightening.
Five minutes
But I already have ChatGPT
It writes you a script. Scripts fail the moment they interrupt you.
You can absolutely rehearse against a chatbot, and plenty of people do. It will give you a good answer, in text, and agree with you. Then the real person says something you did not plan for, and the thing you practised — reading — is not the thing that just failed.
It has something to defend
Your counterpart is built from your facts with a case of their own, a history, and a reason they think they are right. They give ground when you earn it and not before.
It scores what you said
Not what you meant to say. Five dimensions, your own strongest sentence quoted back to you, and one thing to change — named at the moment it happened.
Nothing is kept
Your voice is never recorded — it streams and is gone, and there is no field anywhere that could hold it. You are rehearsing something true about a real colleague. That only works if you can say the unflattering version out loud.
Pricing
The conversation you are facing is free.
Three spars a week on your own situation, with the full debrief and nothing held back. Pro opens the twenty-eight written scenarios and the harder settings — $5.99 a week, or $59.99 a year with a 3-day trial.
Privacy
Say the thing you are not ready to say at work.
You are rehearsing something about a real colleague. Your voice is never recorded — audio streams to the model and is gone, and there is no field anywhere that could hold a recording. What was said is written down so your debrief can exist, stored under your account, readable only by you, and deleted the moment you say so.
The conversation is waiting.
Do not make the real one your first try.
Free on iOS. Build the conversation you are facing this week and say it out loud.