Conflict Resilience (Paperback)

Conflict is getting the better of us.

From our homes and community centers to C-Suites and Congress, disagreements are happening everywhere, with increasing frequency, and are being treated like zero-sum games that allow little margin for error and even less room for productive conversations. This puts a tremendous and untenable strain on our most important relationships and institutions.

Unable or unwilling to negotiate conflict with skill, we ignore it or avoid it for as long as possible; when we are forced to face it, we escalate everyday disagreements and temporary flare-ups as if they’re life-and-death. Neither approach addresses underlying issues, promotes stronger relationships, or yields satisfying results.

But there is a solution: a combined skillset and mindset that Bob Bordone calls “conflict resilience”—the ability to sit genuinely with and grow from disagreement. In this powerful, hopeful book, he and renowned neurologist Joel Salinas, MD, combine the inner mechanics of conflict—literally what’s going on in our bodies and our brains during moments of distress—with a groundbreaking three-step framework for how to navigate it:

In a time of increasing polarization, where consensus, agreement, and problem-solving can sometimes feel elusive, Conflict Resilience provides practical solutions to a common dilemma: How do you handle disagreements and differences with integrity while finding a way to create strong, deep, and lasting relationships?

Conflict Resilienceis not another book about conflict resolution, nor is it about problem solving.

Conflict Resilience combines practical applications of advanced conflict management and study of the human brain to teach anyone how to turn conflict and negotiation into an act of union. This book provides the most cutting-edge and scientifically-grounded tools for driving agreement when possible and for empowering you to disagree better when the differences cut deep and the relationships matter most. This is a chance to bring people together, and an invitation to radically transform how we interact with our friends and families, our co-workers, our students, and our neighbors—anyone with whom we find ourselves in disagreement.