Drawing on advice from the world's leading experts on conflict and communication?from
relationship scientists to hostage negotiators to diplomats?Ian Leslie a columnist for the New
Statesman shows us how to transform the heat of conflict disagreement and argument into the
light of insight creativity and connection in a book with vital lessons for the home
workplace and public arena.For most people conflict triggers a fight or flight response.
Disagreeing productively is a hard skill for which neither evolution or society has equipped
us. It's a skill we urgently need to acquire otherwise our increasingly vociferous
disagreements are destined to tear us apart. Productive disagreement is a way of thinking
perhaps the best one we have. It makes us smarter and more creative and it can even bring us
closer together. It's critical to the success of any shared enterprise from a marriage to a
business to a democracy. Isn't it time we gave more thought to how to do it well? In an
increasingly polarized world our only chance for coming together and moving forward is to
learn from those who have mastered the art and science of disagreement. In this book we'll
learn from experts who are highly skilled at getting the most out of highly charged encounters:
interrogators cops divorce mediators therapists diplomats psychologists. These
professionals know how to get something valuable ? information insight ideas?from the
toughest most antagonistic conversations. They are brilliant communicators: masters at shaping
the conversation beneath the conversation. They know how to turn the heat of conflict into the
light of creativity connection and insight. In this much-need book Ian Leslie explores what
happens to us when we argue why disagreement makes us stressed and why we get angry. He
explains why we urgently need to transform the way we think about conflict and how having
better disagreements can make us more successful. By drawing together the lessons he learns
from different experts he proposes a series of clear principles that we can all use to make
our most difficult dialogues more productive?and our increasingly acrimonious world a better
place.
