about the book
Unresolved workplace conflict wastes time, increases stress, and negatively affects business outcomes. But conflict isn’t the problem: Mismanagement is.
Leaders unintentionally mismanage conflict when they fall into dysfunctional patterns of aggression, avoidance, and appeasing.
The three reasons leaders mismanage conflict is due to the fear of emotions, the lack of skills development or the culture itself.
Resolving conflict requires the ability to initiate, engage in and stay with difficult conversations. This book offers techniques to increase leadership clarity, identify obstacles, and reduce resistance. In chapter seven leaders get a blueprint to facilitate conversations that uncover the hidden barriers to performance, improves performance and increases accountability.

Get the Excerpt
Mismanaging conflict creates lack of clarity, and where there’s lack of clarity, there’s negative experiences, and when people feel discounted, retaliated against, or excluded, there will be division and misunderstandings that waste time and take years to repair, if ever. The conversation avoided today is the lawsuit three years later.
Take a sneak peek and download the excerpt, which includes
- Cover
- Title page
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
We hope you enjoy this except from Marlene Chism’s From Conflict to Courage. On sale May 3rd—order today!
Available at:
Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes and Noble, IndieBound, Berrett-Koehler
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FROM CONFLICT TO COURAGE
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Conflict Is Not the Problem
There are a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to managing conflict and keeping peace. When we say, “I don’t tolerate drama” and “I keep negative people completely out of my life,” we are in essence saying that by controlling outer circumstances and avoiding certain types of people, everything will be fine. I’m now convinced that these beliefs are an incomplete way of understanding conflict and our ability to expand enough to truly manage and resolve conflict. To manage conflict effectively, we need to redefine conflict, recognize our dysfunctional patterns, and then work on expanding our conflict capacity. Let’s get started.
My Hope For You
One of the most difficult aspects of leadership is managing conflict instead of avoiding it. My hope is that after reading this book, you will no longer avoid conflict but instead realize that conflict can be your greatest teacher and a catalyst for leadership growth.
