Welcome!

Thank you for visiting my website!

Looking around at our troubled world these days I can’t help but think how much we need to improve our ability to understand one another and come together. Society is polarized, civic discourse is toxic, cancel culture, mass surveillance, censorship, and authoritarian governments are upsetting many of us. There is no shortage of creativity when it comes to methods of controlling or hurting one another.

Our world goes in the direction of what we’re talking about. Rather than too much negativity and complaining, let’s have more affirming, educational conversations that highlight our ability to come together. Personally, my favorite conversations involve learning about the different ways people resolve their conflicts at home, at work and in our communities.

When it comes to conflict, I learn best when I am directly involved. Other times I learn through observation and I know that there are many good conflict role models we can all learn from. Everyday around the world, business owners, managers, police, teachers, customer service reps, restaurant staff, bouncers, parents, coaches and so many others “get into it” and not only resolve the conflict, but also strengthen the relationship and create mutual respect. Discussing together what makes conflict successful can help us all grow and develop conflict awareness skills. We need all the help we can get.

Unresolved conflicts waste a lot of energy, contaminating the emotional atmosphere of our psyche’s, relationships and workplace cultures. In aggregate, they pile up and affect the mood of society. At home or at work, my hope is that we can all improve our ability to make conflict useful and productive.

Like my book Troubleshooting Conflict, this blog is will be written in the spirit of learning from each other. I plan to offer real life conflict cases, conflicts that I have facilitated or was personally involved in and what it took to resolve each one. My hope is to offer you ideas and concepts to consider and reflect on how they may apply to your own conflicts.

We are all in this together.