Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In
Robert C. Bordone and Joel Salinas
Harper Business/An Imprint of HarperCollins (March 2025)

Conflict is getting the best of us. What to do about it? HOW?

Robert Bordone and Joel Salinas wrote this book in direct and substantial response to that question.

We learn in the Introduction that to interact with others in conflict and “do the hard work of both listening and engaging with them is what Bob [Bordone] has termed [begin italics] conflict resilience [end italics]. It is related to, but different from, conflict resolution, negotiation, mediation, or facilitation. It is their antecedent, the essential ingredient needed if we truly want to ‘get to yes’ or at least get unstuck from bad decisions and bad habits that continue to sabotage and betray our best selves.”

How does Conflict Resilience differ significantly from other books you may have read?

“1. The special definition of what conflict resilience is: a leadership capacity that is [begin italics] prerequisite [end italics] to conflict resolution and negotiation, and a capacity that is declining — but essential — in our society; and

2. The precise coupling of this idea with the latest insights and practical tactics from brain science, providing a transformative application and a prescription that flows from it beyond the negotiation table.”

Bordone and Salinas provide an abundance of information, insights, and counsel that can help you achieve these worthy objectives:

o Get past excuses and self-justifications to diagnoses and solutions
o Rethink and adjust your relationship with conflict (become “conflict positive”)
o Measure and understand your conflict tolerance
o Embrace your negotiations within (i.e. resolve your internal conflicts one way or another)
o Cultivate and nourish curiosity (“deep listening”) in yourself and others
o Give voice to your and others’ values and convictions: effective assertion can be a catalyst of connection, possibility, and collaboration
o “Set the Table”: design a conflict-resilient process
o Decide the future — together or separately (i.e. whether/how to move forward)
o Build a culture that hardwires conflict resilience everywhere within the given enterprise

This is a must-read for all executives in all organizations, whatever their size and nature may be. In a VUCA world, grace under duress is imperative to making the right decisions in a timely manner…especially when there are unrelated but persistent stresses.

Robert Bordone and Joel Salinas urge you to speak to power in principled dissent, welcome candor, and resolve conflict with style and grace as well as vigor and conviction. Keep in mind that conflict is a collision of differences that can usually be resolved to mutual benefit. Goodwill should be a given.

A helpful reminder from Voltaire: “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”

That includes you as well as everyone else.

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Here are two suggestions while you are reading Conflict Resilience: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to the aforementioned, exceptionally informative Introduction (Pages 3-15), one that provides a comprehensive briefing on how to use the information, insights, and counsel that follow to negotiate disagreement “without giving up or giving in.”

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.