This book not only taught me how to disagree with people productively, it also taught me what I’ve been doing wrong in my interactions with a particularly vexatious person in my life.

This is a very well written and engaging book. Often, when I read a book that is labeled as a business book, it consists of a central thesis that could have been stated in a short article. The thesis is then padded with examples and restatements that make reading the book tedious and boring. Not here. Leslie weaves in the main point of each chapter with engaging and enlightening illustrations that serve to make that concept crystal clear. If only all “business” books could be like this one, the genre wouldn’t get such a bad rap.

As I read the chapters in this book, I was reminded of a person who I recently cut out of my life. This person is an inveterate conspiracy theorist, addicted to contrarianism to the point that he believes that Covid vaccines turn people into butterflies. As I read each chapter in the book, my mind would go to some error I’d made when interacting with this person. I felt pretty bad about this until I reached Chapter 14. That chapter said that not all disagreements are worth your time. It’s OK to refuse to engage with people who consistently operate in bad faith or who are totally closed to new ideas. While I won’t talk to this person ever agaon if I can help it, I’m going to remember these tips when I engage with others.

This is an eye opening book, accessible yet packed with too many insights to mention. I highly recommend it.

Conflicted by Ian leslie teaches you how to have productive arguments in various scenarios. Examples from negotiators and difficult conversations from differnt fields are shown to gather lessons from.
High context culture vs low context culture
Proactive about conflict at Southwest helped different type of employees not look down upon each other.
Interactive Intelligence - Socrates, Buffet on second incentivized advice.
Disagree faster and get to work like Wright brothers.
Richard Lewis cross culture communication models
change my view reddit

This review will appear in the May-June issue of Global Business and Organizational Excellence. I will send the final copy when it is out of production.