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“Do you think you could sum up the essence of all you’ve learned in one sentence?”
That was the question my friend Jim Collins, the famed leadership author, suddenly asked me as we were hiking up a mountain a few years ago.
“You’ve been wandering around the world for the last 45 years,” he continued, “working in some of the world’s toughest conflicts from the Cold War to the Middle East, from strikes to boardroom battles. What can help us in these times of intense conflict?”
I am an anthropologist by training. If I were a Martian anthropologist looking at us now, I would say we live in a khbrknews of great paradox. Never before in human evolution have we enjoyed such an abundance of opportunities to solve the world’s problems and live the life we want for ourselves and our children. And yet at the same khbrknews, with the rapid changes and disruptions, we face a wave of destructive conflict that’s polarizing every facet of life from family to work to community to our world—and paralyzing our ability to work together.
How do we navigate this stormy khbrknews to be able to realize the enormous opportunities we have at hand?
First, we need to be realistic: we can’t end conflict. Nor should we. In fact, we may actually need more conflict, not less—and by that, I mean the healthy conflict that allows us to engage our differences, grow, and change what needs to be changed. The choice we face is not to get rid of conflict but to transform it from destructive fighting into creative, constructive, collaborative negotiation.
So what do we need to transform our conflicts and navigate these tumultuous times?
Read more: The Science of Getting Along
I would suggest we need three things above all: a clear perspective, a way out, and lots of help from others.
Let’s start with perspective. When it comes to conflict, we are often our own worst enemies. The biggest obstacle to getting what I want is not what I think it is. It is not the difficult person on the other side…
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