Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes

Written by Ian Leslie

Narrated by Matthew Lloyd Davies

Drawing on advice from the world’s leading experts on conflict and communication—from relationship scientists to hostage negotiators to diplomats—Ian Leslie, a columnist for the New Statesman, shows us how to transform the heat of conflict, disagreement and argument into the light of insight, creativity and connection, in a book with vital lessons for the home, workplace, and public arena.

For most people, conflict triggers a fight or flight response. Disagreeing productively is a hard skill for which neither evolution or society has equipped us. It’s a skill we urgently need to acquire; otherwise, our increasingly vociferous disagreements are destined to tear us apart. Productive disagreement is a way of thinking, perhaps the best one we have. It makes us smarter and more creative, and it can even bring us closer together. It’s critical to the success of any shared enterprise, from a marriage, to a business, to a democracy. Isn’t it time we gave more thought to how to do it well?

In an increasingly polarized world, our only chance for coming together and moving forward is to learn from those who have mastered the art and science of disagreement. In this book, we’ll learn from experts who are highly skilled at getting the most out of highly charged encounters: interrogators, cops, divorce mediators, therapists, diplomats, psychologists. These professionals know how to get something valuable – information, insight, ideas—from the toughest, most antagonistic conversations. They are brilliant communicators: masters at shaping the conversation beneath the conversation. They know how to turn the heat of conflict into the light of creativity, connection, and insight. 

In this much-need book, Ian Leslie explores what happens to us when we argue, why disagreement makes us stressed, and why we get angry. He explains why we urgently need to transform the way we think about conflict and how having better disagreements can make us more successful. By drawing together the lessons he learns from different experts, he proposes a series of clear principles that we can all use to make our most difficult dialogues more productive—and our increasingly acrimonious world a better place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Feb 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780063034068

Ian Leslie

Ian Leslie is the author of two acclaimed books on human behaviour: Born Liars: Why We Can’t Live Without Deceit and Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It (“Rich with insight and answers”, San Francisco Book Review). He is a regular contributor to the New Statesman, the Economist/1843,  the Guardian, and the Financial Times.

Reviews for Conflicted

[reenum_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.