Conflict Resilience Book Summary - Conflict Resilience Book explained in key points

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Conflict Resilience summary

Name: Conflict Resilience
Author: Robert Bordone, Joel Salinas

Robert Bordone, Joel Salinas

Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up Or Giving in

18 mins

Brief summary

Conflict Resilience examines strategies for effectively navigating personal and professional disputes, highlighting techniques to enhance resilience. Bordone and Salinas provide actionable insights into transforming conflict into a constructive force for growth and collaboration.

Topics

Resolving Conflict Leadership Negotiations

Table of Contents

Conflict Resilience
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What’s in it for me? Discover a science-based approach to navigating conflict, and find more common ground in an increasingly polarized world.

If you'll do almost anything to avoid conflict with people in your life, or those who hold vastly different viewpoints from your own, you aren’t alone. But the costs of this avoidance are everywhere – from families estranged across political divides, to workplaces full of festering resentment, and career opportunities left unpursued.

At the national and international level, political and religious divides are increasingly polarizing communities, countries – sometimes entire regions, like in the case of Brexit. From the personal to the political, more and more people are opting out of the difficult work of finding common ground, and the consequences are mounting.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. This Blink introduces a science-backed framework for engaging with conflicts, even the big ones, and making space for common ground. This doesn’t mean giving up on your own values or morals, either, but instead choosing to engage and make room for different viewpoints with curiosity and openness.

The ripple effects of this mindset shift are powerful. It fosters more inclusive families, workplaces, and communities—and by every measure, greater diversity leads to more resilient, stable, and equitable societies.

Changing your attitude won’t happen overnight, but it is incredibly worthwhile. Learning to navigate disagreement with intention can strengthen your relationships, expand your opportunities, and even help mend the divides that so often keep us speaking past one another – instead of with one another – for a better, more connected future.

It starts with you

Most of us will never find ourselves negotiating peace deals in war zones – but that doesn’t mean conflict doesn’t touch our daily lives. Conflict within relationships, business partnerships, families, schools, and workplaces can eat up an outsized amount of our time and energy, and can feel overwhelming at times.

It’s tempting to avoid it altogether. Maybe you bite your tongue when your uncle launches into a tirade about immigration over Thanksgiving dinner, or steer clear of group projects with the colleague who turns every disagreement into office drama. But conflict doesn’t stay isolated in obvious places – it shows up in marriages, parent-child relationships, and extended families, too. And avoiding the discomfort it brings can lead to festering resentment and lasting emotional damage.

As difficult as it is, learning to face conflict head-on can bring enormous benefits. Developing the ability to recognize, sit with, and process conflict is a skill – and like any skill, it starts with understanding where you are now, and what it will take to build the capacity for thoughtful, constructive engagement.

That journey begins with a difficult truth: you're not as rational as you think. None of us are. While we like to believe our opinions are grounded in facts, neuroscience reveals that our beliefs often come first – and we find facts to support them later. Acknowledging that emotions shape many of your values can loosen the belief that your perspective is fixed or universal. And that openness makes room for others’ views to coexist with your own.

Next, understand that you have more than 100 billion neurons in your brain devoted just to detecting signs of impending harm. It isn’t their job to know the difference between a confrontation with your boss and an oncoming storm: they fire the minute they detect potential danger. This protects you by releasing adrenaline, cortisol, and other hormones to help you survive. Great for early humans facing predators; not so great when you're just navigating an awkward meeting.

To develop your skills in engaging with conflict, you need to first understand your current capacity. Are you someone who detects conflict in almost every interaction or situation, or one who thinks even the highest-stakes confrontation is just another day at the office? Most of us fall somewhere in between, so take a non-judgmental inventory of where you think your own conflict detection skills are now.

Beyond your detection skills, you’ll also need to know how well you currently tolerate the stress of conflict. Some people thrive in disagreement; others shut down quickly. Again, you're likely somewhere in the middle. By understanding both how you perceive conflict and how you tolerate it, you’ll be better equipped to develop the resilience needed to navigate it with clarity, empathy, and intention.

Going deeper, with chair work

As you deepen your awareness of your ability to detect conflict – and your capacity to hold space for it – you’ll begin to spot areas where growth is possible. These might include long-simmering tensions in a friendship or relationship, or a more immediate challenge at work that requires a difficult conversation you've been avoiding.

To begin shifting your approach, choose one area of conflict you’d like to work on. It doesn’t have to be the most urgent or overwhelming – just a situation where you feel stuck. Then, let yourself explore the feelings that you’re having around this situation. It’s likely you’ll identify several feelings at once, sometimes contradictory. That’s normal.

Deep listening and the Five F’s

Becoming more mindful of your own emotions is key to overcoming the biggest barrier to conflict resilience: your own brain. Remember those 100 billion neurons in your brain dedicated to detecting signs of danger? They can trigger the sympathetic nervous system before you’re even aware that it is happening. This is the system that protects us from danger by triggering the Five “F” responses in dangerous situations: fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or fester.

Most people tend to rely on one dominant response. So if you run from conflict, then flight is your main strategy. If you let conflict simmer, then you prefer fester. If you rush in to please people, you fawn, and if you escalate before even thinking about it, then fight is your thing. The rest will freeze, incapable of doing anything until the danger has passed and they can soften again.

Setting the table

In the journey so far, you’ve done some mirror work, to understand your own conflict skills and tolerance without judgement. You’ve also encountered chair work, embodying the process of exploring the complexity of your own perspectives in difficult conflicts or conversations. You’ve also learned how taking a pause and shifting from reaction to active listening can interrupt the fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or fester response – making it easier to stay grounded and connected in the moment.

The next step is putting it all into practice. But here’s a caveat: just trying something different in any high-conflict situation is going to feel awkward at first, especially with people you are close to. All relationships have histories, and both sides may feel stuck. Don’t interpret awkward silences or puzzled expressions as signs of failure, but change.

What’s the alternative?

At every stage of conflict engagement, there’s one final insight that can help you approach even the most complex negotiations with greater confidence and less stress, and that’s understanding your best alternative to a negotiated agreement – often referred to as your BATNA. In simple terms, it means knowing what you’ll do if you can’t reach an agreement.

So before asking your boss for a raise, for instance, and going in with a specific number in mind, take time to consider some alternatives. That way, instead of walking away when the boss says, “Sorry, I just can’t pay more in this economy,” you can pivot to more productive ground.

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What is Conflict Resilience about?

Conflict Resilience (2025) blends deep expertise in conflict negotiation with neuroscientific insight to explore why conflict is so deeply rooted in both human biology and modern society. Drawing on this understanding, it presents a proven framework for engaging with conflict in a more constructive and productive way.

Who should read Conflict Resilience?

Anyone feeling stuck in ongoing disagreements with family, friends, or neighbors and looking for a way forward
Conflict avoiders who want to build the confidence and skills to engage in difficult conversations
Those seeking practical tools to resolve deep, entrenched differences at home, at work, or in their community

About the Author

Robert Bordone is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Law School, and served for more than two decades as the Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor of Law, as well as the director and founder of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. He is also Founder and Principal of The Cambridge Negotiation Institute, and has coauthored two previous books, Designing Systems and Processes for Managing Disputes and The Handbook of Dispute Resolution.

Joel Salinas is a behavioral neurologist, researcher, speaker, and author with a focus on how social relationships and environmental factors shape brain health and overall well-being. He is a clinical professor of neurology and formerly held the position of Lulu P. and David J. Levidow Assistant Professor of Neurology at NYU. Salinas has published more than forty peer-reviewed articles in his field and is the author of the bestselling book Mirror Touch, which explores empathy and its role in complex human interactions.

Categories with Conflict Resilience

Management & Leadership Personal Development Communication Skills

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