How To Fight Well with Liane Davey, author of The Good Fight

We Will Get Through This

Confession: I’m not that great at conflict. For WAY too long my motto has been: Why have conflict when you can passively aggressively avoid it in some way? But the truth is, if we’re going to get through this, we need to manage conflict as best we can. Avoid the unnecessary fights; and fight well in the conflicts we have to have to move forward.

That’s why it’s so important to listen to Liane Davey. She is an organizational psychologist who advises leaders on both strategy and team effectiveness. She's distilled her 25 years of experience into her most recent book, The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Your Organization Back on Track.

In our conversation we talk about why we’re biologically wired to avoid conflict (see, it isn’t just me!); the price we pay for accumulating “conflict debt”; the delusion of “picking your battles”; when sweating palms can be helpful; and how to best harness the power of validation and reciprocity.

You can meet Liane at www.LianeDavey.com and follow her on LinkedIn.

This show is brought to you by The Advice Trap, Michael Bungay Stanier’s latest book. You can access a wide range of tools to help #TameYourAdviceMonster at www.TheAdviceTrap.com

If you’d like to spend more time with Michael and people he admires, sign up for The Year of Living Brilliantly. 52 teachers over 52 weeks, each teaching one brilliant insight. Absolutely free.