Building a Culture of Collaboration: How Managing Conflict Transforms Lives, Organizations and Societies

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Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the capacity to manage it.

We live in an adversarial culture. It’s time to transform our adversarial culture to a more collaborative one. This book makes the case for a more collaborative culture — and shows how each of us can be agents of change en route to bringing such a culture into existence.

We’re having trouble handling conflict. We are experiencing a crisis of divisiveness at all levels of society. Within political spheres, we are deeply polarized. In organizations and businesses, tensions among managers, employees and siloed divisions hamper effectiveness. In schools, teachers increasingly find themselves having to manage emotional and behavior problems in their student. Children and teens themselves have difficulty managing harassment, bullying, and even violence. The inability to manage conflict is single biggest reason for the failure of partnerships and other relationships.

We can do better. But doing better calls for a change in how we think about ourselves and our relationships. It requires that we stop seeing interpersonal, social and political problems as power struggles and start seeing them as opportunities to solve problems together. If you want peace, learn how to resolve conflict. This little book shows you how to do this, and how you can be an agent of cultural change by bringing conflict resolution values into your local spheres of influence.

For more information, contact Mike at michaelmascolo@creatingcommonground.org