About the book

 

“We, as a human race, have neither developed a knowledge base nor culture to successfully manage conflict.”

It is well observed and documented that negative conflict has detrimental effects on relationships, psychological and physiological health, quality of performance, motivation and efficiency, as well as wellbeing in general.

Despite this general recognition of the impact of conflict, we as a human race have neither developed a knowledge base nor culture to successfully manage conflict. The most common responses to conflict are ending communication and ignoring conflict or even violence, which in turn only makes conflict worse. On top of that, the common perception of the source of conflict is that it is the other person’s fault; that he or she is mean, crazy, egotistical, etc.
Even less than knowledge of how to deal with conflict, have people developed the knowledge base and culture for communication wellness and standards for quality communication. There are many programs, books, training courses, etc., dealing with these issues, but neither organizations nor society in general have adopted the culture of communication wellness.

This does not mean that human beings in general do not appreciate the experience of high-quality communication, but we do not have appropriate tools nor understanding of communication dynamics nor general awareness or standards of a high level of communication nor mechanisms for its reparation when it deteriorates.

This book proposes a new approach to perceiving, assessing, managing and repairing the quality of communication and offers some practical tools.