Conflict Without Casualties: A Field Guide for Leading With Compassionate Accountability
I (Nate) have always had a problem with the notion of conflict reduction, management, or mediation. All of these concepts imply that conflict is something to be lessened or eradicated, as if it’s fundamentally a bad thing. I’m not surprised that many people would view conflict this way. Look around: Divisive political rhetoric, religious polarization, and global ideological warfare. Everywhere you look, conflict is generating casualties. Negative conflict, manifested as workplace drama, costs the US economy over $350 billion per year in the currency of broken relationships, dysfunctional teams, morale and engagement problems, and failure to thrive.
I believe that the misuse of conflict energy is the biggest crisis facing our planet and that we haven’t even begun to harness the creative potential of conflict. When people embrace the fullest meaning of compassion as a process of “struggling with” others in creative conflict, they can transform lives, companies, and the world.
You can engage in conflict without casualties. My colleagues and I have developed a model and suite of tools to transform the energy of conflict into a creative force. These tools allow people to stop fearing conflict and start leaning into conflict for positive results.
From Fortune 500 executives to pastors of the smallest rural churches, we have made a profound difference in how people walk bravely into the battle field of conflict while preserving the dignity of all involved.
Transformative communication involves the ability to engage in positive conflict, with compassion, to achieve results that benefit the greatest number of people. Conflict without Casualties is a detailed, actionable, down-to-earth manual for how to practice compassionate accountability. If you are tired of the negative drain of drama in your workplace and want a set of tools for leading yourself and others out of drama, this book is for you.
In the book, we invite readers into an incisive exploration of the dynamics, motives, behaviors, costs and consequences of negative conflict through the lens of Karman’s Drama Triangle. A day in the life of persons working at “Drama Corp” exposes the answers to questions like:
- What are the insidious ways drama manifests in the workplace?
- What are the basic principles of gossip?
- What do drama-based cultures look like?
- What happens when people try to help when under the influence of drama?
- Why do people keep acting this way when it hurts themselves and others?
There’s a better way. In the second part of the book we teach readers about the Compassion Cycle, a researched and tested framework for resisting the negative pull of drama, making healthier choices and using positive 
conflict to lead others down a better path.
Conflict without Casualties is packed with user-friendly principles, personal stories, real-life examples and case studies, provocative questions for discussion, and easy-to-follow strategies to begin building your compassionate accountability skill set.
Since any great learning quest involves a solid assessment of your current state, we’ve developed the Drama Resilience Assessment (DRA), an online assessment to gain insight into your drama tendencies and compassion potentials. A code provided in the book to complete one free assessment and receive your results along with a self-study application guide.
Find out more about Nate’s new book here. Connect with Nate on his website.
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Categories Business/Leadership, Employee engagement, Leadership, Managers, Work
