'The absence of healthy conflict is a large part of why people will leave jobs, because it's not where the growth happens.'
How do you feel about hard conversations at work?
Our approaches to conflict are often less than smart. Whether your tendency is towards avoidance or aggression, unless you're actively rejecting 'enforced harmony' for an environment in which people are able to disagree well, you're not getting the best out of your individuals or your organization. (Plus, given that most people are so bad at it, mastering hard conversations is the ultimate leadership edge.)
Alice Driscoll and Louise van Haarst, co-authors of Smart Conflict: How to Have Hard Conversations at Work, are experts at diagnosing the wide range of conflict styles and helping leaders make better decisions about how they adjust their approach for the situation and the person in front of them.
But could they walk the talk when it came to the ultimate stress test: writing a book together for the first time? Spoiler alert: yes. But what they discovered in the process will be gold to anyone considering a co-authored project.