Have a Nice Conflict How to Find Success and Satisfaction in the Most Unlikely Places

From the publishers of the popular Strength Deployment Inventory, Have a Nice Conflict follows one man's fight to rescue his sinking career. Sales manager John Doyle would consider his career a success?he's his company's top revenue driver, and his take-charge attitude gets the job done. However, when he is passed over for promotion?again?after losing two direct reports, who cite his abrasive style as their reason for leaving, John is forced to reassess how he approaches his relationships. With the help of Mac, an expert in the art of Relationship Awareness Theory, John learns the three stages of conflict, and how he reacts in each.

Once John recognizes his own values and trigger points, as well those of other people, he becomes able to better navigate terse situations, express his points in a way that resonates for other people, and even avoid conflict altogether. Equipped with this new understanding of how other people interpret and react to conflict, John soon finds all the relationships in his life?both at work and at home?improving.

• Reveals a practical understanding of how conflict really works
• Shows how to recognize its initial stages of conflict, how to navigate it better to diffuse a situation, and how to understand the values of the other person to better frame your point for them
• Provides guidance for moving beyond conflict to enhance relationships
• Includes a five-step framework (anticipate, prevent, identify, manage, and resolve) and tools for locating conflict triggers in ourselves and others

Anyone can profit from the tools in this book to understand and take control over conflict.

Acknowledgments ix

About the Authors xi

Introduction 1

The Fable 3

Letter from John 199

John’s Notebook 203
A summary of learning

Dr. Mac’s Statement of Philosophy 219
A philosophical approach to learning as written from the perspective of Dr. Mac Wilson

Character Assessment Results 227
SDI assessment results for the characters featured in John’s story

Michael Patterson, Ed.D., is the vice president of business development at Personal Strengths USA and an adjunct professor in the doctoral program at Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Education and Psychology. He began his career as a U.S. Army officer and then spent twenty years in a variety of sales, marketing, and training roles in the pharmaceutical industry.

Kent Mitchell is the vice president of communications for Personal Strengths USA. He is also an award-winning playwright and copywriter, and for nearly ten years, ran an advertising design agency in the Los Angeles area.