Author Talks: How the best leaders cool down when conflict heats up

Does conflict often feel like a zero-sum game? Do you feel unheard or unseen when disagreements arise? People differ widely in the way they process and handle hard conversations, but more and more of us are electing to avoid them, according to Bob Bordone, senior fellow at Harvard Law School, founder of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program, and cofounder of the Cambridge Negotiation Institute. In this edition of Author Talks, Bordone talks with McKinsey Global Publishing’s Lucia Rahilly about what’s at stake when we sidestep dissent, what happens in your brain when strife starts to surface, and how all of us can learn to become more comfortable with conflict—a vital precondition to navigating to consensus successfully. Bordone’s book Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In (Harper Business/Harper Collins Publishers, Winter 2025) is coauthored with behavioral neurologist Joel Salinas.

An edited version of the conversation follows.

Why this book, and why now?

The idea for this book started about seven years ago. It stemmed from my observations of teaching skills in negotiation, conflict, and difficult conversations to Harvard Law School students. Despite the skills I taught them, students were not engaging in hard conversations, either with each other or in the classroom.

Classrooms were becoming more dull, and along with that, polarization was increasing in our society and our families. It dawned on me that people didn’t have much capacity or even the mindset for conflict, which is separate from whether people have the skills to address it.

My coauthor, Joel Salinas, and I felt that combining the idea of conflict resilience, or how we sit with the discomfort of disagreement, as well as the brain science, was well-timed. We also hoped the book could make a unique contribution at an individual and a societal level.

Do you think increasing polarization correlates with conflict avoidance?

The more we are in our cocoon of comfort, the easier it is to tell cartoonlike stories about people with whom we disagree, which contributes to polarization.

And the more we stay in our in-group, the higher the cost of reaching across the transept to engage with the other side, for at least two reasons. First, the more we see others as extreme, the less likely we are to think that there’s anything we have in common. Second, as a consequence of avoidance and polarization, when we do decide to speak with people on the other side, people on our side can often view it as an act of betrayal or a concession. These perceptions fuel each other in ways that warrant consciousness and mindfulness.

What’s new about conflict resilience—versus, for example, conflict resolution?

We purposefully use the words “conflict resilience” instead of “conflict resolution.” We think they’re very different terms. Conflict resilience is the mindset or the capacity to sit with the discomfort of our disagreements with each other, quite apart from whatever skills might be involved.

Conflict resolution involves trying to come up with some solution or agreement to manage a conflict. It involves the skills of getting to “yes” through negotiation, problem-solving, consensus-building, or dialogue.

Conflict resolution skills don’t matter without conflict resilience, which is a prerequisite to conflict resolution and negotiation. For example, I could know how to make a really great French meal. Yet if I can’t sit in the kitchen because it’s too hot for me, there will be no French meal.

What are the inner mechanics of conflict? How does it affect our brains?

Typically, one thinks about two Fs: fight or flight. We write about five mechanics of conflict: fight, flight, fester, fawn, or freeze.

Fester is a variation of flight. We leave the situation but share it with our friends and family, and it continues. Fawn involves mollifying someone who is upset, such as saying, “I’m so sorry, oh my gosh, let me fix it.” Freeze involves pausing and saying, “I don’t know what to say right now.”

From a brain science perspective, those mechanics are highly adaptive. The challenge is that for most conflicts, at least the ones that we cover in our book—whether it’s a business strategy, a political difference, or a vacation destination decision—we remain in a relationship with the other side. And even if we don’t, we have to figure out how to live in this country together.

While our immediate brain responses are less helpful, our brains are retrainable. The brain’s neuroplasticity enables us to lower “limbic irritability” [emotional reaction to negative stimuli], a term we refer to in our book. Pausing and completing breathing exercises enables us to lower limbic irritability.

We can shorten the amount of time the brain has from that automatic [emotional] response to something more cognitive and useful. The more we do that, the more the neural pathway of automatic response starts to change, due to neuroplasticity.

Initially, I approached this topic from a conflict management expert perspective, without the neuroscience component. Before writing this book, I would have said, “Your brain is your brain. You can’t do anything about it.” But that’s actually not true, and that’s what I found very fascinating.

Neuroplasticity enables us to retrain those neural pathways by being more mindful. That aspect is a sign of hope for even the person who feels most unskilled and afraid of conflict.

Has this work affected your own comfort with conflict?

I grew up highly sensitive to making other people happy, and I still like to make others happy. Yet I have profoundly shifted.

I can offer a fun business example. I conduct a number of executive workshops for Harvard, where we agreed to a specific fee for a certain number of people. Before submitting my invoice, I reviewed the contracts and thought, “There are more people in this course.”

I decided to say, “Hey, we agreed to this maximum and this amount, but you actually enrolled this amount. I wonder if we can make a proportional increase.” Being reasonable, the team agreed to the increase.

Six or seven years ago, I would have thought that speaking about the discrepancy was a bridge too far. In some ways, leaning into conflict and becoming more conflict-positive is a gift. Sometimes you get a yes, but a no isn’t bad. The same is true in a personal relationship. That first no means that all the other yeses have some meaning. I wouldn’t say I’m conflict-seeking, but I’m conflict-positive. I’ve definitely changed.

Wait, you’re a lawyer. Isn’t your job navigating conflict?

There is research related to the difference between self-agency and agency on behalf of others. That observation is partially what led me to think about the idea of conflict resilience.

When working with law students and placing them in a simulation, you see them behave quite assertively. Sometimes you must work more on their empathy or listening skills. When you take them out of that simulated context, they’re fleeing or saying, “Conflict is really uncomfortable.” Then you realize that spending most of your time on the skills is a mistake.

Many times, people know what to say, but they just can’t say it as themselves. When I’m coaching, I often say, “Do you know somebody who’s good at this whatever assertion task?” They’ll say, “Oh yeah, my sister.” I say, “OK, I would like to see how your sister does it.” If they do it skillfully, spending any more time giving them the words is not a good use of our time, because they know the words. They just can’t do it themselves.

What are some common barriers to self-agency?

Self-evaluation. Self-evaluation comes in various forms. “Asking for this is selfish. I’m not deserving. I’m not certain I’m right.” I find this sentiment particularly in high-performing people who are taught throughout life to have the right answer. But now they’re not sure that this is the right answer. So they’re not going to say it until they’re sure.

Families of origin. Another domain is our families of origin—the culture in which we were brought up. Regrettably, there are costs.

Gender dynamics. Gender dynamics exist at times. If you look at research on negotiation outcomes with women and men on self-representation, there is almost no difference in outcomes. But in self-agency, there often are differences in outcomes. From research, we know that there’s a backlash effect. If women assert themselves in the same way men do, they will be punished. It’s not all up to you. There could be cultural, racial, or other external reasons.

Lack of good models of assertiveness. Lastly, there are fewer good models of people being effectively assertive. We seem to think that assertion is some version of banging on a table, saying “take it or leave it,” and being a bully.

This [perception of assertion] lacks skill and is not conflict-resilient, because it suggests no capacity for sitting with disagreement and discomfort. That’s a bad model. If we don’t have good models of assertiveness, it will be harder to achieve.

OK, suppose I want to rethink my relationship to conflict. Where should I start?

A key lesson of our book is that you start with yourself. We imagine many people will read our book because they’re thinking of their annoying boss, direct report, or brother-in-law.

The book will definitely help you with these relationships, but you can start with yourself and do some work on naming. We have a three-part framework:

1. Naming your own internal conflicts. This first part asks, “What are the reasons why I really want to raise this?” or “Why is it important to raise it?” and “What are the reasons why I don’t want to avoid it, or I think it’s not worth it?”

   How do I give each side agency or voice, if there might be more than two, three, four, five, or six sides? In the book, we write about “chair work.” For example, people name three different sides of themselves and set up three chairs, each representing a different side. They physically move the chairs and give voice to each side of themselves. Part of the reason that exercise is important is that it can be used as the opening for a difficult conversation. For example, one could raise a certain issue by saying, “There’s a side of me that is unsure whether I should bring this up and worries it’ll go poorly. And it feels like you might be surprised or even upset. And there’s another side of me that feels like it is important, and our working together matters. And I want both of us to have the best shot at success that we can.”

2. Exploring conflict. This part involves combining various skills and cultivating curiosity.
3. Committing to solving the problem. This part involves decision-making.

What about the next step—actually broaching conflict?

The second part is what we call “explore.” It involves a combination of very good listening, deep listening, effective assertion work, and framing of the conversation. We try to spend a disproportionate amount of our time [on this step], because it’s very important for you to cultivate curiosity.

If you’re engaging in performative skills but you’re not actually curious, then those skills will not be received well. In part, we become curious by seeing the other side of a conversation, even if we don’t solve the problem. Problem-solving is a core principle of the book, but it does not have to be a prerequisite to being conflict-resilient.

There are benefits other than problem-solving, but that means you have to see those benefits. We draw on the work of Judson Brewer [professor of psychiatry and human behavior, Brown University], on what he calls the “bigger, better offer” [BBO]. If you don’t see that BBO, you’re not going to do it.

Yet there is a BBO. The BBO might be a more authentic relationship because my relationship with you is more real if I bring all sides of myself instead of only the side you want to see. Perhaps the BBO is preventing demonization [of the other side]. Maybe we don’t necessarily find a way to work well on this issue. Yet through our hard work, I’ve come to see you as a three-dimensional person, which allows us to work in other domains.

The third part of the work, “commit,” does two broad things. On any given issue, it helps us decide whether we should commit and reach an agreement or solve a problem.

Alternatively, if we’re not able to do that, how do we decide whether we should continue having these kinds of conversations? Lastly, even if we’re not going to have those conversations, how do we decide whether we should stay in the relationship at all?

As much as discomfort and conflict resilience are important, we want to really distinguish that from subjecting yourself to harm, trauma, or abuse. That’s an important distinction we make in the last part of the book.

We try to provide some diagnostic questions related to trauma and abuse to help people decide, “No, this is not just, ‘I'm uncomfortable because I’ve never done this before. This is actually harmful.’” That distinction can help them decide whether to stay or go and to consider related process norms.

You advocate for deep listening. How is that different from active listening?

From our perspective, the distinction between deep listening and active listening is less about the behaviors and more about the mindset. There is a set of behaviors in active listening that most of us have some familiarity with.

We might call it paraphrasing or reflecting the main points. We might call it asking open-ended questions, reflecting emotions, or using body language that shows real attention. We agree on all of that.

The deep listening component is the hard work of getting to a place of genuine curiosity about something that the other person says or believes. That work can be very tough in many situations where people are certain that they are right and that others are wrong.

If you’re pretty sure the Earth is round and the other person is pretty sure it’s flat, what can you become curious about? And if you’re not curious and you just do the active-listening “moves,” it will feel performative.

What can you get curious about? Sometimes you can get curious about how other people came to see Earth that way. What do they think of people who think the world is round? How could we have a better conversation on topics that seem so fundamentally opposed? Those ideas come from a place of interest. How do we cultivate and sustain the curiosity?

When my Harvard Law School students or my Georgetown students are really stuck, I’ll say something like, “Pretend the final exam is about deeply understanding how this person thinks about _________. And if you don’t do this, you will fail the exam. You’ll have to retake the class, and you’re not going to get your diploma.” Suddenly, my students become super curious.

What’s wrong with prioritizing facts over feelings when navigating conflict?

Often in a conflict situation, the heart of what is causing the conflict is not mostly or even primarily about the facts. It is about feelings. It is about someone who maybe feels unheard, not listened to, and unseen. Maybe it’s about something that happened 15 years ago.

The reason that we’re having a conflict about the facts is that we’re used to it. It doesn’t make us vulnerable. We know how to do that. But somehow, if we could get to the conversation about the deeper story, meaning, and feelings, we often find that the facts do not disappear.

I wouldn’t want to be misheard as saying, “Information, fact, science don’t matter.” Yet the hyperfocus and the idea that feelings get in the way miss so much of the value that outside advisers, especially, can bring to a problem.

I work in lots of different professional contexts, including with many lawyers and business people, but also with doctors. Doctors can be a skeptical and tough group at times. Lawyers look at a problem and almost immediately go to the solution. But doctors have an important intermediary step, which is diagnosis. And then they go to a solution.

In conflict areas, we need to be more diagnostic than just moving toward a solution. We need to be understanding, to ask questions such as, what is really driving this? Is the solution an interpersonal one? Is it a structural one? Is it both? Is there low trust? Is it a bad meeting structure? Whatever it is, we can address it.

But if we just say, “You’ve been fighting. The solution: Take a conflict skills class with Bob.” That could be right, but it could be completely wrong. Maybe they have low skills, or they could be highly skilled. But we need to do some diagnostic work first.

How can we increase conflict resilience at scale—in the workplace, for instance?

Suppose a series of really bothersome things is occurring at work. You could do something that most people in your workplace may not—bring up an idea that you wouldn’t have brought up in the past. For example, “I know a lot of workplaces once a month have beer and snacks on a Friday afternoon. I wonder: What would people think of that?”

You’re not bringing up the deepest issue, which may be a toxic boss or the people who undermine everything. But for someone who’s not good at bringing anything up, this is a chance to practice. Depending on your issue, you can find little places to stretch. Perhaps your workplace suddenly begins serving nachos on Fridays. Or they say no, and you’re still alive. Stretching is good because it starts to rewire the idea that just raising an issue doesn’t rise to the cataclysmic level that you might feel.

What surprised you most when researching or writing this book?

I wrote this book with a brain scientist, and it was born of Joel’s and my personal friendship and shared interest. I gained a greater ability to explain the causes of so many behavioral situations that I noticed in my work. I didn’t think there would be as much in the brain science domain that could inform these situations.

The difference in the way we handle and process conflict was very surprising. We write about something called “conflict tolerance.” I have a much higher conflict tolerance than Joel does. Sometimes, we would disagree, and I would just move to the next meeting. Three days later, I’d find out that he had three sleepless nights and was wondering whether the book was going to happen.

I’d say, “Why do you do this? That was fun: I kind of enjoyed that.” It was surprising to see the subject matter that we were writing about arise in our own relationship.

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