Raven's Brain: Handling Conflict in Teams: Divide Or Conquer by Diana Mclain Smith

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Handling Conflict in Teams: Divide Or Conquer by Diana Mclain Smith

In a recent post I mentioned Diana Mclain Smith's new book Divide or Conquer- How Great Teams Turn Conflict Into Strength. Search queries pour in to my blog each day with phrases containing some form of "dealing with" or "handling" conflict. It's good to see folks are interested in learning how to work through confrontations and conflicts, and Diana's new book, released last month (June 2008), will serve as an excellent resource for those looking to handle/deal with/manage/work through conflict and how to grow from these situations.

I already consider Divide or Conquer to be a must-read for CEOs, middle managers and newbies to the business world. There is so much to learn about conflict, confrontations and building strong relationships, and this book is a great place to start.

Diana's ideas on conflict are not only interesting and based in the real world, they will help anyone improve their important business relationships and get more out of them. With Bill Gates recent departure from Microsoft, I found Smith's thoughts on the Gates/Balmer relationship at Microsoft timely and interesting. Comparing their positive relationship to that of the broken, and highly publicized relationship betwen Scully and Jobs from Apple helped show just how critical good relationships are to a company's success. It also highlighted the fact that poor or broken relationships can lead to serious damage to both the organization (external) and it's people (internal).

I always enjoy a little humor with my reads and Smith's book makes for an interesting, smart and easy read with a high return. You'll learn how to develop strong, flexible business relationships and understand how they affect both your own and the organization's success. You'll get ideas on how to reshape your thinking and avoid "framing" people through the practical advice, and you'll learn to how to s-l-o-w down your thinking and assumptions so you can have real, productive conversations.

If you're interested in learning more about how conflict, relationships and teams affect your perfonal/professional success, definitely check out Divide or Conquer- How Great Teams Turn Conflict Into Strength.

Here are some links with more about author Diana Smith and her new book Divide or Conquer- How Great Teams Turn Conflict Into Strength: