The Courage Playbook

5Step Five: Playsets for CourCom Conflicts

“Anger is an acid that does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

—Mark Twain¹

We know about external conflicts and protracted interpersonal and emotional clashes. Like boxing, this painful form of social failure usually requires the consent and complicity of the parties—what the Arbinger Institute aptly calls collusion.² Each mysteriously commits to doing what we hate, decry, and condemn—making war on each other. It's amusing, observed historians Will and Ariel Durant, that we passionately demand world peace and just as passionately fight with our partners and can't live with our relatives, neighbors, and coworkers. Like monkeys that grab a fistful of walnuts in a hole but then can't withdraw the prize, we're familiar with conflicts but know very little about how to solve them.

Hence, our second group of CourCom Conflict Plays.

Over the years, when speaking about conflict, I've been asked about assertive and critical communication. Bella Cruz faced a toxic boss and had taken an assertive communication class to establish the validity of her voice. She employed it with that manager, whose treatment of her then worsened. She wondered why. Bella and I found two big differences between assertive and Courageous Communication.

• Assertive communication offered us groundbreaking tools to confirm the legitimacy of each person's voice and their right to be heard. This was a logical response for ...