Preface

The world is in turmoil. Our homes, our workplaces, our communities, and certainly our politics are riddled with strife. Conflict is ubiquitous. Political differences threaten family relationships, family conflicts undermine focus at work, and job-related struggles threaten organizational performance while also exacerbating problems at home. These challenges are not new, but the strains on interpersonal and societal relationships in all directions seem to be increasing. In this day and age, perhaps no topic is more important than knowing how to heal what is breaking and how to maintain connection when people are pulling apart.

Corporate leaders recognize both the challenge and the need. The 2013 Executive Coaching Survey published by Stanford University reveals that CEOs feel a greater need to improve their conflict management skills than skills of any other type. Partners who are struggling with each other and parents who feel challenged by their children likely would identify the same need. Furthermore, people in countries the world over yearn for governmental leaders to find ways to work more effectively with rivals for the good of their countries. Increasing political polarization leaves citizens exasperated.

Which begs this question: Why does there remain so much confusion around dealing with conflict when there is so much need?

The answer is that in conflict, as in magic, the real action occurs where people are not looking. For example, we assume that people in conflict want solutions. However, this is only partially true. Parents of belligerent children do want the belligerence to end, those who work for tyrannical managers want an end to the tyranny, and citizens of weakened nations certainly want to be treated with respect. Notice, however, that parties in conflict all wait on the same solution: they wait for the other party to change. Should we be surprised, then, when conflicts linger and problems remain?

It turns out that people in conflict value something else more highly than they value solutions. The Anatomy of Peace shows what this is and demonstrates how conflicts at home, conflicts at work, and conflicts in the world stem from the same root cause. The book shows how we systematically misunderstand that cause and unwittingly perpetuate the very problems we think we are trying to solve. Most importantly, it presents proven methodologies for bringing people together and resolving conflicts in fundamental and lasting ways.

The first edition of the book was published in 2006. Since then, it has been printed in nearly thirty languages and has become a perennial bestseller in the conflict resolution space. Year after year for fourteen years, The Anatomy of Peace has been one of the top-selling conflict resolution books in the world. Few books in history have performed so strongly in their categories over such a long time. This expanded third edition includes resources at the end of the book to give people additional help in applying the concepts. These resources include diagrams and discussions that further explain some of the book’s approaches, current research about key ideas, and how the transformation approach in the book relates to Arbinger’s comprehensive mindset-change process with organizations.

The Anatomy of Peace has been instrumental in breaking down silos in organizations, transforming law enforcement methodologies and results, providing the framework for whole college conflict curriculums, healing labor-management rifts, and saving marriages and other relationships. Business and governmental leaders, parents, professors, and conflict professionals alike use the book as a guide for finding solutions to their most challenging problems.

The book itself unfolds as a story. Yusuf al-Falah, an Arab, and Avi Rozen, a Jew, each lost his father at the hands of the other’s ethnic cousins. The Anatomy of Peace is the story of how they came together, how they help others come together, and how we too can find our way out of the struggles that weigh us down.

Those who have read our earlier book, Leadership and Self-Deception, will recognize one of the key characters from that book, Lou Herbert, as The Anatomy of Peace takes the reader back in time to when Lou and his wife, Carol, first learned the ideas that transformed both Lou’s company and their family.

Although some of the stories in this book were inspired by actual events, no character or organization described in this book represents any specific person or organization. In many respects, these characters are each of us. They share our strengths and our weaknesses, our aspirations and our despair. They are seeking solutions to problems that weigh us down. They are us, and we are them. So their lessons offer us hope.

Hope? Yes. Because our problems, as theirs, are not what they seem. This is at once our challenge and our opportunity.