Review: How to Get Along with Anyone

April 14, 2025April 13, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Cover image of "How to Get Along with Anyone" by John Eliot and Jim Guinn

How to Get Along with Anyone, John Eliot and Jim Guinn. Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 9781668033074) 2025.

Summary: An approach to conflict resolution based on the five ways people respond to conflict.

156. The number of hours a salaried employee in the United States spends, on average, engaged in moderate to intense workplace conflict that is reported to adversely impact job performance. That adds up to essentially one month of work per year per person. (p. xiv)

Productivity. Job satisfaction. Employee retention. All of these measures and more are impacted by unresolved workplace conflicts. Conversely, effective conflict resolution affirms the value of people, and results in greater organizational effectiveness.

But the workplace isn’t the only place where effective conflict resolution is needed. Unresolved conflict shreds families, undermines voluntary associations and renders toxic our political processes. Knowing how to get along with anyone is a pretty important skill, yet less than 40 percent of full-time employees receive any form of conflict resolution training.

John Eliot and Jim Guinn have worked with an extensive variety of organizations in conflict resolution training and conflict mediation. This book distills the wisdom they’ve gained from that work and the core of the resources they offer. The key idea of the book is that it is crucial to understand the five ways people respond to conflict, and to base one’s actions in resolving conflict on understanding a person’s pattern of responding to conflict. The first section of the book lays the groundwork of good conflict resolution processes while the second focuses on the five conflict response patterns.

First of all, good conflict resolution begins with identifying the three types or triggers of conflict: task, process, and relational. Each of us are triggered more by one of these. The authors offer a trigger analysis process to understand what is triggering conflict. Second, it is vital to predict behavior by identifying a person’s “Go-To Conflict Personality Style.” Specifically, there are five styles: Avoider, Competitor, Analyzer, Collaborator, and Accommodator. For each, they outline strengths, weaknesses ideal conflict scenarios, main MO’s, nicknames, best and worst teammates. However, no conflict style is necessarily better or worse.

Third, after understanding triggers and conflict styles, is getting to a persons underlying interest. Active listening is critical and they offer specific suggestions how to do this. Fourth, it is often necessary to defuse emotion in conflict situations. The authors describe ways to do this through lowered voices, validation, detours, e-mail drafts, and relationship investment. Finally, the authors tie it all together with Matt Damon’s axiom from Rounders: “The key to the game is playing the man, not the cards.” In conflict, we often try to make better arguments, solve problems, and strategize. Rather than playing these cards, we need to play the player, building rapport, summoning their motivations and using momentum to build wins together.

Then the second section of the book takes a deep dive into each conflict style. The authors offer specific techniques for conflict resolution for each style. Throughout, they illustrate these methods with stories from their consulting work. For example, they describe how a competitor’s ultimatum, walking away from a deal, was turned into a five year fleet purchase agreement. In addition to working with a person’s conflict style, it is important to understand one’s own “go-to.” If you can’t figure this out from the descriptions, you can go to The Conflict Docs website and take an assessment (for $25.00).

In conclusion, I found the book to be very helpful. For example, understanding one’s own triggers and “go to” style seems critical. Likewise, the “play the player” insight, I thought, was gold. I can’t enumerate how many conflicts went sideways in my own life because I was oblivious to this insight. However, I think it can be a challenge to keep all the techniques straight, so keep this book handy.

One concern I have is the risk of using the techniques in this book manipulatively. So much hinges on one’s character, it seems. The authors show they care for people and want individuals and organizations to flourish. But I also have known clever manipulators who negotiate their way through conflict, making others feel good while acting only in their own interests. It’s never a good approach to build long-term relationships where trust is important. But some don’t care about the long term.

However, that doesn’t detract from the value of this book. Few people want to be at odds with each other. Most want to work productively. Learning to resolve conflict strengthens relationships, and enhances productivity and organizational effectiveness. Learning how to get along with anyone is a good thing.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

Review: Resolving Conflict

March 17, 2017March 17, 2017 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Resolving Conflict, Lou Priolo. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2016.

Summary: A practical guidebook to the biblical prerequisites and principles of resolving conflicts between Christians both in home and church contexts.

It might be said that wherever two or more are gathered there is conflict. It is part of the human condition and just because one is a follower of Christ does not mean you can escape conflict. We can try to avoid it, or we can do it very badly. Lou Priolo argues there is a better way and that is to do it biblically, which offers the potential of making peace with each other and going deeper in shared community together.

Priolo begins by outlining four biblical prerequisites to conflict resolution: humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance. He devotes a chapter to each, surveying the scriptures that speak of these qualities. Priolo argues that these chapters are actually the most important of the book. The last, loving forbearance, is especially important where sin is not at the root of the conflict. People may just be different from each other and sometimes learning to bear with and even begin to delight in those differences can circumvent many conflicts.

At the same time, that is not always possible, so how does one, embracing the four prerequisites, resolve conflict? The next ten chapters get very practical with the “how” of conflict resolution. He begins by distinguishing three kinds of conflict: those over differentness, those over sinfulness, and those over righteousness (where we disagree about what is right). He explores how love communicates, how we respond to reproof, the heart motives behind conflict, ways we respond unbiblically to conflict, good questions we can ask to resolve conflict, how far to go in a conflict, and the importance of doing all we can insofar as it depends on us to resolve conflict.

In addition to the prerequisites, this book assumes three things about the reader. One is that you are really serious about resolving conflict, serious enough to taking a hard look at your own contribution to a conflict, to face the ways you have sinned against another, and to be willing to take personal steps to change. Second is that you really want your life to be shaped in detail by the teaching of scripture regarding conflict, as well as in other matters. Every chapter includes detailed biblical material and Priolo wants to call things, particularly our sins, according to what scripture says. Finally, this book assumes you are willing to do some hard work, first in self reflection through checklists and journalling exercises, and then in conversation with another.

For those with familiarity with various forms of Christian counselling, Priolo is a disciple of Jay Adams. The book reflects a rigorous Reformed perspective including frequent quotes of one of the best of the Reformers, Richard Baxter, and in marriage relationships assumes a complementarian perspective, though not aggressively advancing this. One need not share these perspectives to benefit from the counsel and exercises Priolo provides. His discussion of the prerequisites for resolving conflict and the exercises that prompt self-reflection would seem helpful regardless one’s theological persuasion.

The style is highly readable and one gets a clear sense of the author’s voice. It may not be the reader’s and the author encourages people to put things in their own words, not just mimic his. All told, this is a useful resource for conflicts in homes, and in the church.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Peace Catalysts: Resolving Conflict in Our Families, Organizations and Communities

December 31, 2014December 31, 2014 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Peace Catalysts: Resolving Conflict in Our Families, Organizations and Communities by Rick Love
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.” So began a song that I learned in elementary school. Peace. It is what every beauty pageant contestant wants. We award huge prizes each year to those who work for peace. Yet despite our deep and seemingly universal longing for peace, we live in strife and conflict torn families, organizations, and local, national, and international communities.

Rick Love is so hopeful that peace can be brought into conflict situations that he leads an organization, Peace Catalysts International, that engages in peacemaking efforts between Christians and Muslims. His book begins with his own peacemaking journey from conflicts in an organization he led to his growing understanding of biblical peacemaking and a vision for how this might be applied in various spheres of life.

He roots the peacemaking strategies he teaches in biblical premises: the God of peace, the peace of God, the gospel of peace, and our call to be peacemakers. He then elaborates eight peacemaking practices of peace catalysts: praying for peace, pursuing peace with all, taking responsibility, loving reproof, accepting reproof from others, asking for forgiveness, forgiving others, and loving your enemies. Under this last, he challenges us particularly around the love of those the church has the hardest time loving: those in the LGBT community, illegal immigrants, and Muslims. He particularly argues that the large majority of Muslims are not terrorists but people like us who are seeking a peaceful existence.

The book goes on to provide practical instructions in mediation with a case study of James and the conflict about Gentiles in the church in Acts, and instruction in team conflict, looking at the rivalries among the disciples in Mark 10. In this chapter, he introduces the very helpful idea of written memos of understanding when a team works out specific resolutions to a conflict and provides a format for these memos.

The last part of the book looks at how peace catalysts spread peace through social peacemaking between groups often alienated from each other and in recognizing six spheres of peacemaking: personal, interpersonal, social, urban, national, and international. I found identifying the sphere of cities particularly helpful with its ideas of seeking common good in a city.

At the end of the book are several appendices with ideas for peacemaking, seven steps to loving reproof, a peace catalyst manifesto, a grace and truth affirmation for Christian-Muslim relationships, and a discussion of the just peacemaking (as opposed to either pacifism or just war) paradigm.

What I most appreciated about this book was how it moved again and again from biblical principle to practice in very concrete ways. I also appreciated the grace and truth emphasis in peacemaking that both seeks common ground and mutual interests in love without compromising gospel integrity, the rule of law, and without covering up real offenses and issues of justice that must be faced.

It is fitting to write this review on the last day of the outgoing year. Each New Year’s, we long that this will be the year without new conflicts and one where old conflicts are mended. We long for a better world. But peace will not come in our families, our cities, or on the world scene without the practice of the nitty-gritty peacemaking principles and the hard but important work outlined in Love’s book.

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