Con­flict is the fire in which solid rela­tion­ships are forged. A fair con­flict, con­ducted with sure knowl­edge of your own goals and val­ues, and with respect and care for your oppo­nent makes for sus­tain­able and pro­duc­tive alliances and friend­ships. But mak­ing con­flict safe, pro­duc­tive, and even fun requires skills and atti­tudes that help ward off those aspects of con­flict that lead most of us to avoid it when­ever possible.

We, the Befriend­ing Con­flict team, believe that a small set of sim­ple tools, based on aware­ness rather than power and pre­scrip­tions, can trans­form any con­flict, no mat­ter how grand or insignif­i­cant, into an oppor­tu­nity for per­sonal and orga­ni­za­tional growth and sus­tain­able col­lab­o­ra­tion. We believe that the tools we are offer­ing, based on the prin­ci­ples of Process Work, World Work, and Deep Democ­racy (devel­oped by Arnold Min­dell and his col­leagues), can enable all of us to enter into spicy, pro­duc­tive rela­tion­ships while avoid­ing esca­la­tion, vio­lence and many of the other neg­a­tive aspects of con­flict which too often make us avoid, rather than explore, poten­tial and actual conflict.