A short spoken piece by Chad Silverstein about handling serious interpersonal conflict—especially with authority figures—and the power of community support. He advises seeking perspectives from wise others, using coaches or peer groups, planning responses rather than reacting, and relying on trusted confidants to confidentially share experiences and advice.
Chapters
You know, it's easy to say, just conflict is a conversation to be had, go have it. But like, when you have conflict with an authority figure, your boss or your partner or, you know, a parent or someone tough in your life, it's not so easy. And I love this day in the book, right? It's about community. You're in one right now, and depending on how you feel about maybe a certain conflict you have that bubbles itself up in your life, you can use a community like this, and if it's more private, you could reach out to one of our coaches, to me, ask for a favor that you want to talk it through. Being able to think about conflict that you have with someone, that is a really tough situation. One of the kind of anomalies, I'm not talking about just some friction with somebody. I'm talking about a real conflict. Getting a perspective from someone else is so powerful. You know, I used to be in this group called ypo and we did something called experience sharing. And what you do is you walk into a room and you have seven, eight, nine, ten other people in the room, and you tee up a situation, and then you would hear everyone else share something from their life that is relatable, that they went through and they shared their experience so that you can learn through their experience. And there's something really powerful connecting with other people, especially people who are older, who are wiser, who've been there and done it. And when you feel like you're in a situation that you don't know how to get out of, don't go dark. Lean on others for support. Find someone in your life who's wise and tell them what's going on. And ask for privacy that they keep it between you and them. And ask for any advice or an experience that they can share that they went through in their life that you know can help you glean some insight that can help you deal with whatever it is you're dealing with. So no one, again, is saying it's easy. And to have courage to deal with conflict is hard. And it's even harder when it's someone with someone that you either don't get along with or an authority figure in your life, but you don't have to do it alone. There are people that you can reach out to. Everyone can think of someone. And if. If you can, again, you got this community, and you can reach out to one of us, but lean on others for support, and don't try to do it by yourself and don't react to it by just running into a scenario without really thinking it through and thinking through the different scenarios and playing them out. Having some vision before you go Act. It's important. Sometimes you only get one chance to do that.
