Buster Benson

Have you ever walked away from an argument and suddenly thought of all the brilliant things you wish you'd said? Do you avoid certain family members and colleagues because of bitter, festering tension that you can't figure out how to address? Now, finally, there's a solution: a new framework that frees you from the trap of unproductive conflict and pointless arguing forever. If the threat of raised voices, emotional outbursts, and public discord makes you want to hide under the conference room table, you're not alone. Conflict, or the fear of it, can be exhausting. But as this powerful book argues, conflict doesn't have to be unpleasant. In fact, properly channeled, conflict can be the most valuable tool we have at our disposal for deepening relationships, solving problems, and coming up with new ideas. As the mastermind behind some of the highest-performing teams at Amazon, Twitter, and Slack, Buster Benson spent decades facilitating hard conversations in stressful environments. In this book, Buster reveals the psychological underpinnings of awkward, unproductive conflict and the critical habits anyone can learn to avoid it. Armed with a deeper understanding of how arguments, you'll be able to: * Remain confident when you're put on the spot * Diffuse tense moments with a few strategic questions * Facilitate creative solutions even when your team has radically different perspectives Why Are We Yelling will shatter your assumptions about what makes arguments productive. You'll find yourself having fewer repetitive, predictable fights once you're empowered to identify your biases, listen with an open mind, and communicate well.

The Art of Productive Disagreement

Why Are We Yelling?

Why Are We Yelling is the essential book about how to turn arguments into a productive and enjoyable dialogue rather than a bad-natured confrontation. The way we argue is broken - whether we're arguing about immigration, the existence of ghosts, the best burger in the city, or who's allowed to sit in your favourite chair. We end up digging in our heels and yelling at one another or choosing to avoid heated topics entirely. Either way, problems continue to fester under the surface and inevitably return as even bigger problems later on. There has to be a better way. Buster Benson, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with two-decades of experience facilitating hard conversations at some of the biggest and most controversial tech companies in the world, is on a mission to help us see disagreement differently. He recommends 10 things to try in order to make disagreements more productive. The way we talk is laden with old conversational habits that need to be re-examined - and by practicing these 10 new habits we can flip frustrating, unproductive disagreements into ones that bear fruit and bring people closer together. Instead of dreading arguments, or avoiding them at all costs, we'll even start looking forward to them as one of the most rewarding parts of our lives. In this book you'll learn practical skills to make your disagreements more fruitful by: * Learning to see and appreciate four other fruits of disagreements that are more valuable than "winning", and easier to harvest. * Identifying the kind of argument you're having so you can know how to best approach it. * Articulating the best possible version of your opponent's argument before attacking it. With this toolkit, we can learn to see the world as a less frustrating and more interesting place. Gone will be the days of mentally gearing up to attack people and defending ourselves from people we disagree with. Instead, we can explore more possibilities and perspectives in the world, simply because we'll no longer be afraid to wade into scary topics of conversation.

Buster Benson

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