Conflict Resolution Playbook: Practical Communication Skills for Preventing, Managing, and Resolving Conflict

Conflict can begin with a simple misunderstanding, a tense workplace exchange, or the feeling that someone has not heard your side. In Conflict Resolution Playbook, conflict resolution practitioner Jeremy Pollack offers a structured look at how these moments arise—and how communication can help keep them from becoming more damaging. Its scope reaches from everyday personal relationships to disagreements at work.

Start with the roots of conflict

The opening section introduces the fundamentals of conflict resolution and the communication skills that support it. Rather than treating every disagreement as proof that one person must be entirely at fault, the book considers how people can understand the same event differently—and how that gap can shape a conversation.

Prevent tension before it escalates

The prevention-focused chapters cover setting conditions for difficult conversations, letting go of resentment, making expectations clear, recognizing different communication styles, and honoring diversity. Pollack also addresses the challenge of staying open when the impulse is to shut someone down, and keeping composure when a discussion heats up.

Find a way forward once conflict begins

For situations already in motion, the book turns to separating observable behavior from interpretation, deciding when and how to offer support, taking responsibility, and apologizing. It also explores assertiveness, collaboration, creative problem-solving, and making a plan of action—approaches that can help shift attention from blame toward what happens next.

Guidance for familiar hard conversations

The final section focuses on recognizable sources of friction: sharing and receiving criticism, passive aggression, gaslighting, insubordination, disagreements with a supervisor, and bullying. These chapters bring the broader communication themes into more specific interpersonal and workplace contexts.

A practical read for personal and working relationships

With its progression from core skills to particular conflict scenarios, this book may interest readers who want to think more clearly about difficult conversations with colleagues, managers, friends, or family. It offers a grounded framework for approaching disagreement with greater awareness, responsibility, and openness to a constructive next step.