What I’ve Been Reading

This book, by Australian clinical psychologist Dr Sarah Edelman, is about how to use cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) techniques to better manage everyday life challenges. While the word “conflict” doesn’t actually appear in the book’s index, it is mentioned explicitly and implicitly throughout the book, as many of our challenges arise from, or create, conflict! […]

This book was published in 2014, but I revisited it in preparing some work on trauma informed practice in conflict resolution. The book is a powerful and often heart-breaking account of the development of knowledge about trauma, its symptoms and its treatment. While not specifically about how to conduct a trauma informed practice, it provides

This just released book is an invaluable resource for all kinds of coaches. The contributors include an impressive group of coaching experts from around the world. The phrase in the subtitle “ethical maturity” has been chosen with purpose. Recent ethics coaching research reported that the number of ethical dilemmas experienced by coaches increases with years

This book is quite old (1997) but much of its content is still relevant today. It is an edited collection written by psychological researchers exploring empathic empathy from the USA (and one author from NZ). Much of the content has been synthesized into Icke’s later book Everyday Mind Reading, but this book is worth going

This is an incredibly powerful book, in both form and substance. I found it incredibly moving, often challenging, and sometimes very confronting. While the book is primarily situated in the USA, the stories and the messages translate into other countries such as Australia where racism, cultural dominance, and institutional oppression are equally problematic. The book’s

Bill Eddy, co-founder of the High Conflict Institute, is well known for his work on managing conflict with what he calls “high conflict people” (HCPs). This book provides a range of process and intervention tips (including scripts for what to say in specific situations) to help mediators work with HCP in a range of conflict

I read this book like a novel, unable to put it down! The book explores a number of case studies of high conflict, and analyses the conditions that led to the conflict and how the people involved managed to escape from the high conflict trap. One of the case studies involved the “father of mediation”

I’ve been reading and writing a lot about empathy recently, as part of my Working With Emotions in Conflict course, and more broadly. This book caught my attention and was fascinating reading. I do love an author who challenges some of the things we take for granted, and Bloom certainly does this. The book is

Ickes is a well known researcher in the area of empathic accuracy – in other words he studies how good people are at identifying others’ feelings. This book provides an easy way to follow and understand the research on this topic, without having to read all the dense academic papers. In many ways, this book

Unlike many books about conflict resolution which provide advice about what to do in our interactions with others, this book focuses on what we can do within ourselves. It’s a kind of mindfulness meets conflict approach to conflict transformation. The author explains that conflict is not some force outside us, happening to us. Rather it