Struggle with the Issue, Not Each Other: Using Confrontation to Harvest Success

Product Author Bios

Jerry I. Porras is a professor at Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Lane Professor Emeritus of Organizational Behavior and Change. With James Collins, he coauthored the worldwide best-seller Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Stewart Emery has coached more than 12,000 people over the past 30 years. As leader of Belvedere Consultants, he has served clients ranging from Cadence Design Systems to KQED and led the team that developed the MasterCard  “Priceless” campaign. Mark Thompson is an executive coach and producer of leadership programs with more than two decades of experience as a senior executive, board member, management coach, producer, and investor. He served as Chief Communications Officer at Charles Schwab and was honored by Forbes as one of America’s leading venture investors. Porras, Emery, and Thompson are coauthors of Success Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters.

This Element is an excerpt from Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters (ISBN: 9780132287517) by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson. Available in print and digital formats.

How to use carefully calibrated, constructive confrontation to ignite your team’s best, most passionate, most creative ideas.

The best thing you can do about contention is throw fuel on the flames. You heard it right. Contention is something enduringly successful people actually seek out: gloves-off, brutally frank dialogue. These “naked conversations” are not intended to be personally abusive. The focus is on issues, not people....