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“This is not just a book about having better arguments, it's a manual for building stronger relationships.”—Adam Grant

“A paradigm-shifting examination of how we can get along better by understanding the role of conflict in our lives more deeply.” —Jefferson Fisher

“Priya Parker offers a generous, radically helpful guide through our divides—without flattening what makes us different.” — Suleika Jaouad

A paradigm-shattering exploration of how we fight and how we build healthy conflict, from the bestselling author of The Art of Gathering

We say we want community. Successful teams. High-performing colleagues and workplaces. Dynamic friend groups. Yet many of us don’t understand the crucial element we need to forge long-lasting communities in our lives: healthy conflict.

In The Art of Fighting, Priya Parker explains that we can’t form and grow effective relationships without a fight. She rejects the idea that conflict is abnormal or that good groups don’t fight. All groups change and evolve; indeed, it’s because people disagree that good groups flourish.

As she did in the now-classic The Art of Gathering, Parker draws on her far-reaching experience as a conflict facilitator, her own detailed research, and real-world examples to lay out the ways that people can identify disputes, determine how to address them, and what to do if they are insurmountable. Whether people disagree in the boardroom or the locker room, on a playground or in church, online or in person, conflict is a part of life, and understanding healthy conflict and how to harness its power is more important than ever. The Art of Fighting is a vital primer to help all of us understand how to do that.

About the Author

PRIYA PARKER is a facilitator, strategic advisor, and acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters.

Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India.

She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, N.Y.