clear in tension

About the book

In Clear in Tension, award-winning author and entrepreneur Tim Duggan draws on interviews with leading researchers and global experts to give you a step-by-step method for navigating conflict. You’ll build real-world skills through practical exercises you can use immediately, at work, in relationships and within yourself.

Learn how to:

• Read any conflict accurately, so you can respond well
• Understand your default responses (and where they help or hold you back)
• Know which fights are worth having and which aren’t
• Hear what’s actually at stake, not just what’s being said
• Find shared direction, even when you don’t fully agree

Everywhere you look, conflict is growing. From board rooms to dining rooms, politics to institutions, there are measurable increases in tension, stress, polarisation and disconnection, and most of us don’t know how to deal with it.

In fact, most of us are drowning in words that we’re swallowing instead of speaking out loud, because we’re fluent in small talk and almost illiterate at the hard conversations.

But every time we avoid that difficult conversation, disengage from debate, let boundaries slip or rehearse a speech inside our head that doesn’t reach our lips, the gap between the life we have and the life that we want becomes a little bit wider.

Being good at conflict is how we get things done. With this book, you’ll move from carrying tension to working through it, and finding clarity in the moments that matter most. That’s what it means to be clear in tension.