If you’re like many of us not long after you woke up this morning you checked your phone or laptop, asked Alexa or Siri to bring you up to speed on the weather and key news for the day. And you found “contention” – problems, great and small, in full flame or about to burst into flame. These problems which come at us in a never ending flood of negativity and hopelessness are rooted in one thing- contention.
Diversity drives positive outcomes, informed perspective and tremendous advantage. Diversity creates opportunities to connect with new people, ideas, experiences and opportunities. Contention offers the opposite experience – contention demeans people, dismisses ideas, minimizes or erases experience and limits opportunity. Contention fuels the flood of negativity we seem to encounter more and more each passing day.
Connection cures contention. It draws out the good and makes the bad more manageable. Connection is possible remotely or sporadically but works better (as we’ve learned post Covid-19) when we connect person to person, neighborhood to neighborhood and team to team. Connection benefits from widening our scope of experience and deepening our number of friendships and associations.
This book, Connection Cures Contention, draws on my personal experience over nearly four decades in traveling to scores of countries on all seven continents where I learned this powerful lesson. The world is full of profoundly good people who, if we’re willing to make the effort to connect with them, can bring us closer together and make life, with all its challenges, a more beautiful and productive experience.
This book introduces a simple formula for connecting to others – we call them the “With Behaviors”. Deciding to “talk with”, “work with”, “build with” and “walk with” others creates powerful connections. These connections can span generational differences, cultural differences, historical and geographical differences. The “With Behaviors” can bring us closer together – at home, at work, in our communities – no matter how deep the divisions are.
I invite you to explore five ideas on how connection cures contention and how those ideas underpin the power of the With Behaviors in helping all of us connect more and unleash the healing power of Connection as it Cures Contention.
