Optimal Outcomes: Free Yourself from Conflict at Work, at Home, and in Life

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As the nation faces the 2020 presidential election and other polarizing issues (from gun control, to climate change, to women’s reproductive rights), conflict increasingly arises at work and at home. How can we better manage conflict to heal our fractured nation, and maintain positive relationships at work and in our communities?

A founding CEO and his top salesperson are engaged in a heated clash over her compensation package.

A working couple are locked in a battle about domestic duties.

A progressive community organization that promotes “love and justice” is struggling with nasty political infighting.

In all these cases, every attempt to talk it out has been unsuccessful. Are some disputes doomed to remain unsolvable?

Dr. Jen Goldman-Wetzler argues that when conflict resolution doesn’t work, you can free yourself from conflict instead. A veteran conflict expert and practitioner, Jen has helped her clients—including that CEO, couple, and community organization—find outcomes that were far better than they’d hoped.

Where can we turn when our attempts to resolve conflict fail? Optimal Outcomes provides the vital next steps. Most approaches emphasize collaboration. People are supposed to sit down, calmly talk through their differences, and find a solution together. But what about situations where the conflict is so intense, so deeply emotional, or so complicated that people can’t even stand to be in the same room? In the most emotionally fraught situations, talking often makes the situation worse—not better.

Grounded in Jungian psychology and Buddhist practice, The Optimal Outcomes Method helps people change their mindsets and stop engaging in behaviors that aggravate conflict, such as taking too narrow a view of the situation, blaming others, and acting aggressively in the heat of the moment. Jen teaches readers how to step back from a conflict, no matter how fraught, and figure out what’s really causing it. She shows us how to ease tensions and free ourselves, even without others’ cooperation.

Dr. Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler, a former counter-terrorism researcher with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, explores how conflict has the power to jeopardize relationships, jobs and opportunities (impacting couples, co-workers, families and friends), and how strategic practices can free you from seemingly impossible conflicts. Founder and CEO of Alignment Strategies Group, a New York based consulting firm, she now teaches conflict freedom at Columbia University and counsels Fortune 500 CEOs and others on her proven approach to managing conflict by deploying mindfulness, psychology, and practical, step-by-step advice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jennifer Goldman-Wetzler is founder and CEO of Alignment Strategies Group, a New York based consulting firm that counsels CEOs and leaders on how to optimize organizational health and growth. With a career spanning the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, two decades of consulting to CEOs and senior teams, grassroots work with Middle East leaders, and research on terrorism and long-term conflict for the US Department of Homeland Security, Goldman-Wetzler is a keynote speaker who inspires audiences, from startups to Fortune 500 companies and leading public institutions. A former counterterrorism research fellow with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, she is a graduate of Tufts University and holds a Ph.D. in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University.

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