Books by Adam Kahane

Using revealing stories from complex situations he has been involved in all over the world - the Middle East, South Africa, Europe, India, Guatemala, the Philippines, Australia, Canada and the United States - Kahane reveals how to dynamically balance power and love.

Collaboration is increasingly difficult and increasingly necessary Often, to get something done that really matters to us, we need to work with people we don't agree with or like or trust. Adam Kahane has faced this challenge many times, working on big issues like democracy and jobs and climate change and on everyday issues in organizations and families. He has learned that our conventional understanding of collaboration-that it requires a harmonious team that agrees on where it's going, how it's going to get there, and who needs to do what-is wrong. Instead, we need a new approach to collaboration that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation-which is exactly what Kahane provides in this groundbreaking and timely book.

Tough problems usually don't get solved peacefully. They either don't get solved at all - they get stuck - or they get solved by force. These frustrating and frightening outcomes occur all the time. Families replay the same argument over and over, or a parent lays down the law. Organizations keep returning to a familiar crisis, or a boss decrees a new strategy. Communities split over a controversial issue, or a politician dictates the answer. Countries negotiate to a stalemate, or they go to war. Either the people involved in a problem can't agree on what the solution is, or the people with power - authority, money, guns - impose their solution on everyone else..The way we talk and listen expresses our relationship with the world. When we fall into the trap of telling and of not listening, we close ourselves off from being changed by the world and we limit ourselves to being able to change the world only by force. But when we talk and listen with an open mind and an open heart and an open spirit, we bring forth our better selves and a better world.