We've all got our triggers, the conditions under which our emotions get the best of us and we can be perhaps less than focused, certainly not at our best for working through conflict.

It is helpful to know what provokes our own less than best performance when there's a disagreement to work through. But to

really thrive, we need to also know who we're dealing with, what's likely to set them off, and

what they are likely to do in pursuit of a resolution. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. When we hear conflict,

we might imagine shouting matches, but my guest estimates the average salaried employee in this

country spends around 156 working hours a year engaged in workplace conflict, and most of us

aren't spending that time yelling at colleagues.

People might compete or collaborate or analyze or accommodate in search of solutions,

and knowing your go-to style and understanding the way your adversaries react

can go a long way toward yielding solutions that work for everybody,

rather than strong-arming or manipulating.

Jim Gwyn is executive director at the Texas

A&M Center for Sports Management, and he is co-author along with John Elliott of the book

How to Get Along with Anyone, the Playbook for Predicting and Preventing Conflict at Work and at Home.

Jim, welcome to think. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you so much for having me.

156 hours of workplace conflict annually. That's basically four whole workweek. So I guess it's not

just mediators and diplomats and lawyers who need to brush up on conflict management skills.

Absolutely. It's a lot of time. And that's one of my

favorite things in meeting with CEOs or superintendents or really anyone in the workplace is they'll

say, ah, you know, we don't really have conflict here. But I ask them about how their day is.

And they go, well, all I do is put out fires and deal with this person. So we may not call it conflict, but typically conflict.

So you actually identify three main categories of conflict, starting with task conflict.

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