Conflict Resilience in Ministry
In this episode of GIA's Interchange podcast, host Kate Williams speaks with author and Harvard professor Bob Bordone about conflict resilience and resolution in parish ministry.
Holy Week and Easter can be a stressful time for parish music ministers, pastors, and staff members. The tension can increase the likelihood of misunderstandings, conflict, and interpersonal challenges.
Explore all this and more with the co-founder of the Cambridge Negotiation Institute, Bob Bordone, to see how best practices in conflict resolution can benefit the working relationships between pastors, musicians, parish staffs, and the diversity of gifts in the congregations they serve alongside.
Listen here or on your favorite podcast provider:
“…when we do engage, it’s a zero sum battle. And that observation I found to be deeply troubling and was related to negotiation and conflict resolution. But I think also different because quite apart from whether we have the skill to handle conflict, we also actually have to have the willingness to engage it, the resilience, to sit with the discomfort of our disagreement.” -Bob Bordone
Follow the Interchange podcast for more conversations about ministry and liturgy.
For further reading, check out Conflict Resilience: Negotiation Conflict Without Giving Up or Giving In by Bob Bordone.
Robert C. Bordone (Bob) is an internationally-recognized expert, author, speaker, and teacher in negotiation, conflict resolution, mediation, and facilitation, recently selected as one of the Top 30 Negotiation Professionals by Top Global Gurus. A Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, and the USA Today best selling author of Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In (HarperCollins 2025), he served on the full-time faculty at Harvard Law School for more than twenty years as the Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor of Law, Director, and Founder of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program before launching his full-time consulting, advisory, speaking, and training practice. He also serves as the Director of the Consensus Building Institute Professional Development Academy and as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Bob has has also been a Visiting Clinical Professor of Conflict Transformation at Boston University’s School of Theology.