This brief, theoretically grounded, yet practical text has proven successful with both student and professional audiences, offering clear, usable advice on how to manage the conflicts that arise on the job and in personal relationships. Important chapters dealing with issues of intercultural communication and gender have been revised and rewritten to reflect the most current research, and the unique material on conflict and writing allows students to gain insight into a medium of communication overlooked by most texts. The authors have created a five-step model of approaching and analyzing interpersonal conflict, and this model is applied repeatedly to different topics, providing students with a genuinely effective structure for working through differences with colleagues, friends, and others they might encounter.