Insights on Conflict, Leadership, and Governance
Practical perspectives for leaders navigating high-stakes situations. These pieces draw from three decades of experience in public school governance, executive leadership, and conflict mediation.
What Theater Taught Me About Staying Calm Under Pressure
Composure under pressure is a trained skill, not a fixed trait. Working with a theater arts educator on The Rehearsal Room changed how I think about preparing leaders for difficult conversations.
The First Conflict of the Year Sets the Tone for All the Others
It is rarely the biggest conflict of the year. It is just the first one, and how it gets handled sets the norm for every conflict that follows.
Pause, Pivot, Script: A Leader's Reset for Hard Conversations
You get about three seconds to decide what happens next when someone stops you with a complaint. Most leaders never got taught what to do in that window, so they improvise, and improvising tends to land on defend, deflect, or vague reassurance. Here's the three-part reset that works instead.
Bruce publishes regularly on conflict, leadership, and governance through the Conflict in Plain English series on Substack. Subscribe below to receive new pieces directly.