Friction

Emotions are messy. Life is full of friction. Here's what to do about it.

You've felt it - the meetingthat goes sideways after one wrong word, the feedback that lands wrong nomatter how carefully you planned it, the relationship that keeps getting stuckin the same loop. You've felt it inside yourself too: the moment you reactbefore you mean to, the pressure that makes everything harder than it shouldbe, the Sunday evening dread that has nothing to do with the actual work.

That tension has a name. It'sfriction - and most of us have never been taught what to do with it.

In Friction, leadershipresearchers and organizational psychologists Maggie Sass and Ross Blankenshipmake the case that friction isn't random, it isn't weakness, and it isn't just"bad communication." It's a predictable force that shows up in three distinctplaces - inside you, between people, and in the systems and structures aroundyou - and it's quietly shaping everything from your own performance to yourteam's culture.

Drawing on findings from theirNational Emotions Survey of U.S. working adults, Sass and Blankenship introducea practical framework for understanding how emotional tension actually works atwork, and what you can do to reduce the costly kind while using productivefriction to sharpen thinking, deepen trust, and improve outcomes.

The heart of the book is 45experiments, organized across all three types of friction, that you can put towork immediately. Strategies like "Breathe Before the Story," "Set theTemperature with Your First Sentence," "Listen for What's at Stake," and"Premium Strategy, Regular Fuel" give you concrete experiments to try in the momentswhen friction shows up and you need to respond on purpose rather than oninstinct.

Friction willhelp you:

Spot the warning signs of escalating tension before it becomes aproblem

Handle pressure without passing it on to your team

Have the hard conversations you've been avoiding

Build the kind of trust that makes your team resilient, not justcompliant

Recognize when the system itself is creating friction, and whatto do about it

Lead with more intention in conditions that feel faster and lessforgiving than they used to

Friction is foranyone who has ever been caught off guard by their own reaction, or someone else's.It's for the newly promoted manager who's discovering that the job is 80%emotional and no one ever told them. It's for the seasoned leader who's tiredof advice that assumes they can be a robot or a saint. It's for the HR partner,the executive coach, the L&D director, and the facilitator who can feel aroom's energy shift but need new language to help them navigate changingdynamics. And it's for anyone who has ever thought: Where is the user'smanual for this mess?

Most leadership books ask youto choose: work on yourself, fix your relationships, or change your culture. Frictionshows you why all three are connected by emotion and gives you the tools towork on all of them at once, backed by a companion website and downloadableworksheets.

The goal isn't to eliminatefriction. The goal is to lead through it, better.