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Collaborating with the Enemy, Second Edition: How to Work with People You Don't Agree with or Like or Trust
This bestselling conflict resolution book has helped thousands of people effectively collaborate across deep divides. Now it’s been updated with 50 percent new material for an increasingly polarized world.
“Offers practical guidance for how to work with diverse others, which is a precondition for confronting many of the complex challenges we face.” —Morris Rosenberg, President, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
In today’s fractured world, collaboration is increasingly difficult yet more crucial than ever. Often, to get something done that really matters, we need to work with people we don’t agree with, like, or trust. Drawing from thirty-plus years of experience working with leaders in over fifty countries, Adam Kahane shows why conventional collaboration—requiring harmony and agreement—is obsolete. Instead, he provides a groundbreaking approach that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation.
Kahane introduces three key stretches to navigate difficult
Stretch to embrace conflict and connectionStretch to experiment and learnStretch to step into the gameThis substantially revised second edition adds multiple new chapters exploring how to work across deepening divides and with those we may never agree with. Using new case studies, a discussion guide, and frameworks for navigating permanent plurality in our polarized times, Kahane offers essential tools for transforming conflict into positive change.
“Offers practical guidance for how to work with diverse others, which is a precondition for confronting many of the complex challenges we face.” —Morris Rosenberg, President, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
In today’s fractured world, collaboration is increasingly difficult yet more crucial than ever. Often, to get something done that really matters, we need to work with people we don’t agree with, like, or trust. Drawing from thirty-plus years of experience working with leaders in over fifty countries, Adam Kahane shows why conventional collaboration—requiring harmony and agreement—is obsolete. Instead, he provides a groundbreaking approach that embraces discord, experimentation, and genuine cocreation.
Kahane introduces three key stretches to navigate difficult
Stretch to embrace conflict and connectionStretch to experiment and learnStretch to step into the gameThis substantially revised second edition adds multiple new chapters exploring how to work across deepening divides and with those we may never agree with. Using new case studies, a discussion guide, and frameworks for navigating permanent plurality in our polarized times, Kahane offers essential tools for transforming conflict into positive change.
224 pages, Paperback
Published November 25, 2025
About the author
Adam Kahane
20 books92 followersAdam Kahane is a Director of Reos Partners, an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues.
Adam is a leading organizer, designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address such challenges. He has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerrillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists.
Adam is a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2022 he was named a Schwab Foundation Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Adam is a leading organizer, designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address such challenges. He has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerrillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists.
Adam is a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2022 he was named a Schwab Foundation Social Innovation Thought Leader of the Year at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 30, 2026
I was introduced to Adam Kahane (his works not his person) in 2024, studying for a Chartered Director certification at the DeGroote School, MacMaster University (as an aside, a great program – I highly recommend!). At the time, I was struggling in my third organizational design and transformation initiative in a government context, trying to build a foundation for collaborative work across different areas of specialised expertise. Let’s say I was developing a new respect for the old cliché that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
Adam Kahane’s insightful stories and practical advice were like a breath of air – literally inspiring! It didn’t take long for my copy of Collaborating with the Enemy (first edition) to become worn and dog-eared, full of scribbled notes and double underlines.
His concept of “stretch collaboration” reminded me of my long-forgotten thesis work in the field of adult education, where I explored the idea of “learning in the crack” – a reference to Anthem, a favourite Leonard Cohen song. Cohen says “Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering; there is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in”. I was delighted to see that Adam Kahane cites the same lyrics in Anthem in some of his works. Similar to “learning in the crack”, his advice is to let go of the illusion that collaboration is about a common and perfect path forward. Instead, he invites his readers to actively seek out the fissures and fractures between “us and them”, as spaces of surprising possibility. I try to remind myself that the more uncomfortable and destabilized I feel, the more likely I am stretching, learning outside my own worldview. But it is much harder to ask others to stay and play with you in the precarious cracks of stretch collaboration, especially when they do not see it as necessary.
I was again re-motivated by the second edition of Collaborating with the Enemy - an even deeper and richer version of the first. Still, the way forward is very slow - one step forward, two steps back. I keep wondering why it seems as though we are always starting or re-starting the work of trying to collaborate? When that light shines through the “crack” for a brief moment, and we seem to all be going in the same direction (though for different reasons or with different outcomes in mind), the accomplishment feels tenuous, fragile. And when all the energy and faith invested in collaboration no longer feel worth the risk and discomfort to you or to your co-collaborators, what then?
I am committed to the questions. It’s why, today, my second edition copy looks almost as well-used as its predecessor!
Adam Kahane’s insightful stories and practical advice were like a breath of air – literally inspiring! It didn’t take long for my copy of Collaborating with the Enemy (first edition) to become worn and dog-eared, full of scribbled notes and double underlines.
His concept of “stretch collaboration” reminded me of my long-forgotten thesis work in the field of adult education, where I explored the idea of “learning in the crack” – a reference to Anthem, a favourite Leonard Cohen song. Cohen says “Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering; there is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in”. I was delighted to see that Adam Kahane cites the same lyrics in Anthem in some of his works. Similar to “learning in the crack”, his advice is to let go of the illusion that collaboration is about a common and perfect path forward. Instead, he invites his readers to actively seek out the fissures and fractures between “us and them”, as spaces of surprising possibility. I try to remind myself that the more uncomfortable and destabilized I feel, the more likely I am stretching, learning outside my own worldview. But it is much harder to ask others to stay and play with you in the precarious cracks of stretch collaboration, especially when they do not see it as necessary.
I was again re-motivated by the second edition of Collaborating with the Enemy - an even deeper and richer version of the first. Still, the way forward is very slow - one step forward, two steps back. I keep wondering why it seems as though we are always starting or re-starting the work of trying to collaborate? When that light shines through the “crack” for a brief moment, and we seem to all be going in the same direction (though for different reasons or with different outcomes in mind), the accomplishment feels tenuous, fragile. And when all the energy and faith invested in collaboration no longer feel worth the risk and discomfort to you or to your co-collaborators, what then?
I am committed to the questions. It’s why, today, my second edition copy looks almost as well-used as its predecessor!
April 18, 2026
Adam Kahane is shocked--shocked, I tell you-- that someone would consider the fossil fuel lobby "the enemy." Because Adam Kahane is, presumably, an extraterrestrial being too new to the planet to know that, after multiple bad faith interactions, one can't help but be distrustful of an entity or a person.
Adam Kahane bemoans the pervasiveness of a "syndrome" where we tend to "enemyfy"(his stupid word to support his strawman) people because we disagree. Not sure why Adam Kahane takes such a bleak view of humanity because variness and skepticism are not hostility. Maybe on Adam Kahane's planet. But also, see above for duplicitious people.
Adam Kahane is pleased to discover that a major reason why people tend not to collaborate with someone they distrust (likely due to multiple bad faith interactions) is because they are waiting for the other to admit that they're wrong. But someone very likely is wrong. "Perspective" doesn't alter hard, probable fact. Perhaps things are different on Adam Kahane's planet.
Adam Kahane seems to think that we have no choice but to work with the enemy, so-called. I'm happy to tell him that, unlike on his planet, we Terrans are allowed choices. Sometimes those choices entail interrogating the environment that promotes enemyfy syndrome i.e. villainisation. If you keep encountering hostile situations or people, it is highly likely that the work environment is playing a non-trivial role. If Tom crashes out in a meeting, his behaviour is discomfiting but the problem goes beyond personnel. People shatter if made to go at Warp-9 for months on end.
A truly naïve, repetitive volume with a bizarre understanding of the world and a strange fixation on blaming people for lacking "conflict management skills" when it is systems that we work under that seem to profit from conflict.
Adam Kahane bemoans the pervasiveness of a "syndrome" where we tend to "enemyfy"(his stupid word to support his strawman) people because we disagree. Not sure why Adam Kahane takes such a bleak view of humanity because variness and skepticism are not hostility. Maybe on Adam Kahane's planet. But also, see above for duplicitious people.
Adam Kahane is pleased to discover that a major reason why people tend not to collaborate with someone they distrust (likely due to multiple bad faith interactions) is because they are waiting for the other to admit that they're wrong. But someone very likely is wrong. "Perspective" doesn't alter hard, probable fact. Perhaps things are different on Adam Kahane's planet.
Adam Kahane seems to think that we have no choice but to work with the enemy, so-called. I'm happy to tell him that, unlike on his planet, we Terrans are allowed choices. Sometimes those choices entail interrogating the environment that promotes enemyfy syndrome i.e. villainisation. If you keep encountering hostile situations or people, it is highly likely that the work environment is playing a non-trivial role. If Tom crashes out in a meeting, his behaviour is discomfiting but the problem goes beyond personnel. People shatter if made to go at Warp-9 for months on end.
A truly naïve, repetitive volume with a bizarre understanding of the world and a strange fixation on blaming people for lacking "conflict management skills" when it is systems that we work under that seem to profit from conflict.
January 30, 2026
📸 Photo: me holding the book (https://rb.gy/gjmoic)
This book immediately resonated with me. Across my industry experience, I’ve had multiple moments of “working with the enemy”—situations where collaboration wasn’t optional, even when trust was low and values or perspectives sharply differed.
One key insight so far:
True collaboration doesn’t start with agreement or alignment—it starts with commitment to the shared problem. Kahane challenges the idea that we need harmony to make progress. Instead, progress often comes from staying at the table, even when it’s uncomfortable, messy, or emotionally draining.
One question I’m sitting with:
When collaboration turns into burnout or emotional drainage, what is the most effective approach?
Is it stepping back to reset boundaries, changing the way we engage, or redefining what “collaboration” actually means in those moments? How do we stay constructive without sacrificing our own well-being?
Looking forward to reflecting more on this—and to hearing how others have navigated collaboration when agreement, trust, or likability weren’t part of the equation.
This book immediately resonated with me. Across my industry experience, I’ve had multiple moments of “working with the enemy”—situations where collaboration wasn’t optional, even when trust was low and values or perspectives sharply differed.
One key insight so far:
True collaboration doesn’t start with agreement or alignment—it starts with commitment to the shared problem. Kahane challenges the idea that we need harmony to make progress. Instead, progress often comes from staying at the table, even when it’s uncomfortable, messy, or emotionally draining.
One question I’m sitting with:
When collaboration turns into burnout or emotional drainage, what is the most effective approach?
Is it stepping back to reset boundaries, changing the way we engage, or redefining what “collaboration” actually means in those moments? How do we stay constructive without sacrificing our own well-being?
Looking forward to reflecting more on this—and to hearing how others have navigated collaboration when agreement, trust, or likability weren’t part of the equation.
January 12, 2026
Valuable read for anyone, and definitely for those working with complex change, transformation and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Especially in contexts where outcomes, and the route towards them, cannot be fully planned or predicted upfront, and where uncertainty, tension and shifting interests are part of the everyday.
An open invitation for growth and sensemaking and exploration of the collective grey areas through reflection combined with practical insights on human and system dynamics. One of many insights: sustainable change is less about designing the perfect plan, and more about creating the conditions in which people can stay in (relationship with) the change while moving through uncertainty together.
A thoughtful and warmly written book. Def recommended for anyone who works IN change, not just ON it.
An open invitation for growth and sensemaking and exploration of the collective grey areas through reflection combined with practical insights on human and system dynamics. One of many insights: sustainable change is less about designing the perfect plan, and more about creating the conditions in which people can stay in (relationship with) the change while moving through uncertainty together.
A thoughtful and warmly written book. Def recommended for anyone who works IN change, not just ON it.
January 19, 2026
Full review and summary.
This book explores why collaboration across differences is both necessary and difficult and why our usual approaches often fall short. Adam Kahane’s concept of stretch collaboration acknowledges conflict and complexity instead of smoothing them over, while offering practical reflections.
Obviously, there is no book in this world, or any theory, will magically make collaboration painless, but at least this book gives some clue to move forward when working with people we don’t agree with.
Thanks to Berrett-Koehler Publishers for kindly sharing a review copy of Collaborating with the Enemy.
This book explores why collaboration across differences is both necessary and difficult and why our usual approaches often fall short. Adam Kahane’s concept of stretch collaboration acknowledges conflict and complexity instead of smoothing them over, while offering practical reflections.
Obviously, there is no book in this world, or any theory, will magically make collaboration painless, but at least this book gives some clue to move forward when working with people we don’t agree with.
Thanks to Berrett-Koehler Publishers for kindly sharing a review copy of Collaborating with the Enemy.
December 11, 2025
Adam is a wonderful writer and I admire his ability to constantly seek out deeper understanding. He’s incredible about seeking out diverse perspectives to further his understanding and ability to help others.
March 21, 2026
This book was a great companion to me as I venture beyond organisational innovation, and towards climate, economic and social transition projects that involve multi-stakeholder dialogue. The triad of love, power and justice is a powerful framework for thinking about stretch collaboration.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews