Description

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An indispensable tool kit for engaging and harnessing healthy conflict to drive success and happiness, and eliminate the pain and stress of toxic conflict.

While most people view conflict as a bad thing that should be avoided at all costs, the reality is that embracing conflict in a healthy way is the single greatest factor in driving success and avoiding painful failure. Don’t Get Mad at Penguins breaks down the factors that escalate conflict to dangerous heights and shows us how to defuse conflict and make it work for us rather than against us. Just as toxins in our bodies make us unhealthy, slow us down, and cause us pain, the same holds true for toxins in our organizations and minds. They cause healthy conflict to become destructive, which then consumes an organization’s energy and taxes its ability to compete, grow, and prosper. Team engagements become pained, client relationships are strained, and individual careers suffer. The same unhealthy, painful dynamics play out in our personal lives as well. The key to making conflict work for our benefit lies in removing toxins from our interactions, and Don’t Get Mad at Penguins offers simple yet powerfully effective tools to do just that.

About the Author

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Gabe Karp spent the first ten years of his career as a trial lawyer. He later joined a small technology startup as one of the key executives who grew ePrize (now Merkle) into one of the top digital promotions companies in the world. Gabe then entered the world of venture capital and currently sits on the boards of several companies in the Detroit Venture Partners and Lightbank portfolios. He has negotiated business and finance deals in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and frequently speaks on embracing healthy conflict. For more, visit gabekarp.com.

Praise For…

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“Healthy conflict and extreme candor are crucial elements of communication in high-trust teams. Businesses with strong cultures, who embrace the teachings in this book, will grow faster and go further.”
— Jay Farner, Vice-Chairman and CEO of Rocket Companies

“Don’t Get Mad at Penguins is a must read for anyone looking to thrive in today's environment. It's almost impossible to get ahead without learning how to navigate different personalities and manage the inherent conflict that exists when humans interact. Gabe provides a litany of useful tools and lessons that are essential to success.”
— Eric Lefkofsky, Founder and CEO of Tempus; Co-Founder and Chairman of Groupon

“Don’t Get Mad at Penguins is entertaining and fun to read. Through captivating and inspiring stories, Gabe Karp shares invaluable lessons for detoxing conflict to lead a more successful, fulfilling, and happy life. Now that I’m armed with an entirely new skillset, I’m looking forward to my next conflict—and this time I’m ready!”
— Andy Friedman, Founder and former CEO, SkinnyPop Popcorn

“Gabe may be a genius. Like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. When it comes to driving results through unprecedented and really cool techniques Gabe can ‘just play.’ We had very few rules at our companies. ‘No yawning’ and ‘no sorries’ were developed by our team. But, ‘open communication solves all problems’ was all Gabe. In Don’t Get Mad at Penguins, Gabe winds us through a fun and notable path to conflict resolution that you will love. Guessing you’ll read it twice. And, I didn’t find a single spelling error.”

 
— Robert Wolfe, Founder and former CEO of Moosejaw and CrowdRise

“Business building is impossible without conflict and the more effectively we drive through conflict, the faster we build. Adherence to the lessons in Don't Get Mad at Penguins should put every leader on the path to success.”

 
— Jason Raznick, Founder and Chief Zinger at Benzinga, and a 2021 E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year