R.W. Burke is a Certified Professional Coach through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. He holds a bachelor of science degree in accountancy from Providence College, and a master of business administration degree with a concentration in finance from Providence College’s School of Business.

For thirty years, he’s worked in and around the automobile business. For the past six of those years, he’s worked to become a top coach on Ford Motor Company’s Consumer Experience Movement (CEM) project, covering twenty-five dealerships in seven states. In his capacity as coach, he’s responsible for developing the dealerships’ 2,500 people (and the organizations themselves), both personally and professionally, to better understand the ways those people are limiting themselves in life and to break through those limitations to new levels of performance. As a result, he has logged over ten thousand hours of individual coaching, with the vast majority of those hours specifically focused on helping others manage conflict.

People limit themselves in life based on their inability to manage conflict. Many allow themselves to be ruled by their emotions. When we’re emotionally reactive, we’re not our best selves, nor do we produce the smartest outcomes. Emotional reactions create winners and losers. And winning directly at the expense of another is actually losing in disguise, due to the resentment that’s born in the loser, as a result. Often, people get stuck in a pattern of reacting emotionally, long past the time when the combativeness that once served them no longer does—long past the time when the pattern has become destructive without them being aware of it. Many want to change that part of themselves; they want more peaceful interactions, more successful outcomes, but they don’t know how to achieve that.

Quiet the Rage helps readers understand how conflict works, how they themselves may actually be the source of the conflict they’re experiencing in their lives, and most important, how to stop being that source.