Dealing with conflict

I was at a school event the other day, a very very long high school end of soccer season gathering (3hrs ) where coaches, graduating student/players etc were talking about their experiences. Anyway, living in a society that puts in a very high pedestal team sports and the importance of children participation..., I wasn't expecting to hear anything new. JUst the usual, about how people chracter, social skils, leaderships etc was improved (my personal view is that sports are useful, but expecting kids to invest 10hrs+ (my kids are putting closer to 20 hrs between , P.E., soccer, swimming, shuttling to the various events) has clearly a negative ROI.).

One coach started a list of the 8 benefits that kids get from this (high school soccer team partication in this case):

1. Deal with Authority  (I realized there that all the coaches/teachers in that room seemed more like seargants than normal teachers)
...
3. Dealing with Conflict:
 I Want the kids to learn to deal with conflict. There are good and bad ways to deal with conflict. Sometimes I create conflict for no particular reason, just for the effect. The other day a kid came 1 minute late. I harass him in front of everyone. "YOU ARE ONE MINUTE LATE. I asked everyone to be on time." Kids learn that "lying" isn't working. Kids learn that "its ok" to not agree. Kids learn to defend themselves. Kids learn how to not lose control. etc etc.
... (I actually don't recall the rest).

That stuck on me.
I realized that this is something that I don't know how to do. Actually I realized that most people from my country (propbably because they don't do sports in their youth) don't know how to do - while a higher percent of "americans" do. I talked about it with my cofounnder and we both agreed that it is a very useful and important skill to have and it is unfortunate that we don't have it and it improbable that we would be able to obtain it at our age..

But today I had a new realization. The issue is much deeper.
When my friend says "my biggest problem is that I don't know how to say no to people. http://realgl.blogspot.com/2013/02/phobia-of-offending-people.html"
its the same issue "he doesn't know how to deal with conflict"
When I say I am not good at negotiating its the same issue.
When I say to a CEO, you cannot do salary discussions with an engineer the same way that you would with a sales guy.., the sales guy will come to you, and you will often just negotiate him down. The engineer will not come to you until he would wait for you to suggest an increase - and he will tell you that this is not enough only when he has made already the decision to go someplace else... The same issue :the engineer stereotype doesn't know how to deal with conflict.
When people (used to say) sales guys get the pretty girls because they know how to deal with rejection  its the same issue.

When I look around in the company probably the most talented engineers in the company "don't deal well with conflict".
These people are often called passive/aggressive  - which converts a missing skill to a character/behavioral weakness.

A simplistic way to understand what goes on here is to realize that early "academic brain maturing" in kids often results in social isolation
  - you don't have common things to discuss with your classmates, your classmates don't like you
  - you find interest in book reading computer gaming etc... which replaces social advancement time in other kids
  - early academic brain maturing typically comes at the expense of lack "physical control brain maturing" => geeks aren't the best athletes => none of the "sport team" gains above

Following my recent change in attitude to accept the way I am (as opposed to try to improve/reprogram myself) I think I am ok not knowing how to deal with conflict.
I have the hope that an HS world leaves much less conflict than what you would get if you were to build a team of smart strangers with different optimization formulas and get them to create a company.