Why Avoiding a Fight is Killing Your Relationship (and How to Fight Well) | Priya Parker

0:00Jonathan Fields: So most of us think avoiding a fight is the peaceful choice. Priya Parker says it's actually letting the real relationship die in favor of a surface calm that costs you everything real underneath it. And once you hear her case for why healthy relationships and communities need healthy conflict, you won't be able to unsee the fights that you've been avoiding. In this conversation, you'll discover why the belief that, quote, good people don't fight has quietly wrecked more relationships than actual conflict ever has. We'll talk about the concept of relational longing and how to find it underneath a disagreement that feels like it's about nothing.

0:39Jonathan Fields: And we'll explore the three phases every healthy fight moves through and what each one actually requires of you. We'll talk about a single phrase to listen for in any group or relationship that reveals what it's really trying to become and why giant sequoia trees can't reproduce without fire and what that has to do with your marriage, your family, your relationships, or your team. Our guide is a claim facilitator and author Priya Parker. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short break.

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3:05Jonathan Fields: This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. And you have spent years watching groups come together and also fall apart. You know, companies, communities, individuals, marriages, friendships, you make a counterintuitive argument in your new work about conflict.

3:56Jonathan Fields: What is the thing that you now believe about conflict that maybe most people have completely backwards? That conflict is not dysfunction. Break that down for me. So, you know, and it's so nice to be back in conversation with you. You were one of my very first conversations when I first wrote The Art of Gathering. And I'm so delighted to be back with you. I feel like you always host me into these moments of transition in my work, and so it's really a pleasure to be with you. You know, I am a conflict-averse conflict resolution facilitator. And I grew up in a family that both my mother and father were conflict-averse when they eventually separated and divorced.

4:52And when they announced that they were, when they told people they were separating, everyone was shocked because they never fought. And so I learned from a young age and sort of kicking and screaming to get better at conflict because I learned and I saw that there's great loss and avoidance. and I became a conflict resolution facilitator in college and part of what I've been interested in and looking at for now decades is how do we fight with those we want to belong to and one of the things that I began to see as I took this question front and center in my new book, The Art of Fighting, is that one of the reasons that we don't fight is because we believe it is immoral, or we believe it is wrong, or we believe it's dysfunctional, right?

5:55Like somebody says, like, we're fighting, we're so dysfunctional, or it's a dysfunctional family, or a dysfunctional team. And part of what I began to learn as I looked at how groups grow and change, as I look at how organizations that get through crisis evolve, is that conflict is actually highly functional. It's deeply necessary. And one of the things that I've learned as a now conflict resolution facilitator for more than two decades, is that long lasting communities that are relevant and vibrant and people want to be a part of need love. And they also need conflict. and that healthy communities have healthy conflict.

6:38And there's a thousand ways to get there. And there's a thousand reasons that we often don't get there. But part of what kind of blew my mind as I decided to sort of take this question front and center of how do we fight with those we belong to, we want to belong to, is that we have to first pause and actually examine this idea that conflict is dysfunctional and that actually the only way to get to relevance, to get to a group or relationship you want to be a part of, that you have by and for, where people understand what their roles are, why they're part of it, is actually through conflict, is through fighting, is through asking these core fundamental questions together of who are we, What do we want to be?

7:24How do we do this? And it turns out you can't avoid that step to figure out and to become the best versions of your collective self.

7:33Jonathan Fields: Yeah. So if I understand, it's sort of like you're saying we have this preconception of this is what fighting looks like and this is what it will inevitably lead to. And it's hard, it's uncomfortable, and it's bad. So we back away from it. But what you're inviting us to consider is that actually, and I think underlying this often is the opposite of conflict is peace. But I think what I really hear you saying underneath this is that that's not true at all. The conflict, if we look at it, conflict is relevance. Conflict is people don't fight about things they don't care about. Right? right, then they leave.

8:22And or they don't pay attention. And, and conflict in and of itself is what I one of the people I interviewed for the art of fighting is a conflict practitioner called Seythu Nair. And she's a brilliant facilitator. And one of the things she said to me was, I said, you know, she's called into the hardest fights to facilitate group fights. So she'll be called in this real example to a local government agency that erupted in a so-called flag war, where within the agency, this is during the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter's flag started popping up on people's desks, and then Blue Lives Matter's flag started popping up on people's desks in this agency.

9:03And she was brought to come in to kind of the director of the agency banned all flags, right but had the vision to realize like just because you ban an action doesn't mean that there hasn't been fabric torn right between co-workers so Setsunaire is the kind of facilitator who's brought in to facilitate a circle in a context like that like super complex and she has beautiful work and I asked her what do you how when you enter a conflict like that what are you looking for? And she says, I always look for and see where I can find the relational longing. I start in any group of tapping into the relational longing.

9:47And if you can tap into the relational longing that's still there, you can do all sorts of things. And so part of like the core part of as a conflict resolution facilitator, I'm not called into groups that don't want to work it out, right? That leads, they just leave or people sort of fighting with the quote unquote other. I specifically, and most facilitators are brought in because at some level, even if there's difference, there's enough of a desire to kind of want to work it out. And so part of conflict and part of this process is part of the opportunity is to help a group basically realize that there's a lot of love here, or there's a lot of relevance here, or there's a lot of heat here, but maybe it's not any longer in the right form or in the right structure.

10:40And we need to actually have a conversation to make some changes.

10:43Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, that concept of relational, relational longing was the phrase that, that, that just lands. So like, I, it took me a second to try to figure out if I think I actually even understand what that is, but it sounds like it, tell me if I'm getting this right. It is that within the group, within the individuals, even though there may be this surface level disagreement, conflict, what seems like something that is just, you know, everyone's at each other, that underneath, if there's still a fabric within the individuals, there's something like a pulse that says, I want this to work out. I want to be back in healthy relationship.

11:21Jonathan Fields: That's kind of the starting point. Does that land? Yes. Yes. But I wouldn't call it a fabric. Okay. If you're trying to weave a fabric, I would call it an urge. an urge or a desire, right? The sense of, I still, I want to be in, I care about this person, I want to be in relationship with this person, maybe not in this form, but that there's still a longing there. I mean, going on this example with Cetuner, I write about this in the book, she went in to this local government agency in New York City, and she basically, there was 20 participants as voluntary so they they um it was 20 participants from this office where they're the sort of fly war so-called fly war erupted and they came in and they had i think six hours together and her job as a facilitator was basically trying to help them help help them make it not not such a difficult place to work and to start sort of understanding and restoring them to each other.

12:21And, and she does all sorts of things. And I write about in the book, but the moment of breakthrough was when they stopped talking about what's happening out there in the country, what they're the moment they stopped talking about what's happening on what they're seeing on Fox or what they're seeing on MSNBC, or what they've seen the president do, like they stop, that is not a helpful conversation for this room. And when they actually start getting into the specificity of what does it how has it how has this flag war specifically made it hard for you to show up to work and when she asked this super specific question by the way these are colleagues who've worked together many of them for 20 years and the breakthrough moment it's one of the most beautiful moments in the book for me it was when she and and a lot of the local government agency is full of both like police, law enforcement and social workers.

13:20So it's sort of this rift sort of was emerging between like, who are we really for in this office? And a former cop, self-described former cop on his day off was so kind of troubled by what has happened between and across all of his colleagues. He came in on his day off to be part of the circle. And when she asked this question, you could kind of see him get choked up he she could see him get choked up and she and he says you know i've been in this office for more than a decade and i have so many friends in this office and every day one of the things i most loved was i walk over to one of my colleagues and it was clearly someone on the other side of the sort of the flag symbology and i walk over and i would lean my elbow on her desk and we'd always chat.

14:11And after this incident happened, I walked in and I realized she had barricaded her desk with plants in the space my elbow used to go.

14:26And you could feel just the whole room, right? You can feel it now because we're drop into like, oh and you could feel his grief and you could feel his sorrow and he was an actual person with this very specific role but also that has many identities and like all of us but in that moment the core purpose of this conversation was as colleagues and because she could tap into the relational longing there was a possibility there for them to begin to have the conversation that could actually expand for each of them and for all of them, what does it mean to work here? And how do we do this together?

15:05Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I mean, that lands in what you're describing in a group environment like this happens to have been a work environment. I would imagine this could be the same thing in a family environment. This could be the same thing between two intimate partners. It could be the same thing between parent and child, almost anyone you could imagine. It's the same dynamic that really translates, right? Every relationship that we choose to be in over the long term will change. And part of either getting to that change or navigating it, even forget conflict, just change, just time, time in and of itself, right?

15:44Between parent and child, between siblings, between spouses, like where and how do we negotiate as things are changing? How do we want this to be? Am I happy? Is this how I want? And they can also just be super simple. Like how do we spend our Friday nights? Our kids are now teenagers. There's all sorts of needs coming in. How do we spend our Friday nights and who decides, right? For a lot of families, that is a heated question, right? And so part of the skill and part of the invitation, and again, I say this as a conflict-averse person who is learning like a lamb to walk, to be in healthy heat with my own in my life, in my relationships, and in my work, is the only way in these relationships to sort of figure out the next form of how we want to spend our time, how simple stuff, how we want to spend our time, what money do we want to spend on stuff?

16:38What night of week do we want to, you know, meet? I mean, this is not existential, but this is actually the infrastructure of shared life. And so in modern life, part of our challenge is we all kind of make up how we spend time together. And so this book, in a lot of ways, is actually a book like The Art of Gathering for modern life. When we don't have inherited ways of being and we don't have inherited ways of fighting, but we need to build bridges towards one another to be able to be in thick, deep, whether it's relationships or whether it's being part of an amazing team. But you can't actually get to that right form without a storm, without what Bruce Tuckman, the sociologist who writes about groups, without storming, without asking, how do we want to do this and who decides?

17:25Yeah.

17:26Jonathan Fields: So it's almost like conflict avoidance. Many of us would perceive as like, this is the peaceful option. This is the quote neutral option, right? But what you're saying is no, actually conflict avoidance is it's more of an active choice to almost let the real relationship or relational longing die in favor of some sort of surface level, often superficial and not lasting peace. while everything that's real underneath it kind of withers because it's not getting what it needs. Does that land? I will also say not all fights are worth facing. Yeah. So in The Art of Fighting, the first third of the book is actually about assessing what kind of fight you're in and deciding whether to face or not.

18:15And so there are absolutely fights that are not worth facing. Dr. Mercer calls strategic conflict avoidance. One of the people I interviewed for the book is a guy called Michael Hebb. And one of the things he told me when he gets in a fight with a friend that he asks himself whether or not it's worth facing is, do I want to be closer to this person? And sometimes you don't need to be closer to a person. So it may not actually be worth the effort. But if you're wanting to be closer to that friend, if you're wanting to have more intimacy with whoever it is, if you want to be a more functional team or group, the idea that conflict is a threat to that is misguided.

19:09Jonathan Fields: Yeah. Instead of a threat. I mean, it may well be a gateway. Exactly. If you're making that choice, like that this matters and I want to be in it. and we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors good life project is sponsored by bombas so this summer has been full hanging out with friends a wedding out of town hundreds of miles of early morning hikes and through it all my feet and honestly my whole family's feet have been in bombas and it has been that way for i think over a decade now the sports socks are the real deal cushioned right where you need it sweat wicking Your feet feel as good at the finish as they do at the start.

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21:44Jonathan Fields: I want to sort of drop into your approach, too. But before we get there, you also write about this image, giant sequoias, like the largest trees in the world. I have had the great pleasure of walking among them and felt it stunning off that like a tiny little human being feels when you're in there. They live something like 3 ,000 years, but they can't reproduce without fire. Walk me through that and why, what's the lesson in the context of conflict here? I was actually explaining my book. This was years ago, and I was researching to a mother of a friend of mine, and she was listening very closely.

22:26I said, you know, conflict can actually help a group really figure out who it is. Conflict can help a family. Often there are moments where people think there shouldn't be fights, but there's a lot of fights, like after a death of a patriarch, of weddings, like moments where you're like, we're not supposed to be fighting now. And I said, but it also clears a lot of space. And she looked at me, and she's a biologist, and she said, oh, well, that's also true in nature. She said, you should check out what forests of giant sequoias do, the largest trees in the world. And they cannot reproduce without fire.

23:09And she gave me, she gifted me this metaphor. She said, fire clears space on the forest floor, letting in light and water for new seedlings to take hold and grow. It clears away the leaves that have been built up on the ground so seeds can root into bare, mineral-rich soil. And the heat even opens up older cones, releasing fresh seeds. and just as there are seeds that require fire to germinate groups often require some amount of heat to sort of come back into a sense of relevance and purpose and you can absolutely have a forest fire that as we've seen burns the whole hell you know burns it needs to be a controlled fire it needs to be sort of within the right natural environment where the ecosystem needs to be healthy, all of that.

23:55You can absolutely have unhealthy fire. But the avoidance of fire will also kind of kill the so-called forest.

24:05Jonathan Fields: Yeah, it's like it can't grow. If it rages too big or uncontrolled, it destroys everything. But if it never happens in a way that is manageable, growth ends and eventually death ensues one of my favorite interviews that I've heard was with the radio host Krista Tippett and she was interviewing the Brazilian writer Paolo Coelho and she said to him how have you been married to the same woman for 40 years and he pauses and he says she's not the same woman and i'm not the same man and and i remember listening i'm like what do you mean she's not oh right she's changed and so have i and she and he said to her and we've had many many many troubles many problems but every time we pause and we look and we say basically this house no longer the house we built no longer fits us but i love you that relational longing and you still love me.

25:13And so let's rebuild the house. Right. And so you can use different metaphors, but it's sort of like you need to renovate a home or a building or a structure after many years, you need sequoias need fire. And just like that with with groups, with friendships, with relationships, if you're a part of a community, if you're part of a sports team, if you're part of an association, if you're part of a swimming club, at some level groups need infrastructure. And that infrastructure is a creative act. You have to decide who are we? Who do we let in? Who do we not let in? What are we about? How long should a meeting be?

25:46Like, again, I'm not even talking about super complicated identity-based conflict, just sort of good old, how do we coordinate? And every group needs to go through what Bruce Tuckman calls the storm. In the beginning, you enter a new college or high school, you enter a new group, you're so new member orientation, you apply, right? In some places, there's a formal op, I want to be part of this group because or even with friendship, like, oh, we have a great vibe, right? You are you are able to articulate and declare, right, your intentions metaphorically, but off but in groups, and when things need to change, or in a relationship, there's no for there's very few opportunities to basically say, hey, I want to change.

26:30I want to change here. It comes up, you back into it through conflict. And so part of what I've tried to do in my own relationships and my work, and then help as a facilitator, is to just pause and when conflict comes up, to first help people not see this as a total disaster and a moral failure. But the second is to get curious and to say, huh, in a way, almost maybe this is an opportunity to quote unquote declare what we think is needed now. One of the one of the tools I give in the book, I call it the we're not a clause. And the we're not a clause is something I noticed as a as a facilitator, but also as a friend in groups, where if you hear people sort of arguing about something, and, you know, say, it could be a couple having a group of people over for dinner and cooking for them and people's, you know, coming in with 1000 different requests for whether it's allergies or preferences.

27:29And someone may say, we're not a restaurant. I'm not making 12 different meals for 12 different people, right. But you will hear often what people say we're not. And you should listen for that clause, because it's the beginning of an opportunity to redefine and to refresh what it is you are and want to be. Yeah, one of the characters, one of the examples I look at the book over many years is the burning man founders the founders of this sort of you know um uh gathering in the desert over decades very unlikely gathering and um they've had as all good founders will every every few years like really deep existential fights like what is this place can we have a hierarchy what should we pay ourselves is this utopia can you create an external equality and have an internal hierarchy.

28:20Like really, what should tickets cost fees? Should there be a lottery system? And I was watching one of the board meetings on a documentary and listening to the fight of the board meeting. And this is like what facilitators do. We just like listen to reams and reams of fights.

28:37Jonathan Fields: Sounds like so much fun. And I was listening to this. I mean, very rare to get a great board meeting and a great fight on audio because you can actually then listen to like what are the moments of breakthrough so somehow this documentary filmmaker cut with you know got caught this fight and one of steven raspa that one of the um one of the core members of burning man you can be heard on camera saying we're not a festival we're not a festival how how many years have we kept saying we're not a festival we don't do programming we're not disney world we're not a festival and that was actually listening to that documentary when though we're not a clause.

29:11And I realized it was something that I hear in groups all the time. So if you're listening, if you're thinking about moments where people actually have an opportunity to kind of define what they are, first, it is often in conflict. And second, listen out for the we're not a clause.

29:27Jonathan Fields: I love that. Let's drop a little bit into the how of healthy conflict. You talk about and you write that oftentimes there's sort of like these three broad phases that people move through in healthy comfort. We call it a framework, for lack of a better word. You know, there's the tear phrase of it, the grapple phrase of it, and then the cleave phase of it. I want to drop into each one of these and tease out a little bit what they are and how we actually implement them. Let's start out with tear. What is this? so tear is the first third i basically wanted to write a guide that demystifies the phases of conflict and i chose many many groups that people assume are a monolith so like 120 year old swimming club a queer asian taiko drumming circle a boy scout troop right not not a football team and to normalize conflict and part.

30:36And so the first phase of this guide is looking at the moment where a group experiences a tear, what sometimes what I call a triggering, a triggering events can create some kind of explosion or implosion. And you need to understand what you have on your hands. And so tears tend to happen at specific moments. So tears often happen at moments in which the group and how things work become visible to or obvious to the group when the implicit becomes explicit. And I call these forcing mechanisms. So a forcing mechanism is a moment of high pressure observable by the groups that forces decisions to be made.

31:31renovations well we have this we have the space should it go to the you know should it be the kids room or should it be the music library right these are actually values milestone events uh weddings elections a lineup and a baseball team right what's the batting order that who who gets who gets you know in a in a play which who like the roster so forcing mechanism are moments that contain dozens of decisions that will impact the group and reflect its values, which is often why people often when I work in teams organizations, like we're just going to do a 30th anniversary for our company. This is supposed to be a happy moment.

32:12Like, why is everyone fighting? Well, because all of a sudden you have a stage and you may have three days or three hours and you have to decide who speaks for us and what are they going to say and which products are we going to elevate to say these are who we've been for those 30 years, right? It's small p political or in a family wedding. Do we allow kids? Why or why not? Do people get to bring plus ones? Who decides? Who is this fundamentally for? Which rituals do we bring from? And so a wedding, right? It's this high pressure moment. It's not because the, you know, these sort of stereotypes of like the bridezilla or whatever.

32:51It's actually, it's actually really important for families to act, There's so few modern mechanisms to allow a group to ask again, to your earlier point of like, who are we now? And also like for often for that generation getting married, it's often the first time they have any amount of power to have some amount of influence as to say, who are we now? What does it mean to be a Parker now? What does it mean to be an Orion now? And then it's visible by the shared community, which is why I feel so high stakes.

33:26Jonathan Fields: And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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35:50Jonathan Fields: and i don't want to gloss over what you shared also which is this also tends to be the moment this trigger where the implicit becomes explicit the invisible becomes visible and oftentimes i would imagine tell me if this is right but before that moment there may have been this underlying assumption that we're all working on the same set of values the same assumptions the same beliefs even though everybody feels in different ways, that's probably not true. And then there's this thing that happens. There's this moment which reveals the fact that actually we're not on the same page. Even if it's stated on a mission statement or on an agreement between partners or whatever it may be, everyone's kind of known, but it's always been just bubbling beneath the surface and something happens.

36:38Jonathan Fields: There's a rupture that says, no, this is breaking out. And now we actually have to deal with this. Yes. And it can be super simple. Like, one of the reasons I love gatherings, and I'm interested in them as a conflict resolution facilitator, is because gatherings contain all sorts of conflict in them. Like I'm interested in them, because gathering is line drawing, who is in who is out. And so I mean, simple example years ago, I was for my first child planning a baby shower. And my father called me upset. And he said, I can't believe you didn't invite so and so to your baby shower. I can't believe I'm bringing color Marsha.

37:16I can't believe you didn't invite Marsha to your baby shower. And I was thinking, why would I invite Marsha to my baby shower? And it was my stepbrother's wife. Like I wasn't particularly close to my stepbrother, let alone his wife. There was there's no problem between us. But we lived in totally different parts of the country. We lived different lives. Like we didn't have an active or engaged relationship. She wasn't part of my support circle. I wasn't part of her support circle. There was nothing there's no beef or anything between us. It was just sort of like, there was no charge there. Like she's she's not one of my people.

37:51I'm not one of her people. But again, no offense that happens in many multi, you know, complex, multiple marriage families. Anyways, and so I thought about it, and the conversation, his being upset, and him saying something to me, which I know is a big deal for him to say something, prompted me to think through my own set of questions. So anyway, I end up not inviting her, and I think we're both fine with that. But actually, the person I needed to repair with was my father. and so months later maybe even a year later you know it's intense to have a baby it's intense to you know it's everyone's going through these changes and as we said we sat in a coffee shop in philadelphia maybe like more than a year later and i remember him saying this and i have permission to share this it's it's in the book but i remember him saying to me i think of my circle of my family as the 11 of you.

38:48And he met his children from his combined family, his spouses, their children. And he says, and it extends to you and Anand, my husband. And I was listening. I was really listening. And we were getting to the heart of it. And I said to him, Dad, I understand that. But my circle isn't your circle. I have a different circle.

39:15right and and he sat there and he was upset and his face was red and he was teary-eyed but he was listening you know and i and he said well i wish you would make it your circle right and you can hear you can hear the tension there right it's like i'm gonna do you i like But we were having the right fight. We were able, right? We were at the core of it. And I could tell even from his reaction, he wasn't totally getting it. But that was okay, right? I was presenting a different defining circle than he was. And we could both let those things, those desires sit side by side and still be in relationship with each other.

39:57and so part there's like a tiny little moment but part of these part of these like all of us getting upset is what you were saying earlier is these mental models it's these assumptions rising up and then being shocked right that we have different assumptions of what a baby shower is who should be invited what our obligations are and and often between and between generations it's a it is conflict because i mean i see this in as an indian american my mother's indian like even in other cultures the assumption your parents make all sort have all sorts of obligations to their peers and their friends and their families and then the wedding comes and it's like is it the next generation's obligation to fulfill their parents debts right quote unquote or is this fundamentally about the new generation that's conflict small c conflict and so part of part Part of the power of this is when we can just, it's terrifying.

40:54I mean, I find it terrifying. Maybe not everyone finds it terrifying. But to actually pause because you care about the relationship and realize we want different things. How do we have a conversation about it? How do we hold each other? Even if it's terrifying or hold the question together, you can actually start moving through as a family. Yeah.

41:13Jonathan Fields: I mean, it's interesting, too. We started out talking about this, sort of like the first phase that you often describe, the tear phase, really understanding what is the rupture, what is the trigger, what happened here. And you moved us into sort of like this next phase where you're grappling. You're grappling with what's going on. And part of what you're describing under this, and I think a lot of people just get the word grapple. We've got to actually figure this out. We literally have to work our way through it. There's this excavation phase that you talked about, which you just described, where you're kind of saying, what really happened here?

41:43Jonathan Fields: What is this fight actually about? Because I think often we don't really know. Yes, yes. The question that I ask, so in Grapple, is what is the need? Like we're almost distracted by the set of events, right? And sort of pausing and asking, what is the need here? And particularly for a group fight, you can do this in one-on-one, but particularly in a group fight often when I work with groups that that are trying to sort through whether it's an organization that's been through some kind of reckoning or whether it is a political movement that's sort of bringing together its leaders that have been you know arguing for decades to pause and I do this with all my clients and just ask first what is the need what is the what I call the capital n need of the actual group in this moment and it may not be to talk about the explosion.

42:41The explosion may be a symptom, right? And at some deeper level, I mean, it took me a while to get to this, but I realized with this example of the baby shower, the need at some level, I mean, I've never articulated this before, but I think it was to be in relationship with my father without having his definition of how I should be spending my time be my definition of how I should be spending my time or his definition of who my circle should be be my definition of who my circle would be. And so at first asking in the grapple phase, what is the need? And then a need is small p political. Not everyone may agree on a need.

43:26And often the loudest voices get heard first or the people with most power don't actually understand what's happening. I have a simple example in the book. I actually love this example. It's an English law firm that years ago, it was during the World Cup in Qatar. And they had a Slack channel that was called Elephant in the Room. And they encouraged people that if they had something they wanted to ask about the organization, I think it was like 40 or 60 members at that point, put it into the Zoom. And a new intern was just during that summer and was kind of shocked to find out that not only was the law firm watching the World Cup during office hours and people were wearing English jerseys and all this stuff, but that they were sort of that everyone that kind of work stopped.

44:21And he was, like many people in his generation, kind of horrified that the World Cup was being played in Qatar, where being gay is illegal, where there had been death. Like there was all of this sort of problematic parts of in this younger person's mind about the World Cup. And so he popped into the, you know, maybe innocently and naively popped into the slack. Something like, can we please not like watch the World Cup during working hours, particularly given their like human rights, you know, these sort of human rights failures. And he didn't know it, but he had hit a third, he'd kicked, he's kicking a third rail.

45:07He's kicking a core part of this law firm sense of usness. which is this is a group for years, a group of partners who for years, whether it's the World Cup or whether it's the Wimbledon, whatever it is, like they're watching their sports together. It's also very English, right? And long story short, and also took a while for those with most power, the partners, to even know that this was happening, that there had become, there was sort of this kerfuffle around it within the office, in part because they weren't on Slack. like the the partners ea literally like printed out the the slack to like showed it onto her and on their phone and and and they they sent out this is what what is not to do they sent out like a a staff wide save the date email to have the entire staff talk about whether or not to watch the world cup in the office and and part and i teach through this lesson because part of what they didn't do was in good intentions.

46:10They're like, let's have everyone talk about this with good intention. They're like, let's just duke it all out. We used to be a small group, right? Why not bring everyone together? And what they should have done is pause and asked, what is the need here? What is the group need? And how do you figure out what is the actual worthy grapple, right? Is this someone who just needs to be educated into our culture? Or is this something or how do we how do we as an or as a community, as an organization, as a partnership have conversations about our face moments where our new members are bristling at some of our cultural practices that seem outdated?

46:53it. Right? And that's not a conversation for everyone. But beginning to have group intelligence is to ask every single time first, what is the need here?

47:02Jonathan Fields: So I guess my curiosity is, what's the question beneath the question there? Because I would imagine if you just go to the group or you go to the individual and say, well, what is the need here? You're going to get a whole lot of confusion. How do we actually get to that? What's the question underneath that that actually elicits what the real need is so that you have something tangible to respond to. There's different ways you can ask the question. I call it the craft of excavation. And this is really for, I would say, larger groups. This is for, it could be something like you have a family reunion and you've been coming together for in the same way or Thanksgiving, you've been coming together in the same way for a decade.

47:48And it's, there's enough people are feeling that this is no longer really working, but feeling like kicking the, you know, what is it kicking the wasp's nest is like, but it's also not worth suggesting we no longer have it at grandma's house. You know, like, it's, this is good for comp, like semi complex groups, where again, you care about something, but but something's not going well. And one of the problems, one of the challenges of group fights is when you start talking about it, it will grow. right? And so each of these things as a conduct resolution facilitator needs to be done with a lot of care.

48:22And so part of the first question is really what is like, what is the I mean, what I asked again, and again, it's like, what is the deepest need? And I asked this to different parts of the group, what do you think the actual need is here? And sometimes we engage in this process of ritual asking, like, what is your, what is the need of the group? What is the need of and people may say like, I don't know, is the need of the group to have more trust? Is it to change how we gather? Is it to not be totally boring? But you hear all of these answers. And then but part of what you sort of have to dig and dig and dig.

49:00But then you need to dig with care and in a way that builds trust. So the so first is, what are you asking people? Say you're trying to reimagine your family's Passover or your Thanksgiving or some some kind of family reunion, where clearly it's no longer working, whether it's because of the setup, whether it's because of how you do it, but you don't want to lose it altogether. Where and how do you begin to, with care, sort of dig and figure out, can we change this ship? So first, what is being asked? Like, what are you actually asking people? The second is who's asking, right? For in a, let's say it's an extended family, or if it's an organization, different people have different levels of trust, right?

49:38Different people have different social capital. So who's actually doing the asking? Is it a beloved? Is it someone beloved? Is it someone no one trusts? Is it an outsider? Is it an insider? Who is actually being asked? So one of the things I write about in the book is called the dotted line problem, which is like who is actually part of a group. So when I asked different members of like a friend group that it was exploding after 30 years, everyone's well, you know, she sort of left in college and was no longer part of a group or like, actually, well, she moved out of the country. So never, but is she part of the group, right?

50:10We're in an organization like, well, are the consultants part of a group? So who is actually part of the group? What is who's being asked? And how's it going to be asked? And then what's happening with that information? And so part of the excavation process is if you are thinking it like a facilitator, this is what we do in organizations. But then I have this interlude that basically talks about the power of gossip. And that in many families and many communities, we think again, like conflict, that all gossip is bad. And so part also of holding this with care is really thinking about what conversations do we need to have in order to change something we all care about?

50:48Jonathan Fields: I mean, that all lands in a lot of the questions that you just offered, I think, are super important. And while the questions seem fairly straightforward, answering them may not be quite so straightforward. Like, who do we actually ask here? Huh. Maybe I actually need to take a beat to think about that. But I wonder if in the heat of conflict, you just want to get to it so quickly that you're just like, who's the person? Oh, it's that person. It's the oldest. It's the most senior. Rather than just sort of like breathing for a moment and saying, like, who really who really breath is conflict in every stage yeah that makes so much sense um the last phase is really interesting cleave right um it is the aftermath and a what's often known as a contronym right it's a word that means multiple things and can mean multiple actions or decisions in this context.

51:51Jonathan Fields: Take me a little bit into that. I love this word, cleave. And a contronym is a word that contains within it its opposite. So cleave means both to cut and it means to bind or to cling to. And so the final third of the book is called cleave. I was so pleased, you know, as a writer, I was like, that word really works. And so the final third of the book is really looking at the life cycle of a group, which is what actually happens once you've gone through this fight, once you've decided to face, once you kind of do the facing and you come out of it, everyone's maybe a little bit raw or sore, or maybe people feel incredibly relieved.

52:32What do you what what then? And then in most particularly for for for conflicts, you come out and particularly if people have been altered by the conversation, right, you've actually been changed or you've been moved or you've been some new information has come to the surface that you didn't realize then there's this question which is do we stay and change or do we close or as an individual do I exit and so part of this sort of aftermath is um is first is actually meaning making again our saying at the very beginning we're terrified of conflict and think like this is really dysfunctional. But actually, right after a fight, it can also feel again, like, why did I do that is I Brene Brown, you know, has this term vulnerability hangover, we can also have conflict hangovers and feel like, Oh, that was such a mistake.

53:23Why did we even touch it? That is a normal thing. I whenever I work in groups or organizations, I always say, like, within the next three days, you're gonna have deep regret. And then it'll pass, right? It's like, it's a very, very normal feeling. And so in that in that for in that phase after I talk a lot about holding the aftermath and doing a lot of meaning making, helping people like frame what they did as courageous, and as an act of investment in each other, and as an act of leadership, and as an act of understanding how to have healthier relationships and skills. But then you kind of come to a moment and you have to sort of decide like, as an individual, like, do I am I is this still does this group still hold water for me.

54:04One of the characters, one of the people I write about in this book is a woman who was part of a taiko drumming circle for more than a decade. And for a decade, it was like it became sort of the center of her life. And as she thought about it and why she joined it, she thought it wasn't just about the taiko, it was about all of the questions that this group as a dance troupe had to ask together that were the questions she held. What should their costumes look like? Which was actually a really interesting question for her to ask of what does it mean to be an Asian woman? What does it mean to present?

54:43What does it mean to do this really masculine, physically demanding sport? What should they wear? And as she went through this entire life cycle of 10 years of this group, and the group goes into a lot of conflict, which I talk about in the book, she finally comes out of the other side. And she realizes that as the group has changed, they're now holding different questions. And that's okay. The questions that are holding are much more about externally oriented. They're about social justice. They're about the projects they want to do in the community. And again, that was okay. She said, their questions weren't my questions.

55:19And part of what I found in this group in this research is that part of modern life, and I said this earlier, is like we actually get to choose our groups. Like one of the wildest things of modern life is most of us choose the groups we belong to. We choose where we work. We choose who we want to work with. We choose who we wed, right? We're exiting and entering institutions of faith. And part of modern groups that actually last don't often have shared identities. They have shared questions. And so whether it's a tech company that is in there that is asking a set of shared questions, whether it's a church, churches have all sorts of different questions, meaning some churches are asking, you know, how do we serve the community?

56:11And other churches are asking, how do we find personal liberation? And other questions, like the different institutions are holding different questions. And so a good question at the end is, are these questions still my questions? And do I have the Hindi word man here? Do I again, it's sort of like a relation along in but it's like, do I still have, is there still a motivating force here? Is there still, is there still, is there still an urge to kind of be part of this group? Or has my time subsided? And then in the final parts of the book, I talk a lot about how to close well and how to end well.

56:43But also, when there has been deep conflict, how to repair and how to restore and how I actually think this is one of the most interesting questions that we have, which is when in a group, we're asking people to play new roles. how do we help them get there if if my idea of a father you know i'm metaphorically a father is somebody who is takes their kid to soccer practice on saturdays at 10 a.m and it's clear that like that is no longer the definition of what we want the father to be in this family where and how do we help that dad play a role that he never saw his dad play, right? If we are reimagining what it means to be a quote unquote, good partner at a firm, and for 40 years, a partner with somebody who gave their entire life to work, and was also disproportionately a married man of a certain, you know, race and ethnicity, and over 40 years, that has radically changed.

57:47And we need to reimagine what a good partner is. I'm saying that in quotes. How do we actually help if you want to change? How do you reimagine and help people into new roles? And that is one of we I think that is one of our most relevant questions as a country. I think that's one of the most relevant questions in any institution, which is how do we when we realize that we need to change, and people want to stay? How do we help ourselves into the new roles that make sense for the world we live in now.

58:18Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, that lands so powerfully and I completely agree. It's often not even an afterthought. It's not even a thought. You know, we're sort of like, let's say, you know, like we're moving into this mode of conflict. There's this triggering event. There's the rupture. There's the tear you described. We do the work to get really clear about what is it, what's really happening here. We grapple with it. Like what are the needs really defining? What are we actually fighting about? We do the work to get the clarity to really surface the assumptions so that the implicit becomes explicit. And we get to a point where we have what we need for everybody to either agree or disagree.

58:56Jonathan Fields: Are we moving forward together or are we not moving together? Are we like the cleaving? Are we binding or are we saying goodbye? But if we choose to bind, to stay together, this is the one part, right? Because it's sort of like, are you in or you're out? Well, I'm in. But what if you don't have the skills or the practices or the history or the ability to understand how to be in in the new shape of this community of this this relationship and that i agree i think that's so often where we fall down on a large scale but also small scale that's exactly right and and and then when i mean this is like i would say with adult relationships with their you know aging parents where and how do we want to spend time together what creates meaning in that time together how do we structure it in a way that you feel like it's nurturing and then the other person be like what do you mean it's not nurturing what do you mean i'm not you know and and part of you know all of all of life all of group life all of relational life is like i particularly in modern life choosing choosing to bridge across difference when you want to still be in connection.

1:00:14And so even with my father as my, you know, I now have children, school-aged children. And I think this is true in many families. Like, there's a lot of difference between 70 and 80-year-olds and, you know, 10 and 12-year-olds today. And so thinking about clearing, also clear, like, part of what happened when I could have that fight about my step-sister in law was I didn't, is that actually by me saying my circle is not your circle. It actually cleared a pathway for the future ways we spend time together. So I wasn't continuing to have a fight or an assumption that every time we spent time together, his quote unquote circle of 11 needed to be my circle of nine, right?

1:01:04So Leanne Davies calls this not passing on conflict debt, right? It was as we have the fights, we're not passing on our debt to all of these other unfought fights, where then every single time you're sort of sitting there and not exactly happy with what's going on because you actually, it's almost like you get like plugged up, you know, constipated, conflict constipated. We're coining it here. But a huge part of what I'm now able to have with my father is like both of us have changed a bit. And he also realizes that like, oh, there's new ways to people spend time together. And I also know what he values and I think about it.

1:01:45And I, in a way, have to replace it with something, right? Something fun, something meaningful. So he actually experiences a different way of spending time together.

1:01:58Jonathan Fields: yeah that completely lands you know one of the things that strikes me about um it's funny i want to call a new body of work but it's really it's really an interesting extension of the art of gathering you know is that it's it's ultimately a tool set and a love letter to what it actually means to show up for someone not just in the good moments um but in the ones where everything is on the table um to the framework the ideas um yes they're about conflict um it's also about you know like what it takes to to stay in genuine relationship with another person maybe a community a group over time no matter what um and to keep surfacing what's often never surfaced and to say in conflict, there's also love, which I think is sparring to so many of us.

1:02:55Beautifully said.

1:02:57Jonathan Fields: Nah. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. I have asked you this question, but it was eight years ago or so, so I'm going to ask it again. You've changed the world, has changed in this container of good life project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life. What comes up? Is to... be in authentic, relevant, delightful connection with each other. Thank you. Thank you so much. So let's talk about some of the big ahas and takeaways from this combo. One thing I'm really thinking about is how much of what we call peace is actually just abandonment that we've agreed not to name.

1:03:40Jonathan Fields: Priya's tear, grapple, cleave framework. It gave me language for something that I have felt but never really mapped. The tear is the rupture. The grapple is the real work of finding the need underneath it. And the cleave is the part that nobody talks about, deciding whether to stay changed or you just close the door. And that phrase, relational belonging, that kind of pulse that says, I still want to be in this with you, even when everything on the surface says otherwise, that's a thing worth listening for before you decide a relationship or a group is done. So maybe this week, if there's a small friction that you've been sidestepping with someone that you actually want to keep in your life, don't smooth it over.

1:04:24Jonathan Fields: Ask what's underneath it. That's the whole practice. Hey, before you leave next week, we're sitting down with Shane Parrish to talk about why the way most of us make big decisions is quietly working against us and the small repeatable shifts that can really change that. So be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any future episodes. And do me a quick favor, share this conversation with just one person, or maybe leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us get discovered and reach more people. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young, Chris Carter crafted our theme music.

1:05:05Jonathan Fields: And of course, if you haven't already, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

1:05:24Jonathan Fields: This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. Good Life Project is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. So here's something I find genuinely fascinating. The places where exceptional design shows up where you least expect it, where someone decided that an everyday object, something completely ordinary, deserve the same level of intention and craft as anything else in your life.

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