Culture Study Podcast - Fighting is an Art. Here's How To Get Better At It.

00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone. So we have a quick list of the episodes we're working on so that you can submit

00:00:05.920 your questions. We have two different episodes about influencers, but they're going to be pretty

00:00:10.700 different. One is about influencer culture in general, like what have you noticed? What's

00:00:16.820 confusing you? How is the industry shifting? And then the other one is specifically about

00:00:22.560 journal influencers. So this is the self-styled independent creators delivering news on social

00:00:28.720 media with or without traditional journalism training or any journalism training. So what are

00:00:35.360 you observing? What do you see going on? What are you excited about or scared about? We can talk

00:00:40.000 about all of it. And then finally, we're having our friend Alyssa Morris back to talk about book

00:00:45.080 trends. What are you seeing on shelves, at book covers, on social media, or in your own book club

00:00:50.980 that is raising questions? As always, you can submit your questions at tinyurl.com slash

00:00:57.580 culturestudypod. That's also where you can submit questions and prompts for our subscriber-only

00:01:01.960 segment, Ask Anne Anything. We always need those questions, so please submit away. Thank you so

00:01:08.960 much for your help, and now enjoy today's show. This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne

00:01:22.120 Helen Peterson. And I'm Priya Parker. I'm the author of The Art of Gathering and now The Art

00:01:28.080 of Fighting. A lot of people in this community are very familiar with The Art of Gathering.

00:01:34.400 And I think that like it's following it up with The Art of Fighting, some people like the immediate

00:01:39.680 reaction is like, oh, well, isn't that like contrary or, you know, different? And then you

00:01:48.060 think about it for like one more minute you're like yeah yeah that's usually the problem with

00:01:53.860 like sustaining gatherings is not that we fight and you get to this so like all over the place

00:02:01.660 it's that we are like very bad at fighting and don't think of it as an art or we avoid fighting

00:02:08.280 altogether? Most of us are terrible at fighting. And when the heat kind of rises, we oscillate

00:02:17.760 between unhealthy peace, sort of avoidance, pretending nothing's wrong, hoping it'll go

00:02:24.840 away, and escalating and oscillating to the other side, which is unhealthy heat, right?

00:02:32.720 dominance, cancellation, abuse, you know, insults. And I'm a conflict resolution facilitator.

00:02:42.680 And I was a conflict resolution facilitator when I wrote The Art of Gathering also. Like

00:02:47.000 underneath The Art of Gathering is actually, it's a book about group dynamics. And I wanted to

00:02:53.520 write a book that, like The Art of Gathering, is helping us figuring out our loneliness.

00:03:02.720 epidemic. Right. And figuring out how to connect and figuring out how to have relevant,

00:03:09.060 meaningful moments with the people in our lives. And I think about this all the time about how,

00:03:14.600 like, sometimes you will find a group, whether it's a friend's, whether it's community,

00:03:18.440 and it will feel magical at first. And then, like, whether it's because people start to burn out or

00:03:26.220 you hit, like, something that causes some sort of, like, disagreement about how to handle it.

00:03:31.320 Even people who really respect and cherish one another, if you don't know how to fight, you burst apart.

00:03:39.700 Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, groups can't form without a fight.

00:03:45.200 Yeah.

00:03:45.520 And that's like that's group dynamic theory.

00:03:48.720 There's actually it's like a very nerdy four phase model that groups go through to form a fight.

00:03:56.160 And the first is form. The second is to storm.

00:04:00.040 So exactly as you say, when a group comes together, it can be for a trivia night.

00:04:03.740 It can be for a film clump.

00:04:05.380 It can be for a book club.

00:04:06.760 Very controversial spaces.

00:04:08.480 Yes.

00:04:09.460 Right?

00:04:09.900 And then eventually, actually in every group, if it lasts, there's a period of ensuing conflict.

00:04:17.140 This is like documented research, ensuing conflict.

00:04:19.900 And you're like, what's wrong?

00:04:20.860 Why is this happening?

00:04:22.040 Why is it getting so tense?

00:04:22.800 Well, actually, a group has to storm in order to actually norm and then perform.

00:04:32.380 So form, storm, norm, perform.

00:04:34.800 Basically, all of us, we're different from each other in a thousand different ways.

00:04:38.800 We come together.

00:04:39.700 We have a good time.

00:04:40.860 Because if you're not having a good time, you're not going to want to keep doing it.

00:04:43.780 And then at some point, just like in a romantic relationship, you kind of need to DTR.

00:04:47.760 Yeah.

00:04:48.200 Right?

00:04:48.500 What are we doing here?

00:04:49.340 How often are we meeting?

00:04:50.500 Who's in charge?

00:04:51.480 Whose house is that?

00:04:52.300 How do we choose the books? How long are they? What happens if you don't read the books? What happens? Right. All of the normal things of the wear and tear of human beings. Yeah. But when we don't actually treat conflict as normal or we assume it's all dysfunctional. Yeah. We don't have the skills or even the kind of diagnostic tools to understand why this is happening. And it's leaving our communities fragile and flat.

00:05:20.680 I especially love that this comes from you as a self-described third generation conflict avoidant person. So can you talk a little bit about how you understood conflict growing up and how you even arrived at the place where you wanted to become someone who would become a mediator?

00:05:41.380 I think the first sentence of The Art of Fighting is something like, I became a conflict resolution facilitator not because I'm fearless, but because I hate conflict.

00:05:53.780 And, you know, interestingly, with The Art of Gathering, I, my first book, I interviewed people who other people described as amazing gatherers, teachers, rabbis, choir conductors, and many of them identified, self-identified as introverts.

00:06:10.520 and I thought this was interesting and I asked one of them you know what do you why do you think

00:06:16.980 this is and she said I am so uncomfortable at most of the gatherings I attend and so I decided

00:06:24.060 to kind of do it my way and start hosting gatherings that I'm comfortable at where I

00:06:30.540 focus on structure and context and meaning and escape hatches and other people seem to like it

00:06:37.500 And similarly, I found I'm not the only conflict-averse facilitator out there. When we are bad at something, we seek out the skills to get better at something. And as a young person, I'm half Indian, half white American. I don't remember ever seeing my parents fight. And yet they, when I was in third grade, announced that they were getting separated.

00:07:02.740 And I was shocked. I was devastated. I was also shocked because they never fought. And so I learned early on that there's great loss and avoidance. And that avoidance is also action.

00:07:18.820 I think some people, you know, will say, well, my parents did fight a lot. And that's the reason I hate fighting, because it would get vicious. Like, it was people who, you know, were not artful in any capacity in the way that they were fighting. They were hostile, mean, power hungry, would pick people's vulnerabilities and exploit them.

00:07:39.960 Totally. Nasty. 1.00

00:07:41.600 Manipulative. 1.00

00:07:42.160 Manipulative.

00:07:42.580 Yeah.

00:07:42.840 Totally.

00:07:43.180 Horrible. And I totally understand that aversion.

00:07:46.020 Absolutely. I mean, I have that aversion. I mean, I would categorize that. I mean, I would categorize that.

00:07:48.800 whereas that is unhealthy heat. And by the way, whether you're conflict-averse or conflict-seeking

00:07:55.760 does not make you necessarily an artful fighter. Just because you're conflict-seeking

00:08:03.120 doesn't mean you're good at it.

00:08:07.320 Right. Before we started recording, we were talking about your recent interview with the

00:08:12.680 New York Times, in which you talk about how this often takes place in workplace dynamics and in

00:08:18.560 places like Slack, right? And you mentioned that in every workplace there is often, I can't remember

00:08:24.760 the name you used for it, a person who just goes in there and stirs the pot. A conflict entrepreneur.

00:08:31.620 Conflict entrepreneur. It's so good. It's actually, it's Amanda Ripley's term, a conflict

00:08:36.800 entrepreneur. So that, yeah, just because you're an entrepreneur doesn't mean that you're an

00:08:41.640 artful fighter. Exactly. And just because you're sort of like, if tension rises, you're like up for

00:08:46.060 it. That also doesn't necessarily mean you're skilled. It might mean that you need to do

00:08:50.580 different things in order to have a good fight. But we tend to either exist in unhealthy peace

00:08:58.300 or flip to unhealthy heat. And part of what I wanted to look at with our friend groups and

00:09:05.300 our communities and our churches and our workplaces is how do you fight with the people you want to

00:09:10.960 belong to. Yeah. Right. And you do have to have and this is the hard thing, I think, when we think

00:09:20.220 about conflict in especially the United States right now, but in a lot of places, is that you

00:09:24.860 do want to have to belong. Right. Yes. Like you do want to be friends. You want you want to love

00:09:31.300 these people. And right now, I think that there is a real I think the phrase you use is that we

00:09:37.020 have fallen out of love with many, many others. And this book is not about, you know, screaming

00:09:43.220 at strangers on the internet. It's really, it's actually starting with the most intimate, which is

00:09:48.260 the people you want you're in relationship with. I mean, and I don't mean romantically necessarily.

00:09:53.960 I really, I'm really looking at the skills we need in order to have a vibrant post-fight

00:10:01.780 connection. And so much of what we're taught is honestly that conflict is bad.

00:10:10.320 Yeah. Right. That is dysfunctional. Yeah. Many of the groups, you know, when I get a phone call

00:10:16.300 from an organization or even a friend, there's so much embarrassment and shame. You know,

00:10:21.680 we're so dysfunctional. Like, I'm so sorry. Like, this is so embarrassing. And in part because we

00:10:27.520 actually have a wrong story about conflicts there is dysfunctional conflict but actually that there's

00:10:32.620 also highly functional conflict meaning it serves a purpose it helps us it you know the way i think

00:10:39.040 of conflict or come to think of it as conflict i think of it as heat yeah and i think of it as

00:10:44.220 relevance right people don't fight about the things they don't care about yeah yeah so if

00:10:49.260 you're able to just kind of like zoom out slightly and it's hard when you're in it

00:10:53.800 Yeah.

00:10:54.380 But to just slightly look and be like, oh, we're touching on things that people care about.

00:10:59.980 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:00.800 I sometimes think about that, like, when something feels awkward, when I'm having a reaction, right, to something that someone has said to me that feels a little off or that someone has texted me, say, or an email that someone has sent me.

00:11:14.920 I'm like, why is this making me feel this way?

00:11:18.000 It's because, like you said, it's touching on something that matters to me.

00:11:22.240 So how do I think about how I want to react to that?

00:11:25.600 All that sort of thing.

00:11:26.640 Yes.

00:11:26.780 And, you know, you are the person we got a lot of questions today about how to fight

00:11:30.280 with significant others, how to just fight generally, how to fight in the workplace or

00:11:34.180 at least navigate conflict in the workplace.

00:11:36.360 And I love that, like, you are a person who has thought so broadly about these issues

00:11:41.820 and spoken to so many different people about gathering in so many different capacities,

00:11:47.500 right?

00:11:47.680 Like religious capacities, community capacities, book clubs, all the places that you talked about.

00:11:53.360 But then you also talk to a lot of people in businesses who are trying to figure this stuff out.

00:11:59.160 Because that's our lives, right?

00:12:01.040 We have to do all of these different capacities.

00:12:05.400 And in a way, actually, to me, businesses are the place where this work can be most easily applied.

00:12:13.700 Yeah. Agreed.

00:12:14.640 Because you tend to have a defined team or defined community.

00:12:21.500 You tend to have a shared purpose.

00:12:23.820 You tend to have defined roles.

00:12:25.780 All of the elements that end up, you know, friend groups or institutions are sort of

00:12:29.820 more nebulous.

00:12:31.120 And teams also have the ability to create their own subcultures.

00:12:35.080 So we may be really dysfunctional on how we fight out there, but really good managers

00:12:39.640 can create teams through training and skills and practice that can hold healthy heat. I'm actually

00:12:47.160 the most hopeful to have this applied in businesses. I'm very excited to talk about

00:12:53.160 managers, good managers, and how they work their way through this. But let's start with our

00:12:57.820 questions, and then we're going to arrive there. So first one comes from Lila, and it's about

00:13:03.340 fighting with a parent. This is so good. I struggle to fight with my dad, who has never

00:13:08.360 in all of my 36 years of fighting with him admitted that he is or has ever been wrong.

00:13:14.380 Most of what we fight about is either his behavior or mine. We're lucky to have the

00:13:18.440 same politics. It's taken me a long time to unlearn the kind of close-minded, brute force

00:13:23.840 arguing that I learned from my family, and I'm still working on it. How can I help my dad see

00:13:29.780 my side of things without taking on the same bad behaviors he does when we argue?

00:13:35.180 What does this make you think about?

00:13:36.560 It makes me think about the work of Jack Shatama.

00:13:40.740 And Jack is a minister, a Japanese-American, and he wrote this wonderful book.

00:13:47.000 It's almost a sleeve of a book that has the best title ever, which is,

00:13:50.800 If You Met My Family, You'd Understand.

00:13:54.740 Love it. Love it.

00:13:56.720 And I think the subtitle is A Family Systems Primer.

00:13:59.240 When I listen to Lila, I think of Shatama's work because he describes every group, every system, every relationship really as having what he calls surrounding togetherness pressure.

00:14:14.640 And he says groups can't function without this, right?

00:14:18.680 You know, the layman may call it a culture, right?

00:14:21.820 But surrounding togetherness pressure.

00:14:23.640 And he says, when in a group, particularly in a family, when you start to get older or you start to kind of, you know, develop who you are as an individual, there's a there's a there for all of us, there's a moment in which particularly if you are different in some way from that surrounding togetherness pressure, it can be really difficult.

00:14:42.400 And the advice he gives is to practice what he calls non-anxious presence.

00:14:50.120 And he says non-anxious presence, it's actually a physical practice, but it's the ability to be in a surrounding togetherness pressure in a group or a community that you love or a part of and be able to be who you are, differentiated in a room, without either exiting or attacking.

00:15:12.400 it's not anxious presence but it's also non-anxious it's also not non-anxious absence

00:15:19.680 i don't need those people and part of what he does and he's a wonderful newsletter is he

00:15:25.780 he actually works with church leaders and i've seen him write that one non-anxious presence

00:15:31.620 in a family system even even if you just physically shift because there's two parts

00:15:37.520 of her question. I think it was, how can I help him see my side of things without taking on the

00:15:43.580 same bad behaviors he does when we argue? And I think what Shatama would say would to back into

00:15:50.100 it and focus on the second part of that goal, not the first. Don't worry about him seeing your side

00:15:55.000 of things. But see if you can not mirror his bad behaviors, but practice instead being a non-anxious

00:16:04.600 presence when you interact with him? I've tried this, I think, in some capacities.

00:16:14.300 And sometimes the other person reacts. They're so used to you fighting back

00:16:18.900 the way that you fight back or the way that they fight. Like in this, I could see like

00:16:24.000 you like trying this, right? You're like, oh, you're trying something new, huh? You're trying

00:16:28.300 something new? Fancy behavior you got there. Yeah. Seriously, they're like, oh, did your

00:16:32.540 therapists teach you that, right? No, I got it on culture study, okay?

00:16:39.040 Priya Parker taught me. So, like, but I also think that maybe that opens up a conversation.

00:16:46.480 Maybe. Yes, maybe it can open up a conversation. You know, part of the offer of The Art of Fighting

00:16:51.600 is I'm trying to, as the somatic coach Jennifer Ionello says, expand our range of options.

00:16:59.520 I'm trying to expand our range of options, myself included.

00:17:02.640 So part of this, another way, you know, going in to interact with an adult parent when you're an adult is also ahead of time, you know, pausing and asking, what is my need here?

00:17:17.680 What is my intention?

00:17:19.380 What kind of relationship do I want to have with my dad?

00:17:22.160 And I might suggest to Lila sometimes, and, you know, I'm a conflict resolution facilitator.

00:17:27.880 one of the one of my mentor Hal Saunders said to me early on and my peers don't become a sustained

00:17:34.200 dialogue salesperson don't assume that dialogue is always what is needed sometimes what a community

00:17:41.640 needs is a soccer match sometimes what they need is a party and so my assumption like if I was to

00:17:49.300 talk Lila as I like listen to your wonderful question that I think a lot of people could 0.98

00:17:53.260 relate to what if you changed how you spent time with your dad yeah yeah yeah have a fucking blast 0.56

00:17:58.560 with him like literally shift it up do things that aren't necessarily about argumentation 0.58

00:18:04.120 we can keep going but i have an example of a father-daughter pair yeah that's totally shifted

00:18:09.700 this yeah so a guy i know we'll call him brian he went through a divorce and uh it was as it

00:18:17.920 always is hard on hard on the kids and for a number of years he had a he had a really hard

00:18:22.680 relationship with his daughter and every time they would sort of get into it he would gently

00:18:28.540 suggest therapy and she would reject it you're not gonna you know you don't get a call this

00:18:35.300 we're not gonna do your therapy and this is a few summers ago it was uh he became during the

00:18:42.100 pandemic he became an a taylor swift fan and he was like surprised himself he became a serious

00:18:48.560 like many people a Tara Swift fan. And during the Ayers tour, his daughter suggested they go to her

00:18:55.720 Chicago concert. And he was really surprised and he thought, and they don't live in Chicago. And

00:19:01.680 he thought, okay, let's do it. And for the, as he described it to me, for the period coming up to

00:19:06.620 the concert, they were texting each other about their outfits. They were, they were, they were

00:19:11.720 listening to songs again. They were wondering what her Easter eggs would be. They, they got

00:19:16.600 onto a different track of conversation of dialogue of warmth they change their frequency

00:19:23.580 they go to the concert it's so moving it's cathartic they both know all of the lyrics to

00:19:29.400 all of the songs and i think there's a song as a non-swifty there's a song that has the lyrics so

00:19:34.200 we're never getting back together again yeah yeah and they were both you know crying and

00:19:40.260 scraping those words out and as he said to me it was like it was the first time i could

00:19:44.220 see the divorce through her eyes oh and we went i wept and i and it and it was a it was a massive

00:19:52.840 collective non-rational ritual yeah he described it as like being part of a pack of female howling

00:19:58.440 wolves yeah and then they came back and it and it it was water on parched earth yeah i i think that

00:20:08.220 like i don't know exactly how old this question asker is but our audience a lot of our audience

00:20:13.620 is in their 30s and 40s. And I think that a lot of us find ourselves in these ruts with our parents

00:20:19.860 where, like, you have the same conversations. Yes. And you, like, you have the same, like,

00:20:27.400 you're visiting, right? I'm putting visiting in quotes. Yes. Yes. And that, like,

00:20:33.440 and you just, you kind of, like, find yourself in the same fighting behaviors. And so I love

00:20:39.380 that suggestion to, like, take a completely different road, right? What if you went and

00:20:45.300 volunteered together, right? Yes. There's so many things that you can de-center it away from

00:20:50.900 we're just having this same old fight in the same old way. Yes. It's also a lot. Like,

00:20:57.340 dialogue is one form of connection. Not everyone's good at it. Like,

00:21:01.600 this is one of many tools of connection. I had a friend who last Thanksgiving was nervous about

00:21:07.260 bringing together all of her in-laws for thanksgiving and she's get and also like didn't 0.73

00:21:11.620 want everyone to be drinking for like eight hours until before the meal and so she scheduled

00:21:16.080 i love this so much a group sound bath

00:21:19.740 i love it right they literally sat together for an hour and a half in silence

00:21:29.220 and so this these creative ways like all of the we get stuck and so even things like asking them

00:21:37.000 what I call a magical question at the dinner table that totally changes the vibe, even if

00:21:42.100 it feels a little structured or formal. It's like we become so flat to each other and we need to

00:21:47.520 change how we spend time together. Do other people have to like be on board with things

00:21:51.880 to make them work? Like do other people need to have read The Art of Fighting, right, in order

00:21:57.180 to implement these suggestions? And I think the sound bath connects with this, right? Because I

00:22:03.260 could see a scenario where maybe your brother who's here with like the Thanksgiving is rolling

00:22:10.760 his eyes and it's like oh are we doing this and it just makes you feel like I'm just trying dude

00:22:17.600 I'm just trying totally yeah you do not need to read the art of fighting to try these techniques

00:22:22.360 but as I write in the art of fighting you do need to find what I call a hypoallergenic intervention

00:22:30.020 you need to so the second third of the book is called the grapple and it's basically setting up

00:22:36.100 the facing and part of what and i as a convict facilitator do this like i think of myself more

00:22:41.860 if i'm working with an organization or group that's in some kind of reckoning and i and my

00:22:45.900 peers are trying to figure out like what's going to take right and instead of thinking like a doctor

00:22:50.820 of surgery we think of ourselves almost more of as acupuncturists trying to figure out what's the

00:22:55.460 right size needle and where in the body you're going to put it and is it going to take yeah and

00:22:59.560 And so you do need buy-in, but there's so many creative ways to get buy-in, right?

00:23:05.060 It's maybe finding one or two of the people who also like sound baths or it's seeding it beforehand or it's surprising to people that aren't going to be – you know, you only know your context and your family.

00:23:17.520 So, yeah, you're going to have the most beautiful solution in the world.

00:23:20.460 It's not – if people spit it out.

00:23:21.760 This is, by the way, true about gathering, too.

00:23:23.660 Right.

00:23:23.940 It's not going to work.

00:23:24.960 Right.

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00:27:00.900 Let's talk about this next question from Julie, which is we're moving into the workspace now.

00:27:05.120 I'd love to hear more about how men and women disagree fruitfully, especially in corporate America.

00:27:12.260 Is there a way to be female and disagree with men without being made out into a bitch and or having to do a bunch of code switching and or mental gymnastics to bring male stakeholders along for the conversation and eventual outcome? 0.84

00:27:28.760 Such a good question. 0.99

00:27:30.140 It's such a good question. Such a good question.

00:27:33.340 It just reminds me.

00:27:33.980 Hear the exhaustion in Julie's voice.

00:27:36.160 Yes, 100%. One of my dear friends who is a straightforward communicator, who other people in her workplace, this is actually she worked with all other women, other women in her workplace, this is like a nonprofit sphere, we're like, she's bitchy. 1.00

00:27:49.800 So she had to start adding smile emojis at the end of like every single email, every text, right?

00:27:57.800 And this was part of like her coaching from her manager to try to make her seem less confrontational when really she was just being what I understand is direct. So I know you see this all the time and I would love to hear your thoughts here.

00:28:13.900 First of all, it can be exhausting to feel like one, whether it's a woman, whether you're a person of color in a primarily white space, basically when you're a non-dominant entity in a traditional workspace of a different identity and different cultural mores.

00:28:35.440 And I think leaders can do things to shift small group cultures so that women wouldn't necessarily have to contort themselves into these gender, you know, quote unquote gender dynamics.

00:28:53.280 And, like, studies have shown for years, if you read so many different HBS case studies, you put a real, real, real case study.

00:29:03.160 You put a case study and you tell the class that this is a man, the CEO is a man, and then you put the same case study and you tell the class the CEO is a woman.

00:29:15.680 and you ask the class to describe the adjectives when it's they think it's a man the primary

00:29:24.980 adjectives are things like don't quote me but i'm summarizing yeah um visionary you know uh

00:29:31.460 innovative direct and when it's a woman it's you know manipulative you know uh power hungry 0.79

00:29:40.260 bitchy power hungry aggressive yeah yeah ambitious is a bad word so different places different 0.90

00:29:47.400 cultures different businesses are different and when you are choosing to enter a workplace 0.95

00:29:52.980 all of us are looking to see what makes us successful here like humans are smart and every

00:30:01.140 workplace has a culture and so if you find yourself in a workplace in which these dynamics

00:30:06.040 are happening you know my best advice is to find your female and male allies who are able to see

00:30:14.500 some of this and to create a culture in which you're counterbalancing it i mean part of the

00:30:22.280 art of fighting is i think of it as a group help book not a self-help book yeah and i think part 0.99

00:30:29.980 of the like women having to contort themselves continues to put the onus on the individual 0.98

00:30:34.960 woman each time. And part of what I'm inviting us to look at is these are cultures. And if you

00:30:43.080 ask one individual woman to, you know, behave differently in a culture in which that behavior

00:30:49.620 is not rewarded, she's not going to be rewarded. And so these are culture shifts that if you are

00:30:56.060 listening and you're a manager or you're a leader and you're thinking about how do you reward healthy

00:31:00.020 heat, you need to create a subculture to train, to skill up, to look at, okay, in this meeting,

00:31:06.280 by the way, this is why rituals help. In this meeting, these are the ground rules. These are

00:31:10.740 how we're going to expect people to behave. We're going to go around and everyone's going to get a

00:31:15.020 moment to say their idea. Then they're also going to get a moment to critique their idea.

00:31:18.800 I mean, the reasons we have structure and design at some level is to not just let

00:31:23.100 willy-nilly happen, right? It's to actually help us have the structure that gets the group to the

00:31:27.720 best outcome. So you mentioned manager here, and I know one of the things that you have pointed to

00:31:34.460 in terms of like what makes it hard, what makes conflict hard in the workplace is when the people

00:31:40.660 in power are not actually using their power, but they still have that power, right? So they have

00:31:46.360 the power to fire you or to give you a pep, like whatever, right? They have power over you in that 0.98

00:31:52.200 capacity, but then they're not wielding that power in a way like, say, running the actual

00:31:59.260 meeting and setting the ground rules and that sort of thing.

00:32:02.800 So, yeah, what is the role of the manager here?

00:32:05.100 What power do they need to be using in order to make disagreement possible?

00:32:09.920 So the art of gathering and the art of fighting are what I would call power literate books.

00:32:17.060 Yeah.

00:32:17.420 and in gathering one of the deepest dangers is a host doesn't think they actually have power

00:32:25.760 and so they under host right right the gathering someone gets stuck in the corner someone forever

00:32:31.400 because someone else right there's one volunteer that takes up all of the air supply because they

00:32:35.980 won't stop asking questions and like the host doesn't stop it yeah and so similarly with the

00:32:40.640 Art of Fighting, part of, for a manager, is to ask questions like, what is the need of this group?

00:32:49.380 Not just the individuals, right? And also for a manager, what is my conflict style?

00:32:56.360 And if you don't know, ask your direct reports. They do.

00:32:59.800 well so yeah i could also see a place here where the the manager maybe hears like let's say in this 1.00

00:33:10.200 this question we hear that um julia's like like everyone just makes me out like a bitch if i say 0.86

00:33:16.760 something critical like the manager can also praise yes this sort of feedback right to normalize it 0.89

00:33:24.800 And to, like, defing it, for lack of a better word.

00:33:27.840 Yes, thank you. Totally. Thank you for telling the truth.

00:33:30.620 I had a manager who called me up years ago and said, my team is suffering from, like, toxic positivity.

00:33:36.420 Yeah.

00:33:37.280 I can't, they, like, they won't tell me anything real. What do I do?

00:33:41.360 And she's like, do I stage a cage match?

00:33:43.260 I was like, no, no, no, no, no. You got to start, like, very, very basic and small.

00:33:47.920 And I said, you know, start, think about as you open your meeting, she had a weekly staff meeting.

00:33:52.660 I said, focus on that meeting and just change the first 5%.

00:33:55.200 And start by going around every week and just zip around.

00:34:00.120 It's a quick thing, five to seven minutes.

00:34:01.760 And everyone goes around and says their rose of the week.

00:34:04.360 Yeah.

00:34:05.560 And their thorn of a week.

00:34:07.080 Yeah.

00:34:07.800 Of the week, right?

00:34:08.580 It's a parenting technique. 0.99

00:34:09.980 And do it for 10 weeks in a row. 0.96

00:34:11.980 So she went, she did it.

00:34:13.440 I asked how it went 10 weeks later.

00:34:14.720 And she said, you know, in the beginning, some people inevitably loved it.

00:34:17.480 Some people were kind of rolling their eyes.

00:34:18.780 But like, we kept doing it.

00:34:20.240 that could be shared from work or not work.

00:34:23.120 So for different people,

00:34:24.500 sometimes sharing something at work was vulnerable.

00:34:27.460 For others, something at home was vulnerable.

00:34:29.140 And she just kept on doing it.

00:34:30.440 They got more and more used to it, right?

00:34:31.600 That's what I'm saying.

00:34:32.160 Set a norm.

00:34:32.720 Practice it.

00:34:33.660 And she said, by the fifth or sixth meeting,

00:34:36.240 the rest of the meeting began to change.

00:34:39.320 Huh.

00:34:41.220 Because we normalized thorns.

00:34:44.160 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:34:46.200 Right.

00:34:47.120 And also, the thing that this makes me think of,

00:34:49.500 and this goes to gathering components as well,

00:34:52.840 is that you're also made aware of like

00:34:55.060 when maybe someone's a little tender.

00:34:57.780 Yes, yes, yes.

00:35:00.420 Like whatever is going on in that way.

00:35:01.800 We know so little about each other, yes.

00:35:03.600 Part of, you know, connection and conflict

00:35:05.900 are so interlinked.

00:35:09.020 We think of conflict as this like other place

00:35:11.220 that's so sterile and we're just gonna like

00:35:12.900 get to the thing.

00:35:14.080 But actually the invitation to conflict

00:35:16.380 and healthy conflict and the invitation to connection

00:35:19.120 is actually widening the aperture of how we see each other and what we know about each other.

00:35:26.420 And in a workplace within appropriate range, but actually having more context, you know,

00:35:31.700 I often, even with teams, I have a sub stack called Group Life. And we, every month we do

00:35:39.200 like one webinar, I call it a group help lab. And one of the tools I keep coming back to over and

00:35:44.600 over again, I sound like a broken record, is to use these magical questions. And magical questions

00:35:49.300 are a question you ask in a group that the entire group, whether it's your family or a friend group

00:35:53.680 or colleagues, the entire, everyone in the group is interested in answering it, feels fun, feels

00:35:59.940 interesting, and interested in hearing everyone else's answers. And I keep coming back to this as

00:36:06.660 a management tool because there's so many things you can do with it if you start every Zoom or

00:36:11.140 teams each each meeting once a week five minutes and you just literally in the chat people need

00:36:16.680 you don't need to hear people's answers right what's the first concert you went to and who took

00:36:19.800 you and people drop it into the chat and by the way it's both for connection but it's also for

00:36:27.540 conflict because if you do this over and over again you start learning about different people

00:36:32.620 you can also rotate it so different people have to come up with and ask the magical questions

00:36:36.880 So it can become like a leadership skill, practice opening the meeting for five minutes, practice understanding what's a good question, what falls flat.

00:36:44.900 But the second thing is when the going gets tough, when a product fails, when like the data comes out and the sales data is down, whatever it is, and people are like, oh, you're like, you know what, I'll call her.

00:36:56.600 How about, you know, her first concert was a Toni Braxton concert.

00:37:01.220 Right?

00:37:01.680 How bad could she be?

00:37:02.740 You pick up the phone.

00:37:03.700 You have three other pieces.

00:37:05.340 It's not a trick.

00:37:06.140 Yeah.

00:37:06.420 Just widening the aperture of like being human together.

00:37:09.880 You know, this reminds me, though, of a lot of the discourse around like 2020, like COVID era work from home was around bringing the whole self to work.

00:37:20.220 Do you remember this?

00:37:21.580 And I think a lot of especially people who were doing a lot more caregiving or had a lot more responsibility that they were juggling on top of doing their work from home were like, 1.00

00:37:34.120 you don't want my whole fucking self totally my whole fucking self is a bitch like i don't want 0.98

00:37:39.840 to bring that whole self to work and totally yeah and and i'm so glad you brought that up 0.99

00:37:45.160 the key is what the question is and so the the discernment is again a group that a question

00:37:54.200 it's a relative definition that everyone in your group would be interested in answering and everyone

00:37:59.800 in your group would be hearing each other's answers. In a workplace, that is a narrower band

00:38:04.880 than if you're with your family or with your friends. And so it might be something more

00:38:09.680 related to if you have a conference of dentists. Yes. Right? Actually practicing. What's a magical

00:38:18.500 question you can ask them? And it could be like, what's the, you know, what's the strangest thing

00:38:24.960 you ever found in a mouth yeah totally totally interesting magical hilarious totally appropriate

00:38:31.100 this actually is keys in very well with uh how i think about the threads that we do on culture

00:38:38.520 study because some of them and some of them i think are like super fun like yes dad jokes like

00:38:45.200 what's the worst dad joke right yes yes that's all right your threads are these but i always have to

00:38:50.520 like and i think of this as a facilitator role i think of the worst possible outcome as well this

00:38:58.100 is a good practice so i say dad jokes i give an example but then i also say there is an easy

00:39:05.160 tendency for a dad joke to devolve into like because some dads are bigots we are not doing

00:39:11.560 bigoted or off-color jokes yeah so you're using your power as a host you're practicing generous

00:39:17.700 authority. You're giving the pop-up rules. You're modeling. You're also calling the red lines. And

00:39:23.520 I think your community and how you do facilitate it is one of the most vibrant, nuanced, context-rich

00:39:30.440 places where people also feel safe in complexity because of how you moderate.

00:39:35.580 Well, thank you. I do think about it a lot. And I think people doing these, like, sometimes I think

00:39:41.840 people, like, look up online like icebreakers and then put the first one in and think it's

00:39:46.600 gonna go you know what i mean they're like what would you be if you were a fruit and you're like

00:39:50.960 that's so so silly um and there there's a lot of potential the one i actually just put together

00:39:59.760 by the time this comes out it will have been a couple weeks in the past but it came from a 0.92

00:40:04.440 listener who uses it as an icebreaker at her um queer dating group essentially like it's a

00:40:11.840 like a place where you get together and have, I think, like speed dating almost. 0.69

00:40:16.580 And it's, what do you love spending money on?

00:40:21.820 That's a delicious question.

00:40:23.820 Right? And it's one of those things that you, at first you're like, oh, we shouldn't talk about money.

00:40:27.800 But it's actually, what gives you delight?

00:40:31.360 It could be something, like it could be penny candy, right?

00:40:34.220 Yes.

00:40:34.520 It could be. And the example that I used was, you know, I hate spending money on maintenance of anything, but I love spending money when like a group of people are coming to my house, like a bunch of kids were coming to my house for a week.

00:40:51.540 And I was like, I'm buying like a whole rack of Dr. Pepper. I'm buying popsicles. I'm getting so many lunch meats, like things that are spectacular in some way.

00:41:02.340 And it was so much more money than I usually spend at the grocery store.

00:41:05.360 But I was like, more ice cream.

00:41:08.180 Totally.

00:41:09.060 That like it just gave it.

00:41:10.400 That's a beautiful question.

00:41:11.600 Right.

00:41:11.880 It's a beautiful question.

00:41:12.900 And it's a side.

00:41:14.860 Yes.

00:41:15.460 And a sideways into, I mean, in a way, the topics of heat.

00:41:19.260 Right.

00:41:19.500 We've been taught don't talk about money, politics or religion.

00:41:23.000 Right.

00:41:23.160 And at some level, like there's two.

00:41:25.560 All of those topics are both dangerous and relevant.

00:41:31.520 Yes.

00:41:32.340 and so part of like learning again it's a skill it takes discernment takes group intelligence

00:41:40.000 like these are skills we need to learn particularly in diverse groups but part of what that that

00:41:44.820 question is delicious and yes there's probably a community or a group where that question

00:41:49.960 is not gonna bring people together right right because it will be like in like massive economic

00:41:56.880 inequality or it just or if there's like weird performative pressure to be like i only like

00:42:03.140 spending money on donations to other people right and like some people are going to say that and i

00:42:08.620 like that's the thing that they love doing it sure but at some level like what i hear under that

00:42:13.240 question is like desire delight values it also made me think when my my father and um his wife

00:42:19.900 My stepmother, for years, they were very involved in their church, and they were part of, like, basically pre-marriage counseling, which is basically conflict resolution.

00:42:31.620 Yes.

00:42:31.820 And one of the favorite questions, I would always, like, look at the curriculum.

00:42:36.820 I was so curious, like, what are they doing?

00:42:38.620 And my favorite question they would ask couples before they were getting married was, write down on a piece of paper without the other person seeing, what is the amount that you need to check with your partner before spending money on?

00:42:57.600 So good, right?

00:42:59.160 Wow.

00:43:01.180 Like brilliant for that purpose, right?

00:43:04.400 And people would write down the number and then they'd flip it over.

00:43:07.580 It would always be different.

00:43:07.760 It would always be different. And people like, you know, they'd be shocked. Someone might write down in the same couple $20 and their fiance might write $2,000. And that's not the end of the conversation. That's the beginning of the conversation.

00:43:27.480 Right, right, right.

00:43:28.320 Right? That's the pre-conflict. What the heck? And then they probably need to figure out what and why and what their assumption is and what they're buying and whose account.

00:43:36.400 But it gets into everything underneath. But that was one of the most effective questions to unearth and prevent future conflict.

00:43:47.540 Right. Instead of saying, how do you feel about money?

00:43:51.080 Exactly.

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00:47:32.340 we sent you. Wrap yourself in actual luxury with Lola blankets. Okay, next question is about

00:47:44.700 fighting styles. This comes from C. My husband and I have opposite fighting styles. I want to

00:47:50.500 hash it out in the moment. He wants to wait a few hours until we've both cooled off, but it leaves

00:47:54.580 me feeling like I'm walking on eggshells waiting to see if he'll bring something up. I've told him

00:47:58.760 how I feel about it, but it's just how he processes emotions. What can I do to process

00:48:02.920 fights in a better way?

00:48:06.080 What do you think?

00:48:12.060 First, it sounds like they already have some amount of self-awareness.

00:48:18.300 Yes.

00:48:19.320 Right? Which is, I would say they're in the territory of healthy heat, where they're both

00:48:23.780 reflecting on what it is they need in order to be effective.

00:48:27.380 Yeah.

00:48:27.620 and part of what her husband's doing in this case is actually slowing the fight down

00:48:35.620 giving time even if she doesn't like it it's actually giving a little bit of time of rest

00:48:41.420 a little bit of time of space a little bit of time for a reset and his question to have some space

00:48:50.560 and time to come pull off is a worthy ask yeah maybe it's worth uh see could think of this as

00:48:59.940 a reframe right yeah or maybe um there could be a phrase or something she could ask her husband

00:49:05.640 to say just as a reassurance right like yeah they're walking on eggshells right so what would

00:49:11.500 make them feel less like a ball of energy yeah i mean the way i read it and obviously i'm not part

00:49:18.380 of that relationship but the way i read it and the way i would have them reframe it to themselves

00:49:22.340 and talk about it with their partner is that is him stepping out for a little bit is an act of

00:49:29.140 investment yeah not an act of escape yeah yeah yeah and one of my favorite books i read for the

00:49:38.100 art of fighting is it's actually a parenting book it's called siblings without rivalry

00:49:42.200 it's a wonderful book you should look at it it's and it's it's about it ostensibly it is about

00:49:48.620 siblings but it's actually about every type of connection every type of relationship and in the

00:49:52.740 very beginning of the book the two authors they do parenting workshops for parents who experience

00:49:58.420 like extreme extreme sibling rivalry with their children yeah and the first thing they tell them

00:50:04.920 is your job is not to make your children best friends yeah it's to help them learn how to build

00:50:14.080 a bridge towards each other from their separate identities so that even after you're gone no

00:50:23.460 matter where they are in the world they always know the path i love this metaphor not just for

00:50:31.300 children but for all relationships across difference which is every relationship and so to

00:50:37.940 me you're right to i mean i you're you're you're astute to pause and just help us focus on the egg

00:50:43.820 walking on eggshells yeah and so maybe they have some agreements during that time right maybe i

00:50:49.700 and maybe they come up with it with three like you said there's a word or the time is limited

00:50:54.060 so that they also have what they need yeah like you said like i think um it is a powerful way to

00:51:00.540 like let some steam out of the fight, like allow some things to settle. Oftentimes I find myself

00:51:07.260 like going on a dog walk after I've like held up some anger and things just kind of, it's almost

00:51:13.960 like they're like dropping into place like Tetris pieces in my mind. And I'm like, this is why I'm

00:51:20.040 behaving the way I'm behaving. And then I can come back and kind of own my own behavior in a way that

00:51:26.180 i often can't in the moment yeah so that's another way to think about it but i do think like

00:51:32.360 i you know what are reassurances like this is the way that we can have a better fight

00:51:38.800 yeah maybe i mean sometimes you call it something or call it something yeah like give it a give it

00:51:45.140 give it a name like yeah one of the things i thought was so interesting and i really learned

00:51:50.000 in the art of fighting was actually how important humor is. Yeah. And how important joy. One of my

00:51:56.300 favorite examples is from a friend of mine. She is married to a guy, her husband, they went to

00:52:01.500 middle school together. And, but they didn't date in middle school. They reconnected in their 20s.

00:52:07.500 And she says that when they fight and they really get locked into it, sometimes he'll start

00:52:16.820 singing to her and it always makes her laugh and and the song will be like i i wonder what

00:52:25.640 anna da costa thinks of our fight right now i bet she'd side with you and and like is actually

00:52:33.720 naming the people that like they went to middle school with and it always they always kind of

00:52:37.780 like it just like helps she starts laughing and it just like cools it down yeah and so i don't know

00:52:43.640 like call it something like i wouldn't call it eggshell hour but something you know it's something

00:52:49.160 that's like a funny thing that you create a container for and then he exits and then he

00:52:55.080 re-enters i love that i really love that it's also different the humor example is so great because it

00:53:00.480 was one of the things that i really disliked about how my dad would deal with conflict which

00:53:04.820 is he would try to make me laugh off topic and i would be like right like like being goofy in a

00:53:11.680 You don't get my laugh right now.

00:53:13.000 No, you don't get to make me.

00:53:14.360 But it was so clear that he was trying not to fight.

00:53:17.820 Oh, that's beautiful.

00:53:18.340 He was deflecting from the fight.

00:53:20.940 That's beautiful.

00:53:21.380 And so this humor example is re-centering you.

00:53:25.540 It's centering you still in the fight, but it's also adding that levity, which sometimes you need.

00:53:31.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:53:32.460 I once had a meditation teacher, and we were sort of in a group together.

00:53:38.260 And they said, you know, breathe, sort of focus on detachment.

00:53:41.960 And somebody in the group said, but I don't want to detach.

00:53:45.120 My anger is a righteous anger.

00:53:46.780 I want to engage in the world.

00:53:48.560 And this teacher said, well, there's many types of meditation.

00:53:51.760 And there are some people who use meditation to escape.

00:53:55.620 But we here are using meditation to engage.

00:54:00.780 Right.

00:54:01.980 We are doing this in order to re-engage.

00:54:04.880 Yeah.

00:54:05.040 And the humor point, right?

00:54:07.460 There's a form of humor or, like, sarcasm or something that's like, I'm actually doing this to exit.

00:54:12.320 Yeah.

00:54:12.720 So that is not that.

00:54:13.860 I mean, there's a study from NASA that looked at when they pair astronaut teams together to have, you know, 14 days in a space shuttle together, close quarters.

00:54:23.820 The number one variable, the number one indicator of the most important quality to be able to, in a group like that, to be able to handle conflict and difficult moments is a sense of humor.

00:54:34.780 Mm-hmm. Also, I'm just thinking about how many sources of humor there are on a spaceship with someone. Most of mine will be about, like, floating poop and that sort of thing.

00:54:45.620 Totally! And you saw this, actually, with the, you know, with the...

00:54:49.380 Totally! Oh, when they got stuck.

00:54:51.380 Yes, when they got stuck, when there was a poop clog in the toilet, right? And they're all, like, joking around and it's like, well, that's my job.

00:54:58.660 And like those four astronauts embodied joy.

00:55:03.420 They embodied humor.

00:55:04.640 You could tell they were delighting in each other.

00:55:07.380 Yeah.

00:55:07.860 Yeah.

00:55:08.580 OK, this next question is something that I think I know a lot of people who have this

00:55:13.020 response and get really mad at themselves about it.

00:55:16.500 So this question comes from Cassie.

00:55:17.960 I'm so curious what you think.

00:55:20.040 When faced with conflicts of any kind, especially at work, I immediately tear up.

00:55:23.980 This makes it impossible to not only argue, but be taken seriously thereafter.

00:55:29.800 I've asked around and a lot of my female friends have the same experience.

00:55:33.860 It almost appears to be purely physiological.

00:55:36.760 Is there anything that you can do to control your physical response during an argument?

00:55:41.620 It's incredibly frustrating and kind of debilitating.

00:55:45.580 I've been facilitating dialogue and conversations people would rather not be having and really tense moments.

00:55:53.360 and conflict of all type.

00:55:55.380 And to this day, when I am as a professional facilitator

00:55:59.320 in the room and the heat starts to rise,

00:56:01.780 I have physiological symptoms.

00:56:04.880 My palms get sweaty.

00:56:06.960 My mouth gets really dry.

00:56:08.660 I literally keep like six glasses of water next to me.

00:56:11.560 My heart starts palpitating.

00:56:13.240 And so physiological responses to conflict

00:56:16.780 are totally normal.

00:56:18.680 And some of them are deeply inconvenient.

00:56:21.200 right you may not be able to hear my heartbeat but you can see me crying so I'll say two

00:56:29.120 different things the first is facilitators and I think of holding conflict as not that

00:56:35.840 dissimilar from high performance athletes and one of my favorite sections of the book

00:56:41.840 is called preparing your body for a fight yes I love and I spent time with a wonderful

00:56:48.900 brilliant facilitator Prentice Hemphill and ask Prentice what they do to prepare their body for

00:56:55.300 a fight. So read that section. But basically we go breathing. So particularly if you know it's

00:57:03.360 going to happen or it's likely you're entering, say you're entering a meeting and you know it's

00:57:06.740 likely to be tense, to go into the bathroom, to go into a private place. I do this before every

00:57:11.500 conflict. I do this in my own life for private conflicts. If I know that I'm about to go and

00:57:14.880 have a conversation that scares me. I breathe very deeply. It sounds very simple, but you take

00:57:19.700 10 deep breaths. Put your feet deeply on the floor. I also listen to a song. I have a specific

00:57:27.200 playlist of songs that give me courage. They're not pump up songs because I don't want to be

00:57:32.220 hyper, but they're kind of grounding songs to remind me of the frequency I kind of want to

00:57:37.000 embody. So first, there are ways you can actually, particularly if you know what's going to happen,

00:57:42.280 begin to practice ahead of time to calm your body.

00:57:46.140 Prentice Hempel says,

00:57:47.060 a relaxed body is the most powerful body we have.

00:57:53.040 So that's one.

00:57:54.280 And then also in the micro moment,

00:57:55.600 when you know it's happening,

00:57:56.480 to practice some of those techniques.

00:57:58.240 But the second is, 0.99

00:57:59.900 I know a leader, a female leader, 0.59

00:58:02.820 who has the same response.

00:58:04.640 When conflict happens or certain things happen,

00:58:06.940 she bursts into tears.

00:58:07.860 And what she started doing years ago,

00:58:09.780 including when she's a new leader in a place,

00:58:11.520 is she says, I have this thing that when things get tough, I cry and I'm working on it. And it's,

00:58:18.320 I've worked on it for years and it's feels physiological. And so if it happens, she names

00:58:23.020 it. If it happens, let's keep moving. It will pass. And I want you to know that about me.

00:58:30.020 And again, she's the, she has some power. She has the, she's the boss, but naming it sometimes can

00:58:35.000 help, including to just a few, you can start it with your friends. I'm going to be, I may cry,

00:58:39.220 Right. Start with low risk environments. So I used to have a practitioner I saw. This is literally 20 years ago. And she was a very powerful. She was very connected to the physical to other physical bodies and energy fields.

00:58:55.460 And she, in the very first time I'd heard about her, I got a reference for her.

00:59:00.320 And the first time I, and I'd never done it before.

00:59:02.560 I didn't know what it was, cupping.

00:59:04.340 And she said, now, I have a physiological response that every time I find the right

00:59:10.800 energetic spot on your back, I burp.

00:59:14.740 Wow.

00:59:15.700 And I was like, really?

00:59:17.900 And she said, I burp.

00:59:20.100 And you could say that it's both my blessing and my curse.

00:59:23.640 You know, I found the spot.

00:59:25.460 great and it's a blessing unto the spot right yeah exactly it's like it's also she knows like

00:59:32.980 i also know wow she got it and i was thinking this is huh and then again the first few times

00:59:38.900 even as the the patient quote unquote i was like oh wow and then honestly after like a minute i

00:59:45.300 actually stopped noticing it wow and so all of this is saying you need to know the context you

00:59:51.460 know the power dynamics you need to know what your profession is you need all of that but i

00:59:55.180 But there's two, these are two, one is internal and the other is a relational option.

01:00:01.360 Do you think that there's any potential in like rehearsing, I guess?

01:00:07.760 Oh, deeply.

01:00:08.280 Having someone yell at you, essentially?

01:00:10.320 Oh, in that way?

01:00:11.180 That's interesting.

01:00:12.820 You know, I don't know.

01:00:13.860 This is not my, necessarily my expertise.

01:00:16.880 But I do think about Prentice's work, which is a relaxed body is a powerful body.

01:00:22.460 And I think of this restaurant called Canlis in the Pacific Northwest, fine dining restaurant, third generation, family owned.

01:00:30.640 And I've learned a lot from them.

01:00:32.380 They're a big part of the book.

01:00:33.560 And one of the things they do to make conflict less scary is they regularly schedule games for their entire staff.

01:00:40.300 And again, this is a fine dining restaurant.

01:00:42.140 It's considered one of the best restaurants in the country, like very stuffy, like very formal.

01:00:46.180 I've only been there once and it was for my best friend's 21st birthday and it was like white tablecloth.

01:00:51.500 Yeah, super, super fancy, considered one of the best restaurants maybe in the world. And they, as a staff and as a team, have deeply invested in having and getting everyone comfortable with holding healthy heat.

01:01:06.240 and so I'm curious I don't know but I would imagine when the physiological response often

01:01:14.460 comes from threat or fear and so again it comes back to the group help right those leaders Brian

01:01:20.560 and Mark Hamless are creating a culture in which there's so many different ways to feel safe and

01:01:26.100 have cross-cutting forms of joy and play and karaoke and laser tag but also two real separate

01:01:33.660 rooms in the restaurant called the cachet and the hooch where they expect people to take each other

01:01:39.020 aside and clear up any misunderstandings. And so I also think that when you're in a place where

01:01:44.540 there's a developed a culture of safety and healthy heat and respect, we're going to have

01:01:49.020 less physiological responses because we're not on high alert. Right, right, right. No, that's such

01:01:53.200 a good point, right? Like part of the reason that the response, like the physiological response is

01:01:58.660 happening the way that it is is because it's there is so much tension like it is so unexpected

01:02:04.920 or it's not something that you've had to navigate that often like and so if you like you said

01:02:10.400 regulate the heat that's such a great idea but it's you know this is lifelong this is lifelong

01:02:16.180 work and i the one one you know at the end of the book of the art of fighting one of one of the one

01:02:21.080 of my wishes to the parting reader is if nothing else i hope that there are some skills and some

01:02:26.960 questions in here to help you in some way the next time heat arises, see if you can stay just

01:02:33.740 60 seconds more. Well, I think that's a wonderful place for us to end. Priya, thank you so much for

01:02:40.460 talking about all of this. This has just been such a joy. Oh my gosh, such a joy. Such a joy. Thank

01:02:45.680 you. I love hearing your listeners' voices. It's so cool. I love how you moderate. I love how you

01:02:51.440 hold what you do. It's just, it's really a thrill to be with you. If people want to find more of

01:02:56.280 you on the internet where can they find you they can go to priaparker.com and they can also go to

01:03:04.640 priaparker.substack.com I got a bunch of free resources on there you can join and become a

01:03:10.440 group lifer paid or free and I teach there regularly I also the art of fighting is now

01:03:16.480 available wherever you get books libraries and if you are interested also in becoming a better

01:03:22.940 a gatherer and starting to have a shared language with your team, you can also check out the Art

01:03:27.320 of Gathering digital course for workplaces and teams, which is also at priaparger.com.

01:03:32.640 Amazing. Thank you again.

01:03:34.440 Thank you so much for having me.

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Culture Study Podcast - September 16, 2026

Fighting is an Art. Here's How To Get Better At It.

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