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

Priya Parker comes back to argue that the fights you’re avoiding aren’t threatening your closest relationships; they’re the only thing that can save them.

Priya Parker is a facilitator and strategic advisor who has spent two decades helping churches, companies, and families fight better, not less. She’s the acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering and her new book, The Art of Fighting, and she’s spent her career inside the rooms where groups either fall apart or find their way back to each other.

What you’ll explore:

Why “conflict is not sin,” and how a moral hangover from that idea keeps good relationships stuck in surface-level peace The concept of “relational longing,” the pulse underneath a fight that tells you whether it’s worth having Priya’s three-phase framework for a healthy fight, and the one question that unlocks the middle phase The “we’re not a” clause: a phrase to listen for that reveals what a group is actually trying to become Why giant sequoias can’t reproduce without fire, and what that means for families, teams, and marriages that go decades without a real disagreement

If you’ve been mistaking distance for peace, this conversation is an invitation to find out what’s actually still alive underneath.

You can find Priya at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript

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 change that. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes!

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Photo credit: Fernando Palafox

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] 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. 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:20] You have spent years watching groups come together and also fall apart. You know, companies, communities, uh, individuals, marriages, friendships. You make a counterintuitive argument in your new work about conflict. What is the thing that you now believe about conflict that maybe most people have completely backwards?

Priya Parker: [00:01:48] That conflict is not dysfunction.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:54] Break that down for me.

Priya Parker: [00:01:55] 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, you always host me into these moments of transition in my work. And so it’s really a pleasure to be with you. Um, you know, I am a conflict-averse conflict resolution facilitator, and I grew up in a, uh, in a family that both my mother and father were conflict-averse. Um, when they, they eventually separated and divorced. And when they, uh, 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, and, and sort of, uh, 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. Like so many things like we’re fighting, we’re so dysfunctional or dysfunctional family or dysfunctional team or 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.

Priya Parker: [00:03:57] 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. And 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 a relationship, you want to be a part of that you have buy in for where people understand what their roles are, why they’re part of it is actually through conflict. It’s through fighting. It’s through asking these core fundamental questions together of who are we? What do we want to be? How 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:05:16] Yeah. So if I understand, it’s sort of like you’re saying, we have this preconception, like preconception of this is what fighting looks like, and this is what it will inevitably lead to. And it’s all it’s hard, it’s uncomfortable and it’s bad. So we back away from it. But what you’re inviting us to, to, to consider is, um, 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.

Priya Parker: [00:05:53] The conflict, if we look at it, the conflict is relevance. Conflict is people don’t fight about things they don’t care about, right? Then they leave and 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 Setu Nair, and she’s a brilliant facilitator. And one of the things she said to me was I said, you know, she’s called in to the hardest fights to facilitate group fights. So she’ll be called in this real example, um, to a local government agency that, um, erupted in a so-called flag war where, um, within the agency, this is during the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter flags started popping up on people’s desks, and then Blue Lives Matter flags started popping up on people’s desks. And this agency, and she was brought to come in to kind of the 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 coworkers. So sitting there is the kind of facilitator who’s brought in to facilitate a circle, um, in a context like that, like super complex. And she was beautiful work.

Priya Parker: [00:07:11] And I asked her, what do you, how can 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. And if you can tap into the relational longing that’s still there, you can, you can, 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 that that leads that they just, they just leave or, or people sort of fighting with the quote unquote other eye 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, 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, you know, 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. And we need to actually have a conversation to make some changes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:26] Yeah. I mean, that concept of relational, relational longing was the phrase.

Priya Parker: [00:08:30] Mhm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:31] That, that, um, that just lands. So like, I, it took me a second to try and 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, um, 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. That that’s kind of the starting point. Does that land?

Priya Parker: [00:09:05] Yes, yes. But I wouldn’t call it a fabric. Okay. 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, say, I write about this in the book. She she went in to this, uh, 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 this sort of flag war, so-called flag 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. And, um, and she does all sorts of things. And I write about in the book, but the, the moment of breakthrough was when they stopped talking about what’s happening out there in the country, what they’re that’s the moment they stop 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.

Priya Parker: [00:10:21] 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 have 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 a lot of the local government agency is full of both, uh, like police, law enforcement and social workers. So it’s, it’s sort of this, this, this rift sort of was emerging between like, who are we really for in this office? And, um, a law, 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 this and, and, 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.

Priya Parker: [00:11:37] 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. And after this flight, this incident happened. I walked in and I realized she had barricaded her desk with plants in the space my elbow used to go. And you could feel just the whole room, right? You can feel it now because of drop in to like, air. 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 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?

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:48] Mhm. Yeah. I mean, that lens and 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 like two intimate partners. It could be the same thing between like parent and child. Almost anyone you could imagine. It’s, it’s the same dynamic that really translates, right?

Priya Parker: [00:13:10] Every relationship that we choose to be in over the long term will, will change. And part of either getting to that change or navigating it even forget conflict just changes time, time in and of itself, right? Between parent and child, between siblings, between spouses. Like where and how do we negotiate as things are changing? What? How do we want this to be? Am I happy? Is this how I want? And it 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, uh, who is learning like a lamb to walk to, to be in healthy heat with my own and my life and 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, how, what money do we want to spend on stuff? What 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 with Bruce Tuchman this the sociologist who writes about groups without storming, without asking, how do we want to do this? And who decides?

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:08] Yeah. So it’s almost like, um, 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?

Priya Parker: [00:15:44] I will also say not all fights are worth facing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:48] Yeah.

Priya Parker: [00:15:48] So my 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. And so there is, there are absolutely fights that are not worth facing. Doctor Mercer calls um, strategic conflict avoidance. One of the people I interviewed for um for the book is a guy called Michael Hebb. And one of he, one of the things he told me when he gets in a fight with a friend that he asks himself if whether or not it’s worth facing is, do I want to be closer to this person?

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:25] Mhm.

Priya Parker: [00:16:26] 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 be, to have a. To to have more intimacy with whoever it is. If you want to be a more functional team or group. The idea that conflict is, is a threat to that is, uh, is misguided.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:52] Yeah. Instead of a threat, I mean, it may well be a gateway. If, if.

Priya Parker: [00:16:55] Exactly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:56] If you’re making that, 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. I want to sort of drop into your approach to. But before we get there, um, you also write about this image, giant sequoias, um, like the largest trees in the world. Um, I have had the great pleasure of walking among them and felt that stunning awe that like a tiny little human being feels when you’re in there. Um, they live something like 3000 years. Um, but they can’t reproduce without fire. Walk me through that and why? What’s the lesson in the context of conflict here?

Priya Parker: [00:17:38] I was actually explaining my, um, my book, this is years ago when I was researching to a friend, a mother of a friend of mine, and she was listening very closely. I said, you know, conflict can actually help a group really figure out who it is. Conflict can help a family. Often there are moments of, um, 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 at, of weddings, like moments where you’re like, we’re not supposed to be fighting now. And I said, but this is there’s it also, it 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:18:16] Um.

Priya Parker: [00:18:17] She said, you should check out what forests of giant sequoias do, the largest trees in the world. And they cannot reproduce without fire. And she gave me she gifted me this metaphor. She said, fire. Clear 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 release, 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 house, 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. You can absolutely have unhealthy fire, but the avoidance of fire will also kind of kill the so-called forest.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:26] Mhm. Yeah. It’s like it can’t grow if it rages too in a. To do big or uncontrolled, it destroys everything. Um, but if it never happens in a way that is manageable, um, growth ends and eventually um, death ensues.

Priya Parker: [00:19:44] I, one of my favorite, um, interviews, uh, that I’ve heard was with the radio host Krista Tippett, and she was interviewing the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. And she said to him, um, how have you been married to the same woman for 40 years? And she paused and he pauses, and he says, she’s not the same woman, and I’m not the same man. And, and I remember listening like, what do you mean she’s not this? 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. And 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 like? Again, I’m not even talking about super complicated, identity based conflict, just like sort of good old how do we coordinate and, and every group needs to go through what Bruce Tuckman calls the storm.

Priya Parker: [00:21:23] Right 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 app. I want to be part of this group because or even with friendship, like, oh, we have a great vibe, right? You, you are able to articulate and declare your intentions metaphorically, but often, 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. I 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 in my as a facilitator is to just pause and when, when, 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, um, 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 notice as a, as a facilitator, but also as a friend in groups where if you hear people sort of arguing about something and, um, 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 a thousand different requests for whether it’s allergies or preferences.

Priya Parker: [00:22:51] And 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 in the book over many years is the Burning Man founders, the founders of the sort of, you know, um, gathering in the desert over decades, very unlikely gathering. And, 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 internal external equality and have an internal hierarchy? Like really? What? What should tickets cost be? Should there be a lottery system? And I was watching one of the board meetings on a, 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:58] Sounds like so much fun.

Priya Parker: [00:24:01] And I was listening to this. I mean, it’s 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, 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 was one thing, though. We’re not a clause. And I realized it was something that I hear in groups all the time. So 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 though we’re not a clause. Mhm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:49] I love that. Let’s drop a little bit into um, the how of healthy conflict. You, you talk about and you write that oftentimes there’s sort of like these three broad phases that people move through in a healthy conflict. We call it a framework, for lack of a better word. You know, there’s, there’s the terror phase of it, the grapple phase of it, and then the 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 with terror. What is this?

Priya Parker: [00:25:23] So terror 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. And so the first phase of this guide is looking at, uh, the moment where a group experiences a tear. What sometimes what I call a triggering, a triggering event can create some kind of, uh, explosion or implosion. And you need to understand what you have on your hands. And so tears tend to happen at specific moments. Tears often happen at moments of 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 forcing mechanism is a moment of high pressure observable by the groups that forces decisions to be made. Renovations. 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 line up on a baseball team. Right? What’s the batting order? The who, who gets, who gets, you know, in a in a play which 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 or organizations like we’re just going to do a 30th anniversary for our company, this is supposed to be a happy moment.

Priya Parker: [00:27:34] Like, 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 series of like the bride zilla or whatever. It’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 a Narayan now? And then it’s visible by the shared community, which is why I feel so high stakes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:48] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. And I don’t want to gloss over what you shared also, which is this also tends to be the moment the trigger where the implicit becomes explicit, the invisible becomes visible. And oftentimes I would imagine, tell me if this is right, that 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 a, an agreement between partners or whatever it may be like. And, but it’s everyone’s kind of known, but it’s always been just bubbling beneath the surface and something happens. There’s a rupture that says, no, like this is breaking out. And now we actually have to deal with this.

Priya Parker: [00:29:46] 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 calling Marsha. I 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? I think my, my, it was. And it was my stepbrother’s wife. Like, I wasn’t particularly close to my stepbrother, let alone his wife. There was there was no problem between us, but we lived in totally different parts of the country. We lived different lives. Like we 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 was 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. I’m not one of her people. But again, no offense, that happens in many multi, you know, complex multiple marriage families. And so I thought about it and but and I and I and the conversation his being upset and him saying something to me which I knew it was a big deal for him to say something prompted me to think through my own set of questions.

Priya Parker: [00:31:15] 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. And he meant his children from his combined family, his spouses, their children. And he says, and it extends to you and on. And 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. Right. 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 am you, I like that, but we are having the right fight.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:41] Right.

Priya Parker: [00:32:42] We were able we 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. And 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, this 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 often between 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 sorts 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 of the power of this is when we when we can just it’s terrifying. I mean, I find it terrifying, maybe, 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 hold the question together, you can actually start moving through as a family.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:15] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting too, like you just, you know, we started out talking about this sort of like the first phase that you often describe the terror phase, really understanding what is the rupture, what is the trigger, what happened here? And, 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 like figure this out. Like we literally have to work our way through it. Yeah. There’s this excavation phase that you talk about, which you just described, where you’re kind of saying, what is this? What really happened here? What is this fight actually about? And because I think often we don’t really know.

Priya Parker: [00:34:51] Yes, yes. Well, the question that I ask so in grapple is what is the need? Like, like we’re almost we’re almost distracted by the set of events. Right. And if and 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. Um, 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. The explosion may be a symptom, right? And at some deeper level, I mean, I took me a while to get to this, but I realized with this example at the baby shower, the need at some level, I mean, I’ve never articulated this before, but I think it was to like to be in relationship with my father without having his definition of of how I should be spending my time. Be my definition of how I should be spending my time.

Priya Parker: [00:36:10] Or his definition of who my circle should be. Be my definition of who my circle would be. And, and so at first, asking in a, in a, in a, in the grapple phase, what is the need? And then and then and then a need is small p political. Not everyone may agree on a need and, and often the loudest voices get heard first or, or, 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 um, years ago, uh, it was during the, 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, the organization, I think it was like 40 or 60, 60 members at that point. Um, put it into the Zoom and a new intern was had just joined that summer and was kind of shocked to find out that not only was the law firm watching the World Cup, uh, during office hours and people were wearing English jerseys and all that stuff, but, but that they were so that everyone that kind of work stopped. And he was like many people in his generation, kind of horrified that the World Cup was getting was being played in Qatar, where being gay is illegal, where there had been death, like there was all of this, there was all of this, uh, sort of problematic parts of in this younger person’s mind about, about the World Cup.

Priya Parker: [00:37:44] And so he popped into the UN on, you know, maybe innocently and naively popped into the, the, the, the slack, something like, can we please not like watch the World Cup during working hours, particularly given they’re 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 had kicked he’s kicking a third rail. He’s kicking a core part of this law firm sense of us ness, 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? This is and, and, 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 e literally like printed out the, the slack to like showed it on to on, on their phone and, and, and they, they sent out.

Priya Parker: [00:38:51] This is what, what is not to do. They sent out like a, 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, like, let’s have everyone talk about this with good intentions. They’re like, let’s just duke it all out. We used to be a small group, right? Well why not? Let’s 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 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? 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?

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:05] So I guess my curiosity is what’s the question beneath the question there? Like how. Because I would imagine if you if you just go to the group or you go to the individual and say like, well, what is the need here? You’re going to get a whole lot of confusion. Like how do we actually going to get it right? How do we actually get to that? Like, what’s the question underneath that that actually elicits what the real need is so that you have something tangible to respond to.

Priya Parker: [00:40:30] 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. Um, this is for, uh, it could be something like you have a family reunion and, uh, you’ve been coming together for in the same way or Thanksgiving, you’ve been coming together in the same way for a decade. And it’s, it’s, there’s enough people feeling that it’s no longer really working, but feeling like kicking the you know, what is it kicking the wasp’s nest? 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 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 resolution facilitator needs to be done with a lot of care. And so part of the first question is really what is like? What is the I mean, would I ask again and again is like, what is the deepest need? And I ask 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, is it to, um, change how we gather? Is it to not be totally boring? Right? But you hear all of these, these, these answers.

Priya Parker: [00:41:58] And then but part of what you, you sort of have to dig and dig and dig, but 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 all together. 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, in a, let’s say it’s an extended family or if it’s an organization, different people have different levels of trust, right? Different 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 or is it an insider? Um, who is actually being asked.

Priya Parker: [00:42:52] 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 ask different members of like a friend group that it was exploding after 30 years, everyone was, 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? Or in an organization like, well, are the consultants part of a group? So who is actually part of the group? What is who is being asked and how is 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 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 many 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:43:51] I mean, that all lands and a lot of the questions that you just offered, I think are just 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? Yes. Huh. Maybe I actually need to take a beat to think about that. Um, and, you know, but I wonder if like in the, 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. It’s a, um, rather than just sort of like breathing for a moment and saying yes, like who really who really.

Priya Parker: [00:44:29] Breath is conflict in every stage.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:31] Of.

Priya Parker: [00:44:31] The.

Jonathan Fields: [00:44:32] Yeah. Makes so much sense. Um, the last phase is really interesting, cleave. Right. Um, it is the aftermath and what’s often known as a contra nim, right. It’s a word that means multiple things and can mean multiple actions or decisions in this context. Take me a little bit into that.

Priya Parker: [00:44:56] I love this word cleave. And a nim 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. Uh, I was so pleased, you know, as a writer, I was like, that word really works. Um, 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. What do you what what then? And then in particularly for, for, um, for conflicts, you’ve, you’ve 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 say 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 Brene Brown, you know, has this term vulnerability hangover.

Priya Parker: [00:46:22] We can also have conflict hangovers and feel like, oh, that was such a mistake. Why did we even touch it? That is a normal thing. Whenever I work in groups or organizations, I always say like within the next three days, you’re going to 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, 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? One of the, one of the characters, one of the, one of the people I write about in this book is a woman who was part of a taiko drumming circle for a more than a decade. And for a decade, it was like it became sort of the center of her life. And she and, and as she thought about it and why she joined it, she thought it wasn’t just about the taiko.

Priya Parker: [00:47:27] It was about all of the questions that this group, as a dance troupe, had to ask together. That were the questions she held. Can what what should their costumes look like? Which was actually a really interesting question for her to ask of what does it mean to to be an Asian woman. What does it mean to present? What 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 ten years of this group, and it got 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. And 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.

Priya Parker: [00:48:40] We choose who we wed. Right. We’re we’re exiting and entering in, you know, 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? And other churches are asking, how do we find personal liberation? And other questions like these 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 mun here? Do I again, it’s sort of like a relational longing, 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 of the book, I talk a lot about how to close well and how to end well, but also when there has been deep conflict, how to repair and how to restore, and how I actually think this one of the most interesting parts 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 my idea of a father, you know, I’m metaphorically a father is somebody who takes their kid to soccer practice on Saturdays at 10 a.m.

Priya Parker: [00:50:14] 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, if we are reimagining what it means to be a quote unquote good partner at a firm, and for 40 years, a partner was 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. And 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 when 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?

Jonathan Fields: [00:51:20] 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, we, we, 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, you know, like we’re, you know, we have what we need for everybody to either agree or disagree. Are we moving forward together or are we not moving together? Are we like the cleaving? Like, are we binding or are we saying goodbye? But if we, if we choose to bind, to stay together, this is the one part, right? Because it’s sort of like, are you in or are you 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.

Priya Parker: [00:52:31] That’s exactly right. And, and, and then when I mean, this is, 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 would 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 across difference when you want to still be in connection. And so even with my father as my, you know, I now have children, school aged children. And um, I think this is true in many families. Like there’s a lot, there’s a lot of difference between 70 and 80 year olds and, you know, ten 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.

Priya Parker: [00:53:55] 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? So this Leanne Davies calls this a not passing on conflict debt. Right? It was is we had the fights. We’re not passing on our debt to all of these other un, you know, 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 it’s almost like you get like plugged up, you know, constipated conflict, constipated. Uh, we’re coining it here. Um, but, but a huge part of what I’m now able to have with my father is both of us is like, both of us have changed a bit and both 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 and 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.

Jonathan Fields: [00:55:00] Mhm. Yeah. That completely lands. You know, one of the things that strikes me about, um, it’s funny, I want to call it 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, so 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 foreign to so many of us.

Priya Parker: [00:55:58] Beautifully said.

Jonathan Fields: [00:55:59] Yeah. It 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.

Priya Parker: [00:56:19] Be in authentic, relevant, delightful connection with each other.

Jonathan Fields: [00:56:26] Mhm. Thank you.

Priya Parker: [00:56:29] Thank you so much.

Jonathan Fields: [00:56:30] 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 Priya’s terror grapple cleave framework. It gave me language for something that I have felt but never really mapped. The terror is the rupture. The grapple is the 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. 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 Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By Troy Young. Chris Carter crafted our theme music. 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.

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