Can Conflict Actually Make Our Relationships Stronger? with Priya Parker

Does conflict really have the power to bring us closer together? In this episode of The Curiosity Shop, facilitator and author Priya Parker joins Brené Brown and Adam Grant to rethink how we approach conflict. Drawing from her new book, The Art of Fighting, Priya explores why avoiding conflict can create distance in our relationships, how “healthy heat” differs from destructive conflict, and why practicing disagreement when the stakes are low can prepare us for the conversations that matter most. Together, they unpack toxic politeness and why meaningful relationships require us to embrace discomfort instead of avoiding it. They also explore how preparation and collective humanity can be powerful tools to de-escalate conflict. The conversation leads Brené and Adam to reflect on their own history and how some of their hardest conversations have ultimately deepened their friendship. About Priya Parker | Her Story – Priya Parker, priyaparker.com (web page) The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters – Priya Parker, 2018, Riverhead Books (book) Brené with Priya Parker on The Art of Gathering – Brené Brown and Priya Parker, 2020, Unlocking Us (podcast episode) Brené with Priya Parker on How We Return and Why It Matters, Part 1 of 2 – Brené Brown and Priya Parker, 2021, Dare to Lead (podcast episode) Brené and Adam on What They Will Never Agree On – Brené Brown and Adam Grant, 2026, The Curiosity Shop (video/podcast episode, YouTube) Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction: A meta-analysis – Carsten K. W. De Dreu and Laurie R. Weingart, 2003, Journal of Applied Psychology (journal article) The Science of Productive Conflict – Adam Grant, 2021, WorkLife with Adam Grant (video episode, YouTube) Heat is relevance (and other things I've learned about healthy heat) – Priya Parker, 2026, Group Life (newsletter post, Substack) Group Life – Priya Parker, n.d., Substack (newsletter) Prentis Hemphill – Prentis Hemphill, n.d., prentishemphill.com (personal website) Clear Is Kind. Unclear Is Unkind. – Brené Brown, 2018, brenebrown.com (article) Working at Canlis – Canlis, n.d., canlis.com (careers page) Do I stay or do I go? – Priya Parker, 2026, Group Life (newsletter post, Substack) Why Avoiding Conflict Is Actually Hurting Your Relationships | Priya Parker on 'The Interview' – The New York Times, 2026, YouTube (video) Festivus: The Airing of Grievances – Seinfeld, “The Strike,” 1997, YouTube (video clip) The Rituals Of Reality TV Reunions: An In-Depth Examination – Gibson Johns, 2024, Betches (article) Resources – Conscious Leadership Group, conscious.is (resource library) Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis – Stephen B. Karpman, 1968, Transactional Analysis Bulletin (journal article) How to Use the Drama Triangle at Work – Conscious Leadership Group, n.d., conscious.is (blog post) Martin B. Copenhaver – The Christian Century, christiancentury.org (contributor page) The Rev. Martin B. Copenhaver: "Divided We Stand" – Martin B. Copenhaver, 2007, Washington National Cathedral (sermon) Open and Affirming – UCC Open and Affirming Coalition, openandaffirming.org (organisation page) Open and Affirming – United Church of Christ, n.d., ucc.org (denomination page) Robert's Rules of Order – Henry M. Robert, 1876, Project Gutenberg (book) Zohran Mamdani Campaign Rally, United Palace, Washington Heights – uploader not confirmed, 2025, YouTube (video, deep link at 7:41) The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy – Anand Giridharadas, 2022, Knopf (book) Remembering Hal Saunders, Founder and Mentor – Sustained Dialogue Institute, 2016, sustaineddialogue.org (memorial notice) Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City – Anand Giridharadas, 2026, Knopf / Penguin Random House (book) The 12 New Books to Spice Up Your Fall – Adam Grant, 2026, Granted (newsletter post, Substack) The Story Rumble Process: A Guide for Groups and Teams – Brené Brown, 2018, brenebrown.com (downloadable resource) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:15Brené Brown?

  Welcome to The Curiosity Shop.

• 1:17Adam Grant?

  A show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 1:25Brené Brown?

  Hi, Adam.

• 1:26Adam Grant?

  Hey, Brene.

• 1:27Brené Brown?

  Excited to talk with Priya Parker?

• 1:29Adam Grant?

  I can't wait. I have some fighting that I need to get better at.

• 1:33Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God. I mean, I thought about us a lot when I was reading this book, and I thought about my whole life when I was reading this book. Growing up, now, what I've learned about conflict. Let's tell people who Priya is, in case you don't know. Priya Parker is a facilitator, strategic advisor, and acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters. Her new book is The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict. It's available now. She's trained in the field of conflict resolution. She's worked on race relations on American college campuses, on peace process in the Arab world, in Africa and in India. She studied organizational design at MIT, public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia.

• 2:18Brené Brown?

  She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. Let's bring on Priya.

• 2:23Adam Grant?

  Priya Parker, welcome to The Curiosity Shop. Are you ready to fight?

• 2:27Brené Brown?

  Are you ready to fight?

• 2:28Adam Grant?

  I'm always ready.

• 2:29Brené Brown?

  Thank you for having me. I know you are.

• 2:31Adam Grant?

  I'm always ready to fight.

• 2:34Speaker 04

  I don't think you two are the 10 tended targets of this book.

• 2:38Adam Grant?

  I don't know.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  You both are comfortable with healthy heat.

• 2:43Adam Grant?

  And yet extremely conflict averse. I speak for myself only here, but...

• 2:48Speaker 04

  Really?

• 2:49Brené Brown?

  I am not conflict averse at all. But do you think you're conflict averse, Adam?

• 2:52Adam Grant?

  Historically, yeah. I've worked hard to overcome it.

• 2:56Brené Brown?

  Man, you... Guys, I'll start with an apology. Because working with me is very...

• 3:02Adam Grant?

  Apology rejected. I love it. I love the fact that we can fight and get closer, which is what Priya's book is all about.

• 3:08Brené Brown?

  And I have to say that, first of all, let me just show the book again. Love the cover. Really, all my Post-it notes, really loved this book. As someone who facilitates and is in rooms with teams all the time, I was like, oh, my God, holy shit. Where has this book been my entire facilitating life? So congratulations on the book.

• 3:29Speaker 04

  Thank you. Thank you so much.

• 3:32Brené Brown?

  And I have to say, Adam, to your point, now, I gotta tell you, I don't think we've ever had a fight or a disagreement where we weren't better when it was over. I appreciate that about you and about our relationship. So I'll start there, modeling what the book is about.

• 3:48Adam Grant?

  Same. But I also, Priya, when I was revisiting the book, because I first read it a few months ago, I couldn't help but think that if you had just written it 10 years earlier, Brene and I could have avoided our four years of not talking to each other. So where is your time machine is what I want to know.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  Okay, so let's go to your conflict history. I'm so glad. I'm so glad you're bringing this up.

• 4:11Brené Brown?

  Great.

• 4:12Adam Grant?

  This is not about us.

• 4:15Brené Brown?

  I want to jump in to a line that is right at the top of the book. How do you fight with those to whom you want to belong? And why am I in so many rooms with so many people that say you absolutely do not want to fight with people to whom you want to belong?

• 4:38Speaker 04

  We have been taught, in this culture, myself included, that fighting is immoral, dysfunctional, messed up, only for "bad groups out there," quote unquote. And yet, we all fight. It's a normal part of everyday life. And in part because we've been taught at some level that you only fight with the enemy, it's distorting what fighting actually is, which is to belong to any group, to any team, to any family meaningfully. You have to sort things out. And we have actually such a flat word, "fight."

• 5:23Speaker 04

  I wish we had 600 different words to describe all of these different types of relevant tension. And I'm a conflict averse conflict resolution facilitator. So I have learned that conflict is a skill. And I've also learned that when you avoid it, there's a lot of loss. Avoiding conflict doesn't make your team or your group stronger. In fact, it increases the likelihood that it falls apart.

• 5:52Brené Brown?

  It's so interesting because I'm thinking about growing up and I'm thinking about my parents and the parents of my friends. And you write about this a little bit in the book. I saw two things: no fighting, which is what I really longed for as a kid, or really shitty, hurtful fighting downstairs, muffled. When you're a kid, you're scared. It seems terrible. It doesn't seem productive. I didn't have the word productive. It just seems like your world's getting ready to end any minute. And so the only thing I ever saw was like, no fighting. And my friends saying, oh, my God, my parents have never been in a fight in their lives.

• 6:37Brené Brown?

  Or, oh, my God, is my whole world getting ready to end? Because I don't understand what's happening. And so when Steve and I first got married, and of course, we've done a lot of counseling because neither one of us come from something where we saw productive... We've never seen the art of fighting. And so the first couple of times when Ellen was maybe old enough to know that we were in disagreement, we were both like, oh, God, I think we're supposed to do it, but I think we're supposed to do it well. I don't think we're supposed to pretend nothing's wrong. And I don't think we're supposed to go ape shit right now. I just think we're just supposed to be like, productively doing something. Yeah, I know.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Well, and in a way, you almost want to, in that moment, pause as if you're watching a soccer match or a football match and like get the coach in your ear and be like, now, okay, what do I say? And what do I do? Because this is relevant and I don't want to mess up in front of my child. And I care about this person, but I'm also really mad.

• 7:37Brené Brown?

  Yes, that's it.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  And we don't have those coaches. We haven't been taught. We don't have a lot of examples of healthy heat. And so many of our families, so many of our teams, do exactly what it sounds like was also happening in your friends' families, is we oscillate between what I call unhealthy peace, which is avoidance, no one ever says the thing, really important conversations never get had. And/or we oscillate to the other side and enter into unhealthy heat or unhealthy conflict, which is dominance, insulting, manipulative, abuse. But yet, conflict is actually relevance. Conflict, that's why I call it heat.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  It's dangerous, but it's also relevant. And what we actually need are skills and tools to begin to help hold the most important conversations of our lives. We don't fight with the people we don't care about. And we don't, they're not, they're not relevant to us. I mean, this book isn't up. The Art of Fighting isn't about yelling at strangers on the internet. The Art of Fighting is how do you actually build resilient, fun, thriving, meaningful, connected teams?

• 8:52Adam Grant?

  Okay, so this, I think, speaks to one of my favorite points from the book, which is, one of the things you crystallized for me is that too often, we end up on the two extremes, either unhealthy peace or unhealthy heat, because we avoid the conflict until it blows up. And you actually suggest that we should fight more to practice when the stakes are low. How do we do that?

• 9:18Speaker 04

  I once saw this actually done in a tech company. They were having their leadership retreat, and I have permission to talk about this. They, the vice president was responsible for hosting a three-day retreat, 5,000 leaders. They were at a huge crossroads in their company. And he realized that they were suffering from what he called toxic politeness.

• 9:39Brené Brown?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  Right? Everyone knew there was deep difference and a number of different perspectives in a really crucially important decision they needed to make. But their norms were such that if, once it started happening, everyone was sort of look away or make a joke and sort of keep it cool, temperature-wise. And so what he did is, on the first day, he went up on stage and he said, you know, "Welcome, I don't like doing this, but we're gonna start on kind of a heavier note today. We have some big decisions to make." I was in the room, you could see everyone sort of like tense up, pay attention.

• 10:13Brené Brown?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  And he said, "So we're gonna actually start with four really big debates. We're just gonna rip the Band-Aid off." And everyone's kind of like looking around, you know, pin-drop silence. Everyone who's normally texting like looks up. And he says, "Because we need to really make some big decisions on, as a team." And then he says, "So the first debate within our historic company," and he looks up and he looks in the back of the slide and he says, and the slide appears, "Pineapple on pizza, yes or no?" And everyone's like, "What?" He's also, he's practicing being an artful fighter. "Let's go, groups of four, duke it out, debate." And I turned to the four people around me and one of them's scrunching up their nose and another one's like, "That's disgusting." Another one's like, "Do you not have any curiosity in your life?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  Pineapple on pizza's amazing." And someone else is like, "I'm Italian, I'm offended, pineapple doesn't go on pizza." And everyone's laughing and ribbing at each other and not worrying about walking on landmines? And then he puts up a second slide and it's like, "Is a hot dog a sandwich? Yes or no?" Third slide, and then they keep on doing this. They're practicing their reps. "What is the right time for lunch?" And again, I'm like, "What's the right?" And people are just going, "11:00 AM? What are you, 11:00 AM? That's barely breakfast." "No, no, 2:00 PM. If I eat before 2:00, I'm gonna fall asleep." Again, but what they're actually doing is they're practicing pro-social fighting. There's warmth.

• 11:37Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  There's humor. They're practicing about strongly-held opinions that don't matter. And as I was watching this room, the genius of what Lionel Mori did was he basically helped see that low-stakes arguing actually helps prepare us for high-stakes arguing. In part because a lot of what we avoid in the fight isn't actually the intellectual or the language, it's how our bodies freak out when we're in the room.

• 12:02Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  And so what he's starting to do and what that room did, and I now host hot-takes parties for my teams, for teams, I have a newsletter called Group Life. We hosted a hot-takes party a few weeks ago just to practice these skills. And the core lesson here is to approach heat, add warmth.

• 12:21Adam Grant?

  I love that example. It's so playful and it reminds me of times when I've warmed students up in the classroom or leaders in teams just by saying, "Hey, is cereal soup?"

• 12:30Speaker 04

  Yes!

• 12:31Adam Grant?

  It's the same exact dynamic. People are like, "Hey, we can actually disagree with each other and think it's hilarious and not mind that the other person has a completely different view."

• 12:42Speaker 04

  And part of doing that as a teacher, as an educator at the beginning of a class is your, this is now getting into art of gathering stuff, but the first 5% of a classroom, of a meeting, you're actually laying the pathways for how people behave and the norms for the rest of the time together. And so you're increasing their perception of warmth of each other, right? When we feel safe, one of the, I interviewed three types of people for the art of fighting. People experiencing conflict, which is everybody, but groups fighting, people who study conflict, so researchers, professors, and then people who hold conflict, facilitators, trainers, lawyers. And Prentis Hemphill, who I know, Brene knows, Prentice said, "The most powerful body we

• 13:27Speaker 04

  have is a relaxed body."

• 13:30Brené Brown?

  God, that's so true.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  And so part of what you're also doing is you're increasing your students or your leaders' ability to actually hold complexity when you're also somatically relaxing them and giving them pro-social experiences with each other. It actually changes their capacity for the rest of the meeting.

• 13:52Brené Brown?

  God, that's so interesting. And it's also, I mean, it takes me to another point in this book that I just, when I read it, I called my husband, I called some of the facilitators we work with in organizations, and it's just a line that took my breath away. "Healthy conflict is the missing link in our struggle with loneliness." Like, I cannot, with very few exceptions, over the last 20 years, every organization that I go into to do really deep work starts with, "Well, we have a nice problem." You know, and it's what you're talking about with the toxic positivity.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:34Brené Brown?

  And when I dig into it, there's always just this moment, so I say, "Well, when you get angry, or you're disappointed, or you're frustrated, and you're not talking to the person who's involved in this, when you're not talking to that person about how you're feeling, what are you doing?" And 100% of the time, the answer is, "We're talking about that person to someone else." And, oh my God, like, the distance created when people are so afraid to be uncomfortable with each other, can you walk us through that?

• 15:17Speaker 04

  I mean, so much of your work rhymes so deeply with the art of fighting. I mean, I can't tell you how many people say to me, "It's like what Brené Brown says, 'Clear is kind.'" Right? It's reframing the idea that we assume that the only way to be in relationship with one another is when things are peachy. And actually, the crucible moment of all group life is a fight. You can't, like, I studied group theory for this, and there are stages of group development. And the second stage is called the storm. So part is you form as a group. This could be a trivia club, this could be a church group, this could be a volunteer group, this could be a new team.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  You form, then you storm, conflict increases. "Who are we? How do we share power? How are we gonna do this? What night of week are we gonna meet?" Then you norm, and then you perform. And in so many of our teams, when, I joke, like, when the group chat goes silent, it's usually because there's a smaller sidebar, right? And so a huge part of-

• 16:24Brené Brown?

  The side, the side texts, yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Exactly, the side texts, like, "Did you see that?" Part of what often happens is when we aren't taught the skills or given the social permission to, to address whatever the issue is between us, or this can also be about a product. Like, the number of companies or teams that avoid, if product fails, that avoids literally a debrief? What went wrong? Right?

• 16:48Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  A post-mortem? Because there's so much assumed shame. So part of this is the way to kind of actually come back together is reframing it, but then saying, "Hey, I wanna talk with you about this because I want to work with you." Right? "I want to invest in you." One of the teams I looked at that I think is so interesting, it's a family-owned business, third-generation, fine dining restaurant in the Pacific Northwest called Canlis. And I'd heard about them from other restaurateurs, and they were saying, "You should talk to them." The brothers there are doing something very interesting about how they actually hold heat. And they have two spaces in their restaurants, one's called the cachet and one's called

• 17:32Speaker 04

  the hooch, where if people, if like staff members are basically starting to bicker or get into it on the floor, someone rings a bell and says, "Take it to the hooch." And they've created special, separate, private, not in front of everyone, one-on-one spaces, where they don't just say, "Give each other feedback directly." They actually have normalized, it's in their employee handbook. "I wish I could read it in front of you. Do not take the person aside. Do not do it in front of other people. We are gonna have many moments of conflict every night of service."

• 18:08Brené Brown?

  Oh God, that's true.

• 18:09Speaker 04

  "This is not a disaster. This is actually how we team." And so, starting by a leader or manager normalizing and having people actually practice what I call molehill clearing, like, small kerfuffles to just, again, passing the ball back and forth, this is a massive part of communication, right? If we don't actually know how to communicate, we're not giving scripts, we're not giving tools. And the other thing I'd say is I see a lot of, in workplaces, something will happen, and not only do they talk behind each other's back, I've seen people post oblique stories on Instagram. About what's going on in their team.

• 18:48Adam Grant?

  Well, Priya, one of the, one of the things that you just spoke to that I think very powerfully is you were referencing the Bruce Tuchman work on stages of group development, right? On forming, storming, norming and performing. And I think one of the things that a lot of groups get wrong is they think those are linear stages. And once you pass through stage two, you're done with it, right? We have stormed, now we can norm and perform. And I think what

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Glad that's over with. We can put our umbrella away.

• 19:13Adam Grant?

  Box checked, right? And I think what you're underscoring here is that we actually need to normalize storming as part of our ongoing communication process. And the canvas example is such a fun one. And the idea of having a place where people can playfully shout at each other to go, it really takes the pressure off as opposed to saying, okay, you two, you need to fight. You need to have a conflict.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  You know, we think that a storm only happens once. And then it's like, okay, great. So now we can perform forever. But actually storms happen all the time. And so often in group life, we have rituals, we have application processes. Explain or articulate why we want in, right? A college application, a job interview, you get to hear the other side, who they are. You get to sell yourself. And then we just kind of hope like, okay, great, now we're in. But actually, once you get into a long-term group, fights are the moment of articulation as to why we stay.

• 20:12Brené Brown?

  Wow.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Right? There's no midway interview. It's like, well, why are we doing it that way? Or I look at a Taiko drumming circle group. I look at all types of groups in the art of fighting, in part to normalize heat. All groups fight. It's not only super complex group. The groups you think have no difference within them, they too fight. And one of the, in group life, often a moment will happen that's, that's called, I call a forcing mechanism, where everybody has to see the same moment at the same time. So in families, those are weddings, right? Oh, do they say the word God or not? What kind of ritual? Why isn't an Indian family, she's not wearing red, right? All of these sort of like implicit norms are visibleized.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  But in companies, it's like, oh, 30th anniversary. Why is everyone fighting? Because it's a forcing mechanism to debate, who are we? Which product do we want to say is who we've been and what we want to celebrate? Who gets stage time? What is our vision? These are high stakes moments that actually force us to articulate who we think we are. And, and if you block that conversation, it's not good for the body of the group.

• 21:23Brené Brown?

  God, these are fraught times. These are, the times that you just named are times over the course of my personal and professional life, where when heat is avoided, I have seen permanent fissures that people never come back from.

• 21:44Brené Brown?

  Talk to me about this, this idea that I have in my head and, and you write it and you and I have talked about it before offline and I think probably publicly.

• 21:57Brené Brown?

  The scourge of comfort, like this belief that a joyful, meaningful, good life is one that is free from discomfort.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, free from friction.

• 22:12Brené Brown?

  Where does this come from?

• 22:14Speaker 04

  I don't know. I don't know. And I think it's a dangerous trope. I think it's like when we celebrate like not my baggage, not my labor, not my circus. Now, there is some conflict that is wise to avoid. I'm not saying have every fight. I actually spent the first three chapters of the art of fighting saying, make sure you want to have this fight because there's a lot of fights worth avoiding.

• 22:37Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  But within connected, meaningful community, one has to engage across difference and be uncomfortable. I'll give a simple example. And this, you know, often it's actually in happy moments that I'm called in and people will say like, why is this happening? This is supposed to be a happy moment, right? Or this, this is our wedding. Why is there so much fighting? This is our championship game. We can't fight now, right? And I call these moments sort of jokingly jackpot moments. Because studies show that when people win the lottery, they think it's going to be this amazing moment in their life. And often it's full of massive conflict. Because all of a sudden, first of all, all of these people come around and say like, oh,

• 23:21Speaker 04

  great, like, are you going to share this in different ways? Your values basically get brought up and you have to actually ask, how am I going to spend this? What is money? How do I actually feel about this? And similarly, but jackpot is also a forestry term, which means a building up of excess tension that can, is likely to explode. And so often these jackpot moments in our life are moments in which, in part, Brene, because they're also symbolic, the fissures you're talking about last for so long because the entire community sees, oh, I wasn't asked to give a toast at their wedding. Oh, I wasn't asked to be on stage to discuss the product that I helped design, right? And everyone else also witnessed it.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  And I'll give a simple example, but, but there are also opportunities to repair. When I had my first child, someone very sweetly offered to host a baby shower for me.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  And actually in the art of gathering, I talk about whether or not I wanted the baby shower and how we reimagined it so that people brought meaningful advice to me instead of like pin the diaper on the donkey or, you know, whatever it is. But in the art of fighting, there's a part of that baby shower that I did not talk about in the art of gathering, which is a fight that happened. And I, you know, I invited, I thought about who I was going to invite. My friend sent out the invitation and I got a really upset call from my father. And he said, I can't believe, I'm going to change the name, but I can't believe you didn't invite Marcia.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  And I was like, what? It's like, I can't believe you didn't invite Marcia. And I thought, my stepbrother's wife? Huh. And she lives in a different state. We don't talk, like there's nothing negative between us, but she's sort of not my, my community of psychological safety and I'm not her. It's like, we're cool. And I had to think about it. Do I, should I invite her? If I invite her, who else from that rung of people do I need to invite?

• 25:25Brené Brown?

  Uh oh, because you're, you're in a different, you've pushed out the concentric circles. This is very dangerous.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  You've pushed out the concentric circles.

• 25:31Brené Brown?

  This is a door opener.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  How am I going to behave if I'm in front of somebody where I feel like I need to perform instead of just be? How am I going to behave if I, am I going to say what I would normally say if I'm in front of my intimates? It just, it actually makes it a different thing. But it forced me, as gatherings often do, right? These, why wasn't I invited? Why wasn't, and you can imagine whatever type of gathering. And it forced me to go through my own line of questions, which is, what do I want this thing to be? Do I want to be closer to this person? And am I willing to sort of hold the line? I end up not inviting her. And afterwards I had some repair to do, but not with her, with my father.

• 26:09Brené Brown?

  Dad.

• 26:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so part of what, and it was a few months later, we were in a coffee shop in Philadelphia and I brought it up and I said, Dad, I just want to talk to you about this a bit. And he said, he was, he was still upset. It really hurt him. And he said, you know, I think of my life and I have a circle of 11. You, and this is a joint family, you, you know, his stepchildren, you and Anand, my husband, and I don't know why you wouldn't invite all 11.

• 26:39Speaker 04

  And I said, Dad, your circle is not my circle. Right? And that's like a, it's a moment, I'm, I have children now. He's a grandparent. This is to your point, Adam, like these conversations don't stop. They take new forms because we take new forms.

• 26:58Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 26:58Speaker 04

  And so part of what I'm doing there is I'm actually finding the right amount of space and distance and community and overlap between me and my father. It doesn't end when I leave the house for college. And so whether it's your family or whether it's your team or whether it's a neighbors, like there are going to be triggering events in moments of transition. And even if you, no, I don't feel like I messed up, but there was some difference and hurt there. And so I took the time and it was scary for me to do some repair with my father, which didn't mean apologizing. It actually means sort of coming to the river together and looking at the water.

• 27:44Speaker 00

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• 29:20Adam Grant?

  Red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want online only at HomeDepot.com. Priya, this, this makes me wonder about, I guess, about two things. And you can take this in either direction. And Brene, I'd love to hear your reaction to this, too. One is, it's really hard to fight with people who haven't read The Art of Fighting. If they don't have the framework.

• 29:43Speaker 04

  Why do I have your Christmas, Thanksgiving, you know, fill in the bank present for you?

• 29:48Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I've got some people that if they want to have relationships with me, they just need to read your book first, I think is the takeaway.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Totally. I don't know if it's giving like a gift to artful fighters or like, here's a stick of deodorant. Like, I'm not sure what the gift is.

• 30:02Adam Grant?

  The latter. But yeah, I'm just wondering, what, what do you do in those situations? That's the first question. Maybe, maybe we can start there.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  So The Art of Fighting and The Art of Gathering is my attempt. I'm biracial, I'm bicultural, I grew up in multiple countries, I grew up in multiple households. We are confused as a culture. We don't fully know how to fight. We don't know how to gather. And at some level, it's not our fault. This is the result of living in a culture and a country and teams of difference. And one of, for The Art of Fighting, I studied traditional communities where the people were born in the same place, died in the same place, prayed to the same God, eat the same food. They actually had internal conflict rituals to deal with the airing of grievances.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  And what we have in common life is court. And court is a very blunt tool. Not everything should be taken to court. Or we have union negotiations and companies. Not everything is meant for a union negotiation. And so part of the call here is we need to, in diverse society, create temporary common hymnals. And so The Art of Fighting is my attempt to actually say, I mean, honestly, if you're listening to this conversation, share the conversation. This conversation creates a temporary shared hymnal that introduces just the beginning of an idea that, oh, there's something called healthy heat. And so I recently did another interview and I've been having people slide into my DMs saying,

• 31:35Speaker 04

  I sent our team, our entire team, listen to your interview on the interview. We listened to it together and it gave us an inroad to say, huh, where are we in healthy heat and how do we get better at it? And so much of the work, I mean, you both do this in your work. It's almost like we're giving each other conversational doorknobs to enter. Having just the minimum bare idea that like, oh, I'm investing in this. I'm scared because I care about you. And here, read, listen to this podcast. This is what, like, I'm in the business of culture change, so are you both. But we need a little bit of a common context to help people like reframe what they think is actually happening when heat rises.

• 32:19Adam Grant?

  I'm so glad you said doorknobs and not an aluminum pole. Because when you said airing of grievances, I thought, oh, no. Are you going to suggest we need Festivus like George Costanza's parents did on Seinfeld? No, no, let's not go there.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. I mean, also in popular culture, we have these examples of people storming together. I looked at reality TV shows because I actually think hiding in plain sight, one of the healthiest, with an asterisk, one of the healthiest conflict rituals we have are the Real Housewives reunions. They come together, they're contractually obligated to come to this reunion. They've been dunking each other all season. Yes, it's for entertainment, yes, it's for ratings, right? Yes, they're paid to have heat. But I was looking at these reunions and they basically match traditional conflict rituals. There is a different space. It's not the normal set.

• 33:14Speaker 04

  They dress up in boas and tiaras and ball gowns. They get preparation. There's a pre-conflict resolution. There's an elder, Andy Cohen. Andy Cohen thinks about what questions are going to ask. And I ended up interviewing two of the executive producers of these reunions. And I was like, am I crazy to think like, this is what you're doing? And they kind of chuckled and they said, this is what we're doing. The entire purpose of this is a clearing.

• 33:40Adam Grant?

  You are helping me with my case to Brene that she needs to watch Survivor. Brene, Survivor does the same thing.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, a lot of these reality TV shows, they, there are elements that are deeply dysfunctional and there are parts that go into deep unhealthy heat. And because these are group shows, many of the executive producers are doing what the rest of us should be doing, which is where they're thinking about the life and the dynamic of a group. And part of what I'm trying to do with The Art of Gathering and with The Art of Fighting is create a new bookshelf. So yes, we have lots of self-help books, but we also need group help books. And to grow our group intelligence about what does a group need? What is a clearing? What should a reunion look like? What does a cast that has been through this entirely intense experience need to get something off their chest? And yes, it's for ratings, but it's also for them.

• 34:30Brené Brown?

  I think to your point about Survivor, Adam, and just thinking about this, the thing that makes me the most worried about this sometimes is when I've, when I'm working with a team over an extended period of time. One of the things that I have noticed, I mean, I'm going back to Prentice and their work around the most powerful body is a relaxed body. And I'm going back to, in my mind, because we don't have the doorknobs and the bookshelf, we don't have ways to regulate our nervous systems during conflict that are helpful.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 35:09Brené Brown?

  Thing that flags me a lot about reality television and those conflicts is I can see teams who cognitively understand the need for heat, but again, don't understand what it can look like and what it can deliver performing conflict. And I think sometimes reality television, because of the variables of ratings, can get very performed conflict.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 35:43Brené Brown?

  Yeah, and so I do think one thing I see is when you have scared people

• 35:52Brené Brown?

  who don't have a lot of emotional vocabulary and not a lot of practice managing their nervous systems, they reach desperately for performance conflict.

• 36:03Speaker 04

  Deeply.

• 36:04Brené Brown?

  And, and I think it just goes back sometimes to, whoo, how, you know, we do a lot of kind of from conscious leadership above the line and below the line work. And so how do I, in conflict, stay above the line? So I'm in a mindset of co-creation, productive challenge, coaching, co-coaching, as opposed to going below the line when I'm in conflict and all I know how to be is villain, victim, or hero. And so I think it goes to this idea that actually I had to read and rewrite,

• 36:48Brené Brown?

  read and markup and think about and walk away from in the book. Can you talk to us about this idea of not letting the most offended person in the room run the room? This is hard because I do want to, I want you to, if you can address this for me specifically, because I'm thinking about something where I'm really struggling right now in a group facilitation. Very difficult when the offended person gets either overly villain or overly victim, to not let that person suck every, I don't know how you measure, measure oxygen, but all the oxygen out of the room.

• 37:32Brené Brown?

  So give me a facilitation lesson about how it happens, what the danger is, and how laypeople, how we can talk about this.

• 37:42Speaker 04

  First of all, this is why I sort of keep saying this is really group help, not self-help.

• 37:51Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  And one of the most effective roles of an outside facilitator is to first help a group, including the villain, victim, practice low-stake skills before they attempt the high-stakes conversation. And this is why teaching conflict skills is a leadership practice.

• 38:14Brené Brown?

  Wow.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Normalizing conflict skills is a leadership practice. These are skills we don't have.

• 38:21Brené Brown?

  Oof.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  There, we have a massive education problem, starting even from our schools. And so the symptom is this villain, victim freaking out, right? And then everyone else is punished for it. But actually underneath what is happening is we haven't been taught, we're just sort of like, oh, my gosh, there's been a disaster. But actually, we haven't prepared any of the soil. We haven't prepared, we don't think about normalizing heat. In the book, a couple of things. The first, I have an interlude called Preparing Your Body for a Fight.

• 38:55Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  And facilitators, I'm sure you do this, facilitators, myself included, I am still conflict averse. So when the heat rises and, and I'm paid to hold heat, my heart starts palpitating, my tongue gets dry, my palms get sweaty, like, it doesn't go away. And so the first thing is I practice, and I have an entire chapter, an interview with Prentice, both of us share what our rituals are in our own bodies before we go in and facilitate.

• 39:21Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  I mean, one of the things that Prentice says, they say, the body has all sorts of reactions. Get ready for them. There's no such thing as non-physical conflict. When we are in conflict, our body knows and it reacts. This is very normal and annoying. And then Prentice says, our bodies feel that something we care about is threatened. We may want to leave the body out of it, but sometimes conflict is one of the first ways people even feel their bodies at all. It becomes a bit more uncontrollable. And so in the book, we talk about practice being in a regular body, relax, take a breath, give a shake and much more. But what I'm saying is leaders should actually teach this as skills.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  And actually, when you frame conflict as learnable, as an important skill as a leader, it becomes slightly less scary. And then the second thing is in terms of the offense in the room. If someone, particularly if they have power, is flipping out.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  The people who they're power over are rational to not want to go there. I mean, I've worked, I talked about this in the book. I've worked with organizations and teams. I think of myself as a facilitator with group conflict, almost as an acupuncturist rather than a physical doctor. So work with me with the metaphor. I and my peers, we're kind of like looking at this body and we're trying to figure out where can we intervene and what size needle, right? And, and will the intervention hold? And sometimes it gets spit out. I was during the summer of 2020, I was facilitating, as many of us, many Zoom reckonings, you know, virtual, digital. And I was going into one or such organization and everything my colleague and I presented, they would reject.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  They were, they had like too much PTSD of all of these other experiences they'd had. And finally, I realized, okay, this group is not willing to do anything together as a group. It's too high risk. So we offered, we tried to find out what I call in the book, a hypoallergenic solution, something they're not going to just reject. And we came up with, with teaching poetry, poetry workshops. And the invitation was, we brought in an award winning poet in and she was going to teach everyone how to name an ache, right? I was like, okay, this is brilliant. This is totally brilliant. They're just going to approach it. It's a skill. No one signed up, right?

• 41:46Speaker 04

  And that's not to dissuade you, it's to say, when somebody with power is villain and victim, the people around them are particularly if they have power over them, if they're, if that's the paycheck, this is a cultural problem. It's not the problem of the individuals to solve. That needs to go at some level to a higher authority.

• 42:06Adam Grant?

  Brene, I'm, I'm so glad you asked about that because I see this dynamic all the time in teams where it's the loudest voice that gets heard when conflict is brought up as opposed to the person who's actually trying to solve the problem in many cases. And it makes me wonder, like, it's really common to get on the wrong path. And, you know, you start to get, you start to see people, you know, get sort of into a space of unhealthy heat. And you can't just say to them at that point, hey, you're getting defensive or hey, you're taking too much offense. How do you think about de-escalation?

• 42:41Brené Brown?

  Good question.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  De-escalation starts with preparation. And if you're only thinking about de-escalation, you're starting way too late in the fight plan. So in the art of gathering, I say 90% of the success of every gathering starts before anyone enters the room. It is even more true with conflict. And in the art of fighting, one of the things I looked at was where are modern associations, churches, institutions, teaching their people how to hold a fight together? And one of my favorite examples, and this gets to de-escalation, is a minister named Martin Copenhagen. He, like many ministers in the nineties in the US, was, had their church was sort of coming apart over gay marriage.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  And he had to lead the church through a, a process to decide whether or not they would become what they called open and affirming. And he realized, again, he practiced group intelligence, that if they used their normal processes, which were literally Robert's Rules of Order.

• 43:39Brené Brown?

  Of course, of course.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  Right, right? Parliamentary procedure, do we allow gay marriage? It wasn't going to work. And so what he did, and this is such a beautiful leadership example first, he didn't bring in some external process that was going to have the body freak out, right? The body of the church freak out. First, he looked back into their own archives to see, do we have practices, rituals, skills from our DNA that we could bring forward to today? He found that they used to 250 years ago have a process called congregating. He then told his church, oh, we're not doing this strange new thing and bringing out this outside process. We're going to go back to our roots. This is a precious conversation and we're going to practice being together in a different way.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  He then hosted four meetings, not about gay marriage, but practicing this new way of being together. And one of the major structures was after everybody spoke, after each person spoke, the entire congregation had to say, may the Holy Spirit speak through us. And part of what that was doing was it was actually creating verbal structure and spacing. And he, he said, I was not saying we assume the Holy Spirit is speaking through us, it's just giving a pause. We don't, it's almost inviting curiosity and humility.

• 44:57Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  So he's looking, he's watching, he's like, okay, I think we can now handle it. And so then he takes that practiced body and brings in open and affirming and they start hosting debates. But through this process, after anyone speaks, they have to say, may the Holy Spirit speak through us. On one of such session, a man stood, he hadn't listened to any of the rules. He was loud, he was an elder in the church. He had a three page notes against the rules and starts reading of why they shouldn't allow gay marriage in the church. And someone else screams, this is unconscionable. And the whole church freezes, right? Escalation, escalation, escalation.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  And he looks around and the entire church, as Martin tells to me, Reverend Martin Copenhagen says, through gritted teeth says, may the Holy Spirit speak through us. And the guy looks around.

• 45:51Brené Brown?

  But that is the holiest moment of all.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  It's also de-escalation, but it's practiced.

• 45:58Brené Brown?

  Yeah, totally.

• 45:59Speaker 04

  We're asking ourselves to be Olympic athletes when we haven't trained to walk. And so part of de-escalation was, and by the way, that church, he had a lot of intelligence. They, it would come to a vote, but he, though in their rules, you could have an absentee ballot, he banned absentee ballots because he said, you have to be in the room because you have to be altered or be open to the opportunity to be altered by what you hear. And then the final thing they did is the day that they had the vote, yes. And he didn't say the vote will be on this day. He said, when we are ready, when I, he used his authority as a leader, when I perceive we are ready to have the vote, we will have it. And then in the fourth session, he said, we are ready.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  And he made another rule, whatever the verdict is, no celebrating, no celebrating, because churches were being ripped apart at the time.

• 46:52Brené Brown?

  Oh, our church was ripped apart. Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  And they went and they ended up passing open and affirming and no one left the church.

• 47:02Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  And the final thing he said was, before you leave today, please go over to someone who had a different opinion than you and say hello and shake their hand. Because other, I don't want you debriefing in the parking lot. I want you debriefing here.

• 47:22Brené Brown?

  What great leadership.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Great leadership.

• 47:24Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm struck by the de-escalation strategy, which was basically in a, in a light way to call back to one of their core principles.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  One of the, which they knew, right? The common hymnal. I did advising work for the Ziran Mumdani mayoral campaign and they were, they used gathering as a strategic framework to help build the movement to win that campaign. They're using gathering as a strategic framework to also lead. And one of the ways, these rallies, we get bigger and bigger and bigger. And like all rallies, once you're getting attention, whatever political party you have, there's going to be hecklers, there's going to be protesters. And so part of the training that I do with teams and this works in all types of cases is instead of de-escalation, one of the questions I often ask is, how do we insert joy?

• 48:18Speaker 04

  How do we interrupt based on the values we have? How do you send in the opera singers? How do you blast salsa music and teach everyone to dance, right? They literally did this at one of their largest rallies in, in Washington Heights. And this is like public, you can see it on videos. The MC, who was a comedian, came up and said, now we may have some, we may have some disruptions. Everyone's like, boo. It's normal relevance, there's going to be some interruptions. And if you hear something, if for some reason we can't continue, you're going to hear this song and everyone's listening and it's dansa coduro. You know, like, and what we're going to ask you to do is stand up and dance. We know you can do it, right?

• 49:00Speaker 04

  We were in Washington Heights, like a large Latina, Latino neighborhood. And everyone starts laughing and they stand up and they start salsaing in the first opening moments of the rally, right? They're increasing warmth, they're having people embody their values, they know where they are, but they're also de-escalating, right? We have, our, our imagination is so limited because we think conflict is only antagonistic. We think we actually can't find ways to be in relationship with each other and expand the juiciness, right? Of how we actually be together when we care about each other and we care about the shared thing. Our tools are keeping us from each other and they need to help us actually bring us to each other. But it's also about power.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  It's not only just about connection.

• 49:47Brené Brown?

  Yeah, and I just have to say, this idea of collective humanity as a de-escalation tool is just, I just, I was just thinking about a debate that broke out just a couple of weeks ago in my MBA intensive that I teach. And I said, let's just stop. What's everybody feeling right now? Because I bet we'll find a lot of things in common and people were like, I want to run, worst class ever. And then we just started laughing and I don't think you're supposed to be talking about these things.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  Yes, beautiful.

• 50:24Brené Brown?

  Yeah, fuck it. Who cares? Let's keep going. And then I'm like, so we have a lot in common. They're like, is it okay that what we have in common is we all want to run for our lives? I'm like, a hundred percent.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  Wonderful.

• 50:36Brené Brown?

  And they're like, it's wonderful. It's like the moment when you're at church and you're like, peace be with you because I really dislike you so much that I'm throwing up in my mouth a little bit, but peace be with you. May the Lord's peace be with you.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  Peace be with you.

• 50:55Brené Brown?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 50:58Brené Brown?

  Okay, lightning round. Can I just also say the poetry of The Art of Gathering and The Art of Fighting, I'm just chef's kiss to you, Priya Parker.

• 51:06Speaker 04

  Thank you. That was not what I sold it as, by the way.

• 51:10Brené Brown?

  What did you sell it as?

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Rift.

• 51:13Brené Brown?

  Oh, that's good, too.

• 51:14Speaker 04

  Again, we all think it's like, oh, well, it's so obvious. It's like, you gotta find, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't originally The Art of Fighting.

• 51:22Brené Brown?

  Yeah, but there's, I mean, you could have, I would have sold on The Art of Fighting, The Poetry of Fighting, The Grace of Fighting. They're all just, yeah, I just, and I love, I love the conflict. Woo, I love how beautiful the conflict is on the cover of the book.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  That's Riverhead. My publisher deeply understands that visual language is also our assumption. Again, warmth, beauty, relevance. Like, what are we doing? And welcome to the mess. Like, welcome to the mess.

• 51:53Brené Brown?

  You know, I love it. Woo, I love the mess. Okay. Lightning round. What's one thing you're deeply curious about right now?

• 52:00Speaker 04

  I am deeply curious about how children connect with technology and without technology.

• 52:14Adam Grant?

  All right, I gotta ask this one, because I saw a version of it on the internet. I thought it was, we had to go to the expert. It was something like, the reason we have so many bad fights in America is that the left has purity tests and the right has loyalty tests. Agree or disagree?

• 52:33Speaker 04

  Disagree.

• 52:34Brené Brown?

  Oh, you're not getting, you're not getting off the hook there, girl. Good luck.

• 52:40Speaker 04

  I think we have so many fights in America because we are trying something that a nation has never done before, which is to have a multiracial democracy where people are relatively equal, but also are free to chase their dreams. And it's a really, really hard project. And I do think that the left has purity tests, which many groups on the left are starting to really question and unwind. Anand Gherdar Das's book, The Persuaders, talked a lot about the unwinding these purity tests. He gave this example, he's also my husband, he gave this example about how mega churches in parking lots leave their first three rows of parking spots for people who've never been church before. It's not a shame that

• 53:23Speaker 04

  you've never been before, right? How do you lower the dropage? I don't know about loyalty. I think, I don't know, I don't know what they mean by loyalty tests. But I think that we fight because we fight about the things we care about. And I think the danger is, we fight with people we don't know. And what I'm inviting you to do is to fight better with the people you know, including across political lines, but with the people you love. Because where there is longing, there's a possibility for a way through.

• 53:53Adam Grant?

  Well put. So well said.

• 53:56Brené Brown?

  Beautiful. You get to design the weirdest and wildest curiosity shop item, anything you want. What's one thing you're gonna leave on our shelves of the curiosity shop?

• 54:06Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh. Well, this isn't designed, but I feel you would love this, which is, my mentor is a guy named Hal Saunders, and he was a senior diplomat. He wrote the Camp David Accords, helped write the Camp David Accords, and then he retired and spent 20 years working with young people, teaching these skills, dialogue skills. And he always told us, listen deeply enough to be changed by what you hear. And at his funeral, we were each given a stone that on one side said, listen deeply enough, and then you turn it over, to be changed by what you hear. Hal Saunders, and then his birth years. And

• 54:50Speaker 04

  this book, The Art of Fighting, is dedicated to Hal Saunders. And so, if I could, I would give the curiosity shop that stone.

• 54:57Brené Brown?

  We would accept gratefully.

• 54:59Adam Grant?

  Definitely.

• 54:59Brené Brown?

  I mean, just beautiful. Yeah. Last question, what's one thing you're deeply grateful for right now?

• 55:06Speaker 04

  I am deeply grateful for my children and my husband. We both, crazily enough, have books coming out in September. His is called Man in the Mirror. It is a wild thing to not have one, but two book launches in a month.

• 55:25Speaker 04

  And so I'm grateful for our collective within our little foursome, humor and joy and kind of sense of fun. Because if you don't have that, when things are also stressful, what do you have? So I'm really grateful for their sense of humor and joy, and always finding the fun in when we can in each moment.

• 55:45Brené Brown?

  Thank you for joining us. What a treat. Just so good. Thank you, Priya.

• 55:49Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me. I, Renee, you, your books with Post-it notes in them is like the highest honor as an author. I remember you did that with The Art of Gathering, and I'm like, I've died and gone to heaven. So it's, it's really, I love how you read. It's so physical.

• 56:05Brené Brown?

  Oh, no, it's very, it's very physical. And I can tell you that your, your book got some airtime, meaning I threw it across my bedroom while I was reading it, while wishing you and your husband, but not your children curses. But then I picked it back up and read it again, because it just hit in some really hard places, but critically important ones. So airtime, Post-it notes, all the, all the ways I love a book.

• 56:28Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 56:29Adam Grant?

  Well, it stayed firmly on the ground for me, but immediately on my recommended fall reads list. And

• 56:36Speaker 04

  Thank you so much.

• 56:37Adam Grant?

  I just think, Priya, this is, it's a book that, no matter what kind of relationship you're in, or what kind of group you're in, it's impossible to read it without thinking, oh, I have some work to do, and this is gonna help me get closer to the people around me. I thought I was gonna read a book about conflict. No, it is a book about relationships.

• 56:59Speaker 04

  That's, that's totally right. And, and I thank you so much for your blurb. It's sort of like when someone reflects you back to you, I'm like, that is what this book is. And I think you said, this isn't a book about having better arguments. It's a, it's a manual for having better relationships. And I was like, yeah, that's right. Thank you for seeing it. But that was my deepest hope. It's like, these aren't like, have a better conversation with one person. It's like, let's zoom all the way out and kind of, I don't know, have a, like, add another color to this painting.

• 57:30Brené Brown?

  I did think you crushed the blurb about them. It was so, yeah, it was really spot on. All right. Thank you, Priya. And I can't, I can't wait to know what the next art is. So call us when you're ready.

• 57:40Adam Grant?

  It can't be the art of art. That's my only ask.

• 57:44Speaker 04

  I don't know art, so it won't be.

• 57:51Speaker 00

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• 59:32Adam Grant?

  See HomeDepot.com/LicenseNumbers. Brene, I'm so glad you suggested that. It was so good.

• 59:40Brené Brown?

  It was so fun.

• 59:41Adam Grant?

  So good.

• 59:41Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I just, we did a couple of gigs together, like a tour, and I've done some stuff with her and her husband. And the, I know this is like circular, but the thoughtfulness behind the contribution.

• 59:56Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Brené Brown?

  You know, and her experiences. And yeah, I just thought it was a really, if I could have people eat this book before I come visit them, that would be so helpful. I don't trust them to read it. If they could literally consume it, I'd be better off.

• 1:00:13Adam Grant?

  I mean, this is, this is for me, the big takeaway on de-escalation strategy is just pause. You need to read the heart of fighting.

• 1:00:20Brené Brown?

  Yeah. I mean, pause and just humanity and joyfulness. And we're so much more the same, especially when it gets all the way down to our bodies and our fear and what we need and want from each other, to be able to leverage that as de-escalation. Like, here's what we have in common right now. We all want this to end immediately. Here's what we have in common right now. We wish it was lunchtime. You know, it's like, because we're human. So I think it's, and I, and I thought about us a lot when I was reading this too, our four-year, our four years of not talking to each other, the rounds of hard conversations we've had, the friendship that we're building. I am grateful that we never walked away from heat.

• 1:01:04Adam Grant?

  Me too. And I think most of the time, my impulse has been to walk away from it. And every time I think, you are so good at this. You're so good at, at rumbling. And it's always helped us understand each other better and get on the same page faster. Why, why do I still have this instinct to run in the other direction? Because I'm afraid that it's going to hurt the relationship and I care about the relationship.

• 1:01:31Brené Brown?

  It's interesting, because you must process that internally, because every time I've reached out to you to say, hey, there's this thing going on. I want to talk about it. All I see is, can't wait. How does tomorrow look for you? Like, I don't see that impulse to be like, oh, I just see. And then sometimes when we get on a Zoom or a call, you might start with, I was kind of anxious about this, but it's weird because I know we're going to end up better in 30 minutes than we were right now. I just always saw willingness.

• 1:02:03Adam Grant?

  That's so interesting.

• 1:02:04Brené Brown?

  And interest.

• 1:02:05Adam Grant?

  That's because the uncertainty is worse than if the relationship was in jeopardy, right? Not knowing, it's like, it's like getting called to the principal's office. And then the meeting is next week. Like, no, no, no. If I'm getting called to the principal's office, I need to see the principal now, so that we can work out whatever the issue is, and I can resolve it.

• 1:02:25Brené Brown?

  Wait, am I the principal of this story?

• 1:02:27Adam Grant?

  Maybe, maybe. I think you are. But I mean, just, once I know there's a problem, right? It activates the solver in me, which you initiate with often. But it also just, I don't know, it's, it's interesting. I think you texted me a few weeks ago and described me as sensitive. And I think, I think you're the only person in my life who would describe me that way. And so it actually led to some really interesting reflection about what is it about our dynamic that brings out that part of me? And I think some of it is, you are more forthcoming about issues than most people. And some of it is, I think there's just a vestige of, because we got off on the wrong foot initially. I'm always a little

• 1:03:12Adam Grant?

  bit more worried.

• 1:03:13Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Adam Grant?

  That I could screw it up.

• 1:03:14Brené Brown?

  Yeah. And when, because I think you are trying to, I think you are trying to convince me that I'm a more sensitive person. And I know I'm a sensitive person, but I'm like, you're so sensitive too. We're both sensitive people. And you're like, I deny that claim.

• 1:03:30Adam Grant?

  I totally rejected it.

• 1:03:32Brené Brown?

  Yeah. But I think we're both, I think we're both sensitive. I think we can both be anxious. I think that we both are afraid we're doing something or going to do something that's going to cause another rift that feels insurmountable. But I think not only have all of our hard rumbles been so productive, I think they've deepened our friendship. And I also think I've learned more about myself talking to you.

• 1:03:59Adam Grant?

  Me too. Me too. And that's, I think that's part of what gives me confidence. It's not just that the previous ones have gone so well. It's also the aha moments and revelations that come out of them. It allows me to walk in and say, okay, worst case scenario, Brene is going to be mad at me or offended by something that I did or said. And I'm going to grow through that. And I think that's good for me. And long run, it should be good for us too.

• 1:04:24Brené Brown?

  Yeah. My thinking is, the worst case scenario is he is going to be mad at me.

• 1:04:31Brené Brown?

  And I'm going to be wrong about something, but I don't mind being wrong about something. And if he's mad at me, then I want to know.

• 1:04:39Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Brené Brown?

  And so, and one thing I will say that in her, in Priya's book, one of the calls to courage to me that's so strong, that I want to really compliment you on, is this idea is be alterable, be someone who can be altered by information or someone's experiences or whatever. And I think maybe, and if you're listening, I don't, we're not fawning over each other. We're, we are both just shocked.

• 1:05:05Adam Grant?

  Oh, no fun.

• 1:05:06Brené Brown?

  Yeah. Yeah, no, we have had some very fricking tough conversations, very hard conversations, since the podcast started. I think we're both willing to be altered.

• 1:05:18Brené Brown?

  And where we have really strong convictions, we're willing to learn and understand from each other about why they're strong. And so I think that's a big, because even if I told Steve, like, I'm going to have a hard conversation with Adam tomorrow, and it's scheduled and I'm nervous. He'll be like, can't you just skip to the part where you know it's going to be okay? Because you know it's going to be okay somewhere, right? And I'm like, yeah, but I'm not in that part yet.

• 1:05:41Adam Grant?

  Alison, I mean, Alison and Steve should just resolve our conflicts for us, because

• 1:05:47Adam Grant?

  going into these, Alison often says, you just, you just need to talk to Brene. Every time you talk, these things that you're worried about turn out to be either resolvable, or you actually, we're saying different things than either of you understood, and there wasn't a conflict to begin with.

• 1:06:03Brené Brown?

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:06:06Adam Grant?

  So I think.

• 1:06:06Brené Brown?

  I don't know. It's, it's been a good, it's been a great exercise in the art of fighting.

• 1:06:11Adam Grant?

  It has, it has. And I, you know, I think one of the things that, that Priya also helped me really feel good about is, I think I've hesitated too often. Like, I don't, I don't want to create conflict, or I don't want to bring this up. And that does then trap a relationship in the, okay, we only fight when, when it's intense, or when the stakes are high. And that, that doesn't exercise the muscle. And so I think her, for me, that's a really good push to say, you know what? There is no fight that's too small, because if we can, if we can argue about the fact that a hot dog is definitely not a sandwich, hell no. And I can't imagine being altered on that. But, but also I can, and we can

• 1:06:55Adam Grant?

  have some fun with it. That, that really prepares us for the important conversations, doesn't it?

• 1:07:01Brené Brown?

  God, 100%. And I think if we, I think the moment we say, we're not going to bring up these hard things, whether it's conscious or not, we've put a cap on what the relationship can be. And I think if you're okay with that cap, I mean, I'm okay with that cap with certain people in my life, where I'm not going to invest, I'm not going to invest the body work, the repair work, the time.

• 1:07:30Adam Grant?

  Nope.

• 1:07:30Brené Brown?

  I'm just not going to, I'm okay with that cap. But I am very aware of when there's a cap on conflict.

• 1:07:40Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 1:07:40Brené Brown?

  In a relationship, there's a cap on potential growth.

• 1:07:44Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Brené Brown?

  And deepening, I think.

• 1:07:45Adam Grant?

  I, I think so too. You know, it's, it's, it's interesting, because in those, in the relationships where it matters enough to you to not put the cap on it. I almost think that refusing to raise an issue is disrespectful to the other person. I think what you're, you're kind of implicitly saying to the other person is, I don't think you can do this. I don't think our relationship can withstand this. And what a sad, what a sad predetermined conclusion to arrive at. Why are you investing in this relationship at all, if you don't think it's capable of evolving and handling tension?

• 1:08:23Brené Brown?

  Yeah. And we, I think that's exactly right. I just think, I think that is the messaging. I don't think it can bear the weight of conflict, which is maybe selling yourself, the other person, the team, short. And also, it's a, what do you call that? A self fulfilling prophecy, I guess.

• 1:08:41Adam Grant?

  Yes. Yes, that's it. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. You have now just confined the relationship to the existing space it is, it's operating in, and it's going to be contained to that moving forward.

• 1:08:54Brené Brown?

  That's it. I think Priya would say, no heat, don't expect a ton of warmth. I love it. All right. This was fun. Thank you.

• 1:09:03Adam Grant?

  Thank you. Yeah, it was.

• 1:09:06Brené Brown?

  The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brené Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.

• 1:09:16Adam Grant?

  We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

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