Pod Insights How to Be a Better Human Work advice from the world’s favorite couples therapist w/ Master Fixer Dr. Orna Guralnik | from Fixable About this episode Relationships of any kind can be tricky—but therapists are here to help. In this special episode, Anne and Frances talk to clinical psychologist Dr. Orna Guralnik, star of the hit show Couples Therapy, to translate her advice for romantic relationships to the professional world. Together, they discuss the art of deep listening, underline the importance of patience and working through differences, and reframe relationships as a constant cycle of rupture and repair. Dr. Guralnik also reflects on the making of Couples Therapy and gives Anne and Frances advice as a couple who work together.
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1:23 Chris Duffy? Hey, everyone. Chris Duffy here. Today, we are sharing an episode of a podcast that we think you are going to love. This has been handpicked by the TED staff, and we think that as a How to Be a Better Human listener, you are going to come away with a fresh idea and a totally new perspective. So enjoy this episode and head to the link in the description afterwards to hear even more.
1:43 Speaker 02 Francis, you and I have never been in couples' therapy.
1:47 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. So if you recall, you promised me early on that you would never ask.
1:55 Speaker 02 I did. I would have promised you anything at that point. I was basically a child bride who had no idea what she was getting into.
2:04 Speaker 03 You were 30 years old. You were emotionally, as you still are, like 75.
2:13 Speaker 03 And now I am super suspicious about what I'm walking into.
2:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna ask you to trust me, baby. It's going to be amazing.
2:23 Speaker 03 Oh, boy.
2:26 Speaker 02 Welcome to Fixable, a podcast from TED. I'm your host, Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.
2:32 Speaker 03 And I'm your co-host, Frances Fry. I'm a Harvard Business School professor. And I'm Anne's wife.
2:37 Speaker 02 Today's episode will be the last new episode of the season. So we want to go out with a bang. We have a very special master fixer joining us today.
2:47 Speaker 03 I have never been more nervous.
2:50 Speaker 02 And I have never been more delighted to share a guest with our audience. The fabulous Dr. Orna Guralnik is with us today to help us take lessons from the world of couples therapy and apply them to the experience of work. And Frances, if along the way, we get to our work and our relationship, it happens, baby. It's going to come up organically.
3:15 Speaker 03 This is not helping.
3:17 Speaker 02 Dr. Guralnik, for those of you who don't know, is a renowned psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist on the faculty of NYU's postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis. She is also the star of the fantastic show Couples Therapy on Showtime and Paramount Plus. I want to say upfront that I love this show. I've watched every episode and I have been really struck by the overlap between her work and our work. We're not therapists, of course, but many of the same themes and challenges that come up in the conversations she has with her patients are the same themes that come up in the conversations we have with people every day. How to build and rebuild trust, how to repair relationships,
4:01 Speaker 02 how to not just tolerate differences, but really lean in and value them.
4:06 Speaker 03 Well, this is starting to sound better to me because this is what we think about and write about all the time.
4:12 Speaker 02 And these are some of the topics that we want to explore with Dr. Guralnik today. What are the lessons from her work that we can bring with us into the office?
4:21 Speaker 03 If we keep it focused on the office, I am totally excited.
4:26 Speaker 02 If along the way, we get to our relationship, it happens, baby.
4:35 Speaker 02 Dr. Orna Goralek, welcome to Fixable.
4:38 Speaker 04 Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to join you.
4:41 Speaker 02 We are super fans and have so many questions for you today. We are also really moved by the grace and the wisdom and the values that you share with us and millions of other people through your show Couples Therapy.
4:58 Speaker 04 Thank you.
4:58 Speaker 02 We should disclose upfront that we are married to each other, which you have probably already figured out by now. So we may, we may get to some piece of that story before the conversation is over.
5:10 Speaker 03 I'm okay if we don't. I'm okay if we don't.
5:14 Speaker 02 We might warm up.
5:15 Speaker 03 We already got there. I'm so doomed. I knew I was doomed.
5:19 Speaker 02 I know. I know. You're outnumbered, Frances. Two people who like to live the examined life.
5:24 Speaker 03 Oh, boy.
5:25 Speaker 02 So let's start here, far away from me and Frances. This is a show about work. And on the surface, it sounds like a topic that's very far away from the intimacy of your expertise and domain. But so many of the questions and the topics and the skills that you explore with the couples on your show and I imagine in your work feel so relevant to our experience of work. So maybe just as a starting place, what are the most important lessons from your work that people can bring into their experience of the office?
6:05 Speaker 04 Obviously, what we're dealing with in the office as well as at home and in most of the situations that we encounter so far, we're dealing with other human beings. And we need to interact with other human beings with their otherness and their difference from us. So a lot of what we do in the world is figure out how to work through difference. Really, in almost every aspect of our life, every minute that we're interacting. And even when we're not interacting with other people, we interact with ourselves because we have different parts that are often in conflict. So dealing with difference is kind of the, the basic of like human experience.
6:49 Speaker 02 If I can ask you right away, just for some coaching for us and for our listeners, how do we approach that otherness and that idea of difference with?
6:59 Speaker 02 More curiosity and less judgment, both for other people and and kind of for ourselves. Because I we hear a lot of people beating themselves up for not being better at this one.
7:10 Speaker 04 One of the things that happens when we're faced with difference is we somehow, our mind tends to go towards if we're different, one of us is right, one of us is wrong, one of us is better, which is most of the time flawed.
7:28 Speaker 04 It's like a flawed premise. So to kind of convince ourselves to move out of that state of mind and into a different state of mind, which is a state of mind of curiosity, where, oh, something different from me. How interesting. What is it? What can I learn from it? As opposed to like, who tops who?
7:49 Speaker 02 In your work, is part of what you're doing modeling? What that like emotional frequency is?
7:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, I model it as an emotional frequency. And if you want to talk about the emotional frequency, which I like that word, it has to do with patience. It has to do with breath. It has to do with time. It has to do with regulating level of intensity, regulating kind of anger or despair. It's a lot of emotional frequency that you have to manage just to be able to reach the cognitive state of curiosity, where you're open to taking in something new from the outside, as opposed to just like affirming what you know already.
8:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, and Chris Argers's work, which we go to a lot, he describes that as advocacy versus inquiry.
8:41 Speaker 04 Interesting.
8:42 Speaker 02 And do you have any coaching for us on practically how to access that curious inquiry state?
8:53 Speaker 02 Like in the moment, I'm feeling the thing. My coworker just pissed me off. And I know I have to deal with it. I don't have the luxury of waiting till tomorrow. How do I even think about getting into the beautiful state that you just described?
9:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, so all of what it means to take a deep breath, and I don't mean it only, but sometimes literally take a deep breath, but take a deep breath in terms of like your entire approach to the situation. Like coach yourself into reducing a sense of urgency, calming yourself down in a way kind of, I like to think of it as like imagine yourself taking up a little less space, whatever that space is, and making a little more space for who you're talking to. So you can understand what's going on there on the other side. What is it that they're negotiating for, needing? What is it they're presenting you with? Just make room for more.
9:49 Speaker 02 I love that. Frances, you had a nonverbal reaction. Wondering if you have a thought there?
9:54 Speaker 03 That one works well. I spend a lot of time coaching people to take up more space. And that's so that they can get in touch with their own power and their own voice. And when you interact, as I've just learned, it's a really nice metaphor to now, once you've taken up space, now yield and give some and make room for someone else. So that really sits very intuitively with me now that you've said it.
10:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, and I can imagine that it's of course not always true. I think with certain people or units that are not, that are more inclined to not take space, maybe the coaching would be different. Right? For a real interaction to happen, let's say it depends on how many components are at the table. But if there are two components at the table, both need to be present. And the negotiation of space as a metaphor is important there. Who's taking too much space? Who's taking too little? Are you flexible? Are you moving back and forth in terms of how much you're occupying versus how much you're letting your other side?
11:07 Speaker 04 Speak.
11:08 Speaker 02 And ideally, both people are kind of monitoring that shared space if we're if we're getting this right.
11:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, although there's a lot that one side can do. Moving back to the realm of like couples work, I mean, sometimes people, very often, people are kind of dragging their partner into therapy.
11:29 Speaker 02 Um, how should we think about that scenario differently? When one person is more eager than the other one to have this type of conversation?
11:39 Speaker 04 One person can do a lot. I mean, that's what I was gonna say earlier about like the the relationship between, let's say, what happens in a therapy office and in couples work and and other situations like work environments, or we can talk about other situations, is that a- and that's one thing I've learned is that a relationship is more than its parts, right? When you're in a relationship, you're creating a system and the system has its own properties and it needs attending. It there there are ways that the system works that are different from each individual. And if you create kind of a good system, if you take good care of the field
12:24 Speaker 04 that is created between whoever's sitting at the table, a lot can happen for individuals. And in that sense, I mean, that sounded a bit abstract, but in that sense, one person can do a lot. Not everyone has to take care of the system equally. One person can do a lot to create an environment where the rest can flourish.
12:47 Speaker 02 So if we apply that to a team dynamic, which is a lot of how people experience work as part of their team and then in relationship with their boss, that's what a lot of the the research shows. So if we take that thought and bring it into the workplace,
13:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
13:02 Speaker 02 it's hopeful because you don't need everyone pulling necessarily in the same direction to be able to make a lot of progress there. Let's start with a relationship with my boss that is not going well. Uh, but my boss doesn't seem to care because my boss is thinking about other things. But I want to make our relationship better because it's having a profound impact on my experience of work. What can I do in that situation?
13:27 Speaker 04 Right, so in a relationship with the boss, it's often the subordinate, the employee, has more responsibility to attend to the relationship, to the system than the boss. We can think about all the reasons why that is, but that's often what it is. And you have, as a subordinate, you have many ways to do that. It's not, you don't need a two-way street there. There are plenty of things that you can do to kind of create a system of communication or a system of relationship or relating to each other that is good, that is better than what it was. It depends on what the ills are, but just first of all, to keep in mind
14:08 Speaker 04 that it is your responsibility and that you have the power in that, rather than sitting there quietly and complaining that your boss isn't taking care of you.
14:19 Speaker 02 And do you have an example of what that might look like? Exactly my question.
14:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, totally. One is to become a better listener. That's always the number one thing to go to.
14:32 Speaker 02 Like, I am the subordinate. I want my boss to pay attention to me, pay more attention to me and what I need from work.
14:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:39 Speaker 02 My instinct is not to listen more effectively. I want to be an advocate for myself in that situation.
14:45 Speaker 04 Right, but that's the beauty of thinking systemically. They're not mutually exclusive. Like, the more you create an environment of proper, deep listening, where things, where true things can be said, it goes both ways. It's the field that you're creating. So if you talk to your boss and you say, "I need you to talk to me very directly about what you need from me."
15:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:10 Speaker 04 "Don't hold back. Talk to me as if I'm an adult. I want to hear what you have to say." You're immediately creating a field and you're inviting your boss to participate in a way that is... Serious, mutually respectful. And if the boss feels heard, it's you can pretty much trust that they will then want to listen differently, that they will offer the same thing.
15:33 Speaker 02 Great, thank you. How does that counsel change if I'm thinking about my interacting my relationship with my team members on more of an equal plane?
15:42 Speaker 04 Yeah. Team relationships are different because of course there's certain similarities, but you can think of a team as kind of a pack, like a pack that has to work together, like sled dogs. And ideally, you want a team to be experience themselves as part of a big unit that is working together, like a good working group. And a good working group knows that they have different roles and the roles are clear. They know what each are good at. So one might be the one that is responsible indeed for the quality of their relationships. One might be the one that comes up with all the crazy ideas.
16:27 Speaker 04 One might be the one that, you know, fights with the enemy. One might take on more of a leadership type position, or one might attend to process or to small details. It's good to know what each is good at. The dynamics that get in the way of teams often, aside from lack of clarity, are competition, right? Sibling rivalry. And competition is a healthy thing to have to a certain degree, but beyond a certain level, it becomes really destructive. So the challenges of a team are different. But it's important to think that the team ideally wants to experience itself as a unit,
17:07 Speaker 04 as a functional working group, where the importance of the individual is not what's at stake, but the unit, the system as a whole.
17:17 Speaker 02 A lot of the couples on your show are working on the practice of repair. So there's some kind of harm that's been inflicted on the relationship. We increasingly find ourselves talking with leaders about how important this repair scale is. So the real muscle isn't building trust, it's rebuilding trust.
17:36 Speaker 04 True. You know, there's a saying in the attachment research that all relationships are a constant rupture and repair, constant.
17:49 Speaker 02 Oh, that's so powerful.
17:50 Speaker 03 It's so powerful, and it's exactly what we're experiencing. Because the people often treat trust like a Faberge egg. And once it's broken, it can never be restored. And we're like, no, you can actually restore it to even stronger than it was before. And we guarantee you, you're going to break it. But I like constant state of rupture and repair. Yes.
18:13 Speaker 02 And it's really liberating because, I mean, back to people beating themselves up. People often feel a lot of stress about the fact that these relationships are in flux in this way.
18:23 Speaker 04 Right, but it's the nature of the beast.
18:26 Speaker 02 It's the nature of the beast. Some of your couples are wrestling with whether the rupture is so profound that they need to break up. How do I know if it's time for me to break up with a relationship at work? To leave a team or leave a company? Any coaching there on how I should think about that?
18:47 Speaker 04 Wow, that's a hard one, because there's so many factors that can be part of it. But maybe we can start with what I see in the realm of like a couples world and see what applies. But when couples are too, in a way, addicted to cycles of, we could call it like abuse and vengeance.
19:13 Speaker 04 There can be something that is too satisfying about that. That it's hard for couples to leave that mode of being and move into a more constructive mode. It can be impossible for them for whatever history has accumulated or what they're bringing into the relationship. You know, if something feels like you're trying to work on it one way or another, and you're always left with this like bad feeling, then it might be time to go. It just might not be the right fit, and there's just too much damage, or it's just not the right fit. For me, like, the key question is, how much change are you able to affect with something that is bothering you?
19:56 Speaker 04 If you, if something's bothering you and there's change, you can change something over here and then change something over there. But it's a moving system, it's dynamic, it's not, you know.
20:07 Speaker 04 Stuck in this kind of fossilized place. Why not? Why not keep working at it? It's not like you're gonna go somewhere else and it's gonna be perfect. You're always gonna find some challenge. So try to work on it. If it feels like it's not moving. Go.
20:25 Speaker 03 Move on. I love that.
20:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:28 Speaker 03 When you said deep listening, which resonates a lot, but if I was going to teach someone how to become a deeper listener. Are there some pragmatic steps that we can take?
20:43 Speaker 04 Yeah, you know. There's a, there's an area in the brain that is responsible for expressive language. And there's another area in the brain, like the Broca area is responsible for listening. It's really shifting. If you can have like in your mind that you're shifting. Brain areas, but. Deep listening requires, first of all, quieting down your wish to speak. So there's a difference between listening to fortify your own position. Versus listening to understand. And it's, you have to learn how to.
21:26 Speaker 04 Distinguish between those modes within yourself. It's not always clear. Sometimes you think you're listening to listen, but you're really just kind of. Building your own point or building your own argument. And you have to really know when to quiet things down. And sometimes you need to do that. But it's important to know how to quiet yourself down and first of all, tune in to the other person. And then tune in a way that you're trying to really get to the essence of what they're saying. Versus get caught on the details. I mean, people get caught on details constantly. No, it didn't happen yesterday. It happened three days ago. It's not the point. It doesn't matter when it happens.
22:08 Speaker 03 That's really, that's a super practical one. Let me test some advice I've given to see if it makes sense, which is that I tell people when they can repeat back the other person's point to the other person's satisfaction, you've probably gone through the act of deep listening.
22:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, yes. And the idea is not to necessarily repeat it word by word, but to get essence, what's important to the other person.
22:38 Speaker 03 I love the word essence there.
22:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, so what advice do you have for us? We do all of our work together. We now have a hard time not doing it because it is, we find that we are both so much better in each other's presence than we are out there individually in the world. What should we think about, look out for? How do we, how are we good stewards of this partnership, both at home and out in the world?
23:08 Speaker 04 First of all, I think it's wonderful. Couples that manage to work well together and create something together. I mean, that's fantastic. It's both that thrill of doing it together, but also you get to know your partner in different ways and these people that don't work together don't. You can adore, admire, respect, care for, console. I mean, there's so many, the relationship can get so rich because so much of our lives nowadays is about work. So when it works, I think it's wonderful. The things that can get in the way, you know, I don't need to tell you, of course, is first of all, of course, competition and issues of power
23:51 Speaker 04 and issues of self-esteem, everything that has to do with comparison. When people get like stuck on this problem of comparison, it can, it can be destructive, depending on the quality of the comparison, where people go with it. There's a certain kind of discourse that we use at work and there's a different discourse that has to do with domestic life and there's a different discourse that has to do with romantic life. And it's important to know how to shift between those. If at work, you're like concerned with like things like the bottom line and optimization. I mean, that's not the language you want to bring in your domestic life, or it's not the language you want to be.
24:34 Speaker 02 Or to romance. I was just echoing you. Yeah.
24:37 Speaker 04 Yeah. You do not want to be optimizing romance.
24:41 Speaker 02 You do not want to be optimizing the romance. Yeah.
24:43 Speaker 04 Yeah. So to know that you're shifting discourse and to be kind of aware of that seems to me super important.
24:51 Speaker 02 Nice. I love that. To me, one of the most thrilling parts of it is that um, I get to see so many more dimensions of Francis out in the world than, you know, just within the limitations of domestic life. It's just, it's a more, it's a more narrow version of all of us. And then I get to go out in the world and see all like all of the beautiful colors show up in all these different ways. And I think that is like half the fun of this for me selfishly.
25:21 Speaker 03 Anne often makes a phrase that I, I think I now understand when she says she coaches people to have adult to adult relationships. And it sounds like you're giving a lot of dimensionality to adult to adult relationships.
25:36 Speaker 04 Exactly. Yeah.
25:37 Speaker 02 Back to frequency. There are all these reasons where we don't choose that adult to adult frequency, usually from a place of love, love is maybe too strong in some of these scenarios, but taking care of other people. So I'm not going to tell you the hard truth that you're not performing or because I want to protect your feelings and I want to avoid the discomfort of this. So sometimes the way through it is with this adult to adult framing, which invites both of us to show up.
26:03 Speaker 04 Yeah. Yeah. And trust that truth will set you free.
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29:16 Speaker 02 So you're years into making the show right now. It's been a massive success. Your own learning has become part of the script, and the scenes of you not having all the answers and engaging with your colleagues are also super powerful. Even just as a portrait of a professional at work, you are both strong and skilled and human and vulnerable all at the same time, which I think is really powerful to see. Can you talk about those scenes? Were those intentional? Did you find your way there? And how do you feel about them?
29:49 Speaker 04 First of all, thanks for how you're portraying it. In my profession as an analyst, we do often make sure on and off to have consults with colleagues and with supervisors. We often create these peer supervision groups to make sure that you're not stuck in your own little rabbit hole of how you understand what's going on. You have to keep a great deal of confidentiality. You can't talk about your patients with the rest of the world, but it's important to have certain people to talk with so that you're not just stuck, so that you can get different perspectives on what's going on, especially when things get intense. So it's, when we started doing the show, I was telling the directors, well, I'll probably
30:34 Speaker 04 hire a consultant to just make sure I'm... Thinking about everything and they were like, well, maybe we should film that too. And I'm like, that's a great idea. So that's how it happened. So we started with Virginia and then I was like, well, why don't we bring in the rest of my peers? Because those are the people I would be consulting with. And that's what we did. And it's both really great for me, just for the same reason it would be great for me in my private practice. But I also think it's really important for people to see that because it is a chance to constantly learn the way I'm constantly learning. I can share it with the audience, like, how do you think about these situations? How do you do this theory?
31:19 Speaker 04 So, and indeed kind of debunking the idea that you have to be a know it all, that relationships are based on not knowing and learning from other people and being in conversation.
31:34 Speaker 02 I love that. It really comes through. In retrospect, what are the, what are other creative decisions that you have made for the show that you think were, were most important?
31:45 Speaker 04 Lots, there's always discussions about that. One was what aspects of my own life to allow in and what to keep out? Because typically as an analyst, my patients don't know much about me. I mean, they can read stuff that I've written if they want to. Most choose not to, but otherwise they just come into my office and they're free to know very little. Now, the documentarians, in the beginning, they were, you know, like any documentarian, for them, it's like the more the better, like we, we want to know about you. We want everything, like every conversation you have, we want to film. And I'm like, this is not good. This is not, therapy is not like that. It's not, you want to include less of me to make room
32:31 Speaker 04 for the couples and to make for the audience also to have their own transference, not to put too much of myself in there. And, and that was kind of navigating that was something that we were always learning and trying out and I had a pretty rigid stance early on, but then COVID hit, so it was like. Okay, forget it. Never mind. We're still meeting at home, okay? And then, you know, my kid walks in and it's just like.
33:01 Speaker 02 Frances is a huge dog lover.
33:02 Speaker 03 I was just gonna go to the dog. Why don't you go to the dog?
33:06 Speaker 04 Well, I was. A favorite topic.
33:09 Speaker 03 It's so palpable, the role, the role. I would love to know the thinking might did begin as an accident? And it was then a happy accident? Was it intentional? I'd love to know the story by beyond this. At least it's part of central casting for me in my consumption of the show as a lifelong dog, having dogs in the family.
33:30 Speaker 04 Definitely not an accident. Nico comes with me to work way before the show. She comes with me to work every day. And she does the work with me. She's an amazing presence in the office. She's also just, she's funny. She just knows her job. She like greets people at the door. She walks them in. She sniffs and licks them and makes them happy. And they pet her and she kind of eases everyone in. And when people are settled, she settles down. And when the session ends, she gets up and walks them out.
34:05 Speaker 02 That's so good.
34:07 Speaker 04 And she just brings, you know what dogs bring? They bring this kind of goodness and love and simplicity of connection and very tactile. You know, I'm an analyst. I don't touch my patients. I don't comfort them physically, but the dog does. She's sort of like a transitional object.
34:25 Speaker 03 How did she learn how to do this? Did it, was she just naturally good at it? Did she have training for it?
34:32 Speaker 04 She didn't have training. She's just, you know, she's one of those dogs that just gets it. You know, when I'm like, you know, heavy stuff is going on in the session. If it's like really upsetting or she comforts me. You know, I grab her and I pet her and it's, I'm comforted.
34:50 Speaker 02 I see my wife's mind reeling about the possibilities.
34:55 Speaker 03 So neither of our dogs are get it. In a way you can't describe.
35:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, I don't think any of our dogs are naturals. No. Let's just say that. Yeah.
35:10 Speaker 04 What kind of dogs do you have?
35:12 Speaker 03 Labrador and then a mix between an Irish setter and a golden retriever.
35:18 Speaker 04 Oh.
35:18 Speaker 03 Which, which should be perfect.
35:21 Speaker 04 They should be.
35:22 Speaker 02 Her threat assessment machinery is maybe jacked up a little too high for the work.
35:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:31 Speaker 02 This is, this conversation has selfishly been so fun for us. If our listeners could do one thing tomorrow to make their relationships at work better, what would you advise them to do?
35:43 Speaker 04 Can it be two?
35:44 Speaker 02 Yes, yes, we're going to give you two.
35:46 Speaker 04 Thank you so much. One is to, I mean, this is very corny, but super powerful, is to express gratitude to whoever you're working with about something real. Which again, this is about building a field, like building the field that, creating a field where people can work well. So when people feel recognized for what they're contributing, it's always good. I mean, this is just, anytime you're in doubt, do that. It'll make everything better immediately.
36:20 Speaker 04 And the second thing is, listen, decide, okay, I'm going to listen to whoever it is. Just, it's all about introducing kind of a certain kind of spirit of generosity, inclusiveness, recognition, creating a field in which you want to live.
36:37 Speaker 02 I love that phrase, a field in which you want to live. And to your point, as an individual in that field, I can have a huge impact, even if I don't have, you know, everyone's consent around me or everyone on the same page necessarily.
36:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:54 Speaker 03 You know, one of the things that I'm taking from this is that when we coach people, they usually begin by saying, I can be a good leader as long as employees are pristine. They don't say it that way, but that's what they reveal.
37:08 Speaker 04 Right.
37:08 Speaker 03 Then we tell them our ambition for them is to be great when they're pristine and great when they're not pristine. And you really help to give all kinds of dimensionality to that. And I do, as Anne said earlier, I do find it an ultimately hopeful. Conversation. There's a lot of rigor and a lot of optimism with this. And so I'm really grateful for it.
37:31 Speaker 02 Good. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and time with us today. Thank you for inviting me.
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39:05 Chris Duffy? What does it actually take to build a life that feels like yours? Through the reinventions, reckonings, and reclamation of your 40s, 50s, and beyond. On the top-ranked Good Life Project podcast, host Jonathan Fields sits down every week with renowned thinkers and doers like Priya Parker and Angela Duckworth and hundreds more for deep, honest, science-grounded conversations about identity, meaning, relationships, and what it really means to live well at this stage of life. No hacks, no hustle, just the real stuff. Listen on your favorite podcast app or watch on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. Just search Good Life Project.
39:52 Speaker 03 I don't know that I've ever been in an audience with a better human. And by that, you know, the way we think about leadership is about making others better. Who is she not going to make better?
40:04 Speaker 03 It's just was pretty, it was pretty thrilling.
40:07 Speaker 02 So motivating. Bring your best self and she has that impact on the scale of the planet right now. I mean, what an invitation. You talked about her message being hopeful. What parts of her message made you most hopeful?
40:23 Speaker 03 Let's say you're in a team that's not going well, or you're in a relationship that's not going well. You don't have to wait for the other person.
40:31 Speaker 02 I love that, too.
40:33 Speaker 03 You can do the disproportionate amount of the work so that you take care of the system. So we each have to take care of ourselves, but somebody, it could be just one person who tends to the system. That's like crazy hopeful because usually the person with the frustration also has the discretionary energy to bring to it. So I love that one person can make a big difference. The other part is that everything, like every time we asked her to double click on something like what deep listening or each step was accessible.
41:08 Speaker 03 Like each one was something we could do if we set our minds to it. And then I really loved the rigor. Oh, oh, it's this part of your brain does this part of your brain does that. So it might help to think that you're shifting from one part of your brain to the other. Golly, that speaks my language.
41:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. One of the challenges of this conversation is every, every conversation I wanted to have with her could be an hour conversation. Right. And to try to have it in this kind of snackable way. To her credit, like this format, it almost doesn't work because there's so much like rich territory to get into. And so to skim across the surface is a challenge. I found myself just, part of the joy of the show is being in her presence.
42:03 Speaker 03 I loved being in her presence.
42:04 Speaker 02 And it was so fun in this conversation to just be in her presence as she processed the world and revealed these core values that are so powerful that I think she put a little bit of voice to. But they are also so counter to, I think, much of what we experience in the world and in the media environment right now. So this sense of what, you know, include the opposite of polarization, you know, curiosity about the other, welcoming of the other, you know, doing the practical work of being interested in this other perspective.
42:46 Speaker 02 Like it just, to see it and to feel it is just super powerful.
42:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, I look forward to our listeners getting a glimpse of it as well through this. You know, one of the more remarkable parts of the conversation was at the end, when you asked her, how do you know if a couple needs couples therapy? And she removed ambiguity. Like, like if you feel like you're able, you have problems. Let me just begin. You have issues.
43:17 Speaker 03 If you feel like you can move the needle, you might not need to bring in an additional voice. But if you feel stuck, I love the word fossilized, then an additional voice might be helpful. Although, so on the one hand, wow, a lot of people will be thinking about couples therapy. On the other hand, I can feel a lot of disappointment when walking in and it's not her and Nico.
43:41 Speaker 02 I know. I mean, we don't know the feel, but it does set quite a high bar for what's what happens next. I found that a really useful for do I stay in the job? Do I stay on the team? Like, are you trying to make progress and getting nowhere? Yeah, that's the thing you care about. You know, as opposed to a lot of the kind of loaded language and words and toxicity and like that we think about, oh, here are the red flags for why, for when you need to move on. Like, are you trying to make things better and it's not working? Okay. Then maybe then maybe you should go. But if you're making progress, there is, there is hope here. And it may be worth your time to stay and see how far you can go.
44:26 Speaker 03 And if you're doing nothing and just waiting, you haven't tried yet.
44:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:29 Speaker 03 So that's not a signal to go. I'm just not enjoying myself. It's just not happening. That's not the signal.
44:37 Speaker 02 If you're sitting on the sidelines and judging the behavior of your colleagues, that is not reliable data also. I love that. All right, well, Francis, this is our last episode of Fixable for the season.
44:51 Speaker 03 Wow.
44:52 Speaker 02 I want to share with our listeners that we're really excited. We're going to take a few weeks off now and really think about the show. We're going to come back next season with even more fixable, even more episodes. And we're thinking really hard about the formats and the structure of the show that are going to be most interesting and most fun and the topics that are really going to resonate with people on people's minds. So we are back in action on January 26th, and then we're going to come back bigger and better and stronger than ever.
45:24 Speaker 03 And along the way, you know, we've, we always invite people to call in with their problems and, you know, or send us emails and we appreciate that very much. And we can even open the aperture some, you can tell us which aspects of the show are your favorite, so we make sure not to, not to walk on by those. Because I do think it's, you know, it's time to refresh and think about bringing in new things, which means you have to let go of other things. And so learning from people what resonates most, don't, you know, you can include that in what you share with us.
45:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is a particularly fertile environment for feedback.
45:59 Speaker 03 Yes.
46:00 Speaker 02 As we think about how to make the show better. So any thoughts and ideas you have, please send them. How do they communicate with us, Francis Fry? You can email, call, or text us at [email protected] or 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253.
46:27 Speaker 02 Fixable is a podcast from TED. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris. And me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Balareso, and Roxanne Highlash. And our show was mixed by Louis at Storyart.
46:54 Chris Duffy? This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court, and that fight needs your support today. Donate at nrdc.org/human, and your gift will be matched five times.
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48:57 Speaker 07 This podcast is brought to you by Thomson Reuters. The best don't just do their work, they change what's possible. Cases won, audits completed, jobs saved. Behind every one of those moments is a professional who needed to get it right, and did. Thomson Reuters builds the technology that sharpens insights, speeds up decision-making, and powers the outcomes that matter. So when professionals act, the impact is felt by everyone. Be a change maker. Visit tr.com/changemakers.
Previous Re-release: Throwing good parties and building community (w/ Priya Parker) Next Interview: The razor-thin line between contagion and connection w/ Dan Taberski | from TED Health Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
