How Leaders Turn Conflict Into Progress, with Priya Parker

Dave Stachowiak (0:00)

Often, we assume that good leaders and good teams don't fight. But fighting isn't the death of community. It turns out it's exactly what keeps it going. In this conversation, how to turn conflict into progress. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 802

Produced by Innovate Learning.

Priya Parker (0:21)

Maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak (0:27)

Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders are born, they're made. And this weekly show helps leaders thrive at key inflection points.

What's an inflection point we all run into pretty regularly in our work?

Conflict. Conflict comes up for all of us. It comes up personally, certainly, but it also comes up professionally. It comes up in our teams, our groups, our organizations, sometimes even our industries. And it is a challenging thing for all of us to navigate. Even though theoretically most of us know that conflict is important and valuable, when we get into it, it's often so hard to figure out how do we approach it, and what do we do next? Today's conversation is going to help us to navigate that well. And I'm so glad to welcome someone who's so good at this, and it's going to help us to really illuminate a path that will help us to take that next step. I'm so pleased to welcome back to the show Priya Parker. She is a facilitator, strategic advisor, best-selling author of The Art of Gathering, an executive producer and host of the New York Times podcast, Together Apart. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, she has spent 20 years guiding leaders and groups through complicated conversations about community, identity, and vision at moments of transition. She is the author of the new book, The Art of Fighting, The Transformative Power of Conflict. Priya, welcome back to the show.

Priya Parker (1:50)

Thank you so much for having me.

Dave Stachowiak (1:52)

There is a tendency to think that someone who writes a book about the value of conflict really loves conflict and handling conflict and all this comes really naturally. I know from getting into your work and reading two of your books that that is not necessarily the case, is it?

Priya Parker (2:10)

I am third generation ostrich on both sides. When conflict arises, everyone in my lineage has been taught to duck.

Many of the best fighters I know and many facilitators I know are recovering conflict-averse people who have realized it's a learnable skill and that there's great loss in avoidance.

Dave Stachowiak (2:38)

Well, throw me in the category of this as well too.

Priya Parker (2:42)

Really?

Dave Stachowiak (2:43)

Covering of, oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Priya Parker (2:45)

We can form a club.

Dave Stachowiak (2:46)

Exactly, exactly. Well, this leads into conflict, which is, you write in the book, I'm going to read a couple of sentences. We treat conflict as harmful, immoral, or toxic, yet conflict is everywhere in every relationship and group. It's normal, natural, and necessary. In fact, it's hard to become a durable group without a fight.

What is it that's so necessary about conflict?

Priya Parker (3:11)

Conflict is relevance. We don't fight about the things we don't care about, and we don't fight with people we don't care about.

I should say the art of fighting is not about screaming at strangers on the internet.

Dave Stachowiak (3:25)

Right.

Priya Parker (3:26)

It really is. The core, the question central to this book is, how do you fight with those you want to belong to, whether a team, whether a church or synagogue, whether a family?

And so much of what we think about in terms of conflict is sort of fighting with the enemy, right? Or those people out there.

And yet conflict is the kind of the beating pulse of what is central to a group. So when we don't actually have the skills to approach it, and if we actually see it as immoral or toxic or dysfunctional, we're often leaving a lot of the most important energy and care on the table. And we tend to also think that by not facing a particular fight, we're sort of protecting the group. But often, avoidance leads to exiting, to blander groups, also to distance. And so part of what I wanted to do was, you know, I'm a conflict resolution facilitator and I work in many organizations. And I came up with, I decided I want to write this book, The Art of Fighting, in the summer of 2020, which you may or may not remember, there were a lot of reckonings happening.

Dave Stachowiak (4:44)

Yeah.

Priya Parker (4:45)

And there were groups and companies and organizations imploding all over the place. And I am a facilitator and so I was in many of those Zooms.