The rewards of healthy conflict (w/ Master Fixer Amanda Ripley) (Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

Anne Morriss: Frances, how would you rate our ability to handle conflict as a couple? 

Frances Frei: Ooh, I'm bringing down the average. I think you're a great individual performer. 

Anne Morriss: I think we've actually gotten much better at this over our almost 20 years of being in this together. I recall early in the game that I was shocked at one of your main conflict tactics.

Frances Frei: Oh, yes. 

Anne Morriss: On this spectrum of fight versus flight, I am world class flight. So if I'm not trying, I simply run away. I kind of assessed you in the beginning that you were on the fight end of the spectrum. And that's not the behavior you demonstrated. 

Frances Frei: No. 

Anne Morriss: Do you wanna talk about what you do? 

Frances Frei: Yeah, so fight or flight is presented as the continuum. It's not, because what I do, and I think I'm alive because of it, is I play dead. So in the presence of conflict, I play dead. And you know what? The conflict goes right past me. 

Anne Morriss: In the form of, you will go, you will literally go to sleep. 

Frances Frei: I've never slept more deeply than when there's conflict around. I have to go to sleep literally, maybe just right there on the floor. I have to go to sleep right then and there. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. 

Frances Frei: And then I wake up and I'm ready to go. And you know what? Half the time the people are gone 

Anne Morriss: I remember the first time I observed this behavior. It was a couple years in somehow 'cause there was a child, there was an infant. We had just taken this very stressful drive with this unhappy infant, and we got home and you and I were negotiating kind of the typical couple, who's...

Frances Frei: We're both exhausted, who's gonna care for him? 

Anne Morriss: Yes. And you went to sleep. And I could not believe it. 

Frances Frei: Yeah. Because it seemed out of character if you were assessing my empathy.

Anne Morriss: Yeah. 

Frances Frei: But totally in character if I was experiencing the conflict. 

Anne Morriss: And I was really stuck like from an evolutionary perspective on how you, like your ancestors who had exhibited similar behaviors were still walking around, and that's when we realized that this playing dead tactic actually probably worked well.

Frances Frei: There's really no other reason I'd be around.

Anne Morriss: You are listening to Fixable, a podcast from TED. I'm your host, Anne Morriss. I'm a company builder and leadership coach. 

Frances Frei: And I'm your co-host, Frances Frei. I'm a Harvard Business School professor, and I'm Anne's wife. 

Anne Morriss: This is a show where we fix things, and our ambition today is to fix workplace conflict.

Frances Frei: Ambition is the right word. 

Anne Morriss: Frances, here's the problem. As we've talked about on this show before, good conflict, healthy conflict is such a powerful force for making teams better, and yet that's not what most of us are experiencing. Most of us are experiencing conflict that makes us worse, or we're just avoiding it altogether.

Frances Frei: So how do we fix this? 

Anne Morriss: We're gonna try to make some progress today by inviting Master Fixer Amanda Ripley on the show to help us get better at conflict. Amanda's a fantastic journalist who has covered conflict all over the world. She's the author of three bestselling award-winning books, all terrific. Her latest is High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out. She also co-founded a company called Good Conflict that trains people in handling disagreements more productively. 

Frances Frei: She sounds perfect for the job. 

Anne Morriss: I agree. We've been trying to get her on the show for a long time and I couldn't be more thrilled that she's here.

Amanda Ripley, welcome to Fixable. 

Amanda Ripley: Thanks for having me. Good to see you both. 

Anne Morriss: We are big fans. We're delighted to host you on the show today. We seem to be living through a moment in world history where your expertise is sorely needed. On a smaller scale, which is what we think about all the time, we're also seeing conflict tripping people up in the workplace a lot of the time. Unproductive conflict, avoidance of conflict, fear of conflict. 

Amanda Ripley: Mm-hmm. 

Anne Morriss: These things all have a profound impact on our experience of work, um, because I also think conflict has earned this bad reputation. 

Amanda Ripley: Mm-hmm. Totally. 

Anne Morriss: And it can be so good for teams, it can be so good for performance when we get it right. So how can conflict help us when we're working in groups? Let's start there. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. So this is a good place to start because I agree, like conflict needs a rebrand, right? I mean it's just, you know, it's like what was the tobacco company that changed its name? Do you remember that?

Frances Frei: Yes. 

Amanda Ripley: Which one?

Frances Frei: It was Reynolds.

Amanda Ripley: Okay. Yeah, and now they're like something that sounds nothing like tobacco. 

Frances Frei: Yeah. 

Amanda Ripley: Conflict needs something like that. And the analogy I often use is exercise. So we know that all biological organisms need stress in order to perform at their best. That is just a fact. 

Anne Morriss: Well, I love that metaphor. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. So we know we need some pushback, some resistance training, right, to get stronger. We don't like it, most of us. Right? We're not like excited to go running or swimming or lift weights, and yet it is the only way that we can get stronger. And so there is an analogy there with conflict, which is that friction, that kind of Oh, interesting. I totally, I see it totally differently, right? That those moments, those sparks are where we can be pushed, where we can push each other, where we can discover that there's a whole different way of looking at this, even if we never agree, right? And it just opens up this whole kind of understory of conflict that is very useful and it can, if done right, right? Make us feel more connected, not less. Even as we disagree and maybe never agree. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. I'm trying to channel our listeners who are on the conflict averse side of this. 

Amanda Ripley: Mm-hmm. 

Anne Morriss: Which is probably where I identify, but Frances, I'm curious where your mind went.

Frances Frei: I was just gonna say that most companies that are like that describe themselves to us as company nice. Like, we're this company and they just say we have a blank nice culture. 

Amanda Ripley: Right. 

Frances Frei: And they say it with, as a confessional to help explain why they're only average.

Amanda Ripley: Right. And it becomes, uh, not just normalized, but it can be actually a point of pride. Right? We recently had the privilege of working with a school superintendent and her nemesis on a school board. 

Anne Morriss: I feel that example right away. 

Amanda Ripley: Okay, yeah. 

Anne Morriss: I've been in that board meeting. 

Amanda Ripley: Uhhuh. Okay. So you know, this is like ground zero for conflict, dysfunctional conflict. Our, our school board meetings today. So, uh, this particular school board member ran for school board in order basically to oust the school superintendent. She really had it out for her, uh, over a principal that she thought should have been fired and wasn't fired, you know, kind of classic situation. So things did not start off well. In fact, all the signs that predict future dysfunctional conflict were sort of blinking red. There was distrust on both sides. The school board member didn't really understand the role of the school board, so this was just happening a lot, where people think that if they just get on the school board, they'll be able to determine, you know, who gets to be a teacher and what it gets taught, and that typically is not how it really works. So, um, so there was a lot of things going on. There was some public humiliation because of the nature of school board meetings, um, which is also one of the four fire starters that leads to dysfunctional high conflict.

Um, anyway, we kind of worked with them to trace back what did they do over time to get to a place where they became very strong collaborators. So in that case, that conflict, once they could shift it out of dysfunctional conflict into functional conflict, and I can share what they did in that case, once they could get to functional conflict, then they were much stronger as a team than they were as two individuals. Because the school board member could help the superintendent see how some parents were seeing things and how some school board members were seeing things. Whereas the superintendent could, you know, importantly, help the school board member see the limitations and constraints that she was facing in her role as superintendent and also help her understand how the teachers were seeing things.

So they're able to almost serve as, um, you know, an intelligence agency for each other to understand not just each other and the problem, but their other, the other stakeholders who are creating challenges for them. So, um, so yeah, I would say that was one where making that shift generated big returns.

And just, you know, honestly, and this is what we just, were talking with some congressional staff who we work with, you know, one of the big returns is it's just like a better way to live. Like you sleep better at night, you're not as preoccupied with imaginary conversations that you could have had or should have had or did have. Right? And, uh, it's just an easier, better way to live where you're kind of a little bit more yourself. 

Frances Frei: Mm-hmm. 

Amanda Ripley: In the organization without having to suppress or ignore or avoid a bunch of things, but also feeling like you can make mistakes and be challenged without getting crushed and humiliated. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. I wanna follow up on your fire starters as we get into this, but as long as we're in the public service announcement portion of this conversation, that conflict is a good thing. Good conflict is a good thing. 

Amanda Ripley: Right. 

Anne Morriss: High performing teams have more conflict, not less. 

Amanda Ripley: Yes. An easy way to think about this is, is in your personal relationships. Like if you're in a long-term romantic relationship and you have no conflict, you've got a problem. Like there's a lot of research on this. Like you need to have the ability to make mistakes, be misunderstood. Point out where you got your feelings hurt. Understand why. You know, why that hurt. That is like obvious. I think, right? Is that obvious? Sometimes I think things are obvious and other people don't. So. 

Anne Morriss: Let's assume on this topic, nothing is obvious.

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. Okay. The research on marital conflict is pretty clear that people who have resilient, satisfying, long-term relationships do have plenty of conflict, but that conflict leaves them feeling closer. 

Anne Morriss: Nice. 

Amanda Ripley: So that's kind of a, an example of what I mean, that it, instead of driving them apart, the conflict actually brings them together. Even though, and this is key, John and Julie Gottman, who study marital conflict, have found that roughly two thirds of marital problems are unsolvable. 

Anne Morriss: I love that. 

Amanda Ripley: I know! 

Anne Morriss: I love, that's a total reframe! 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah! So it's not actually...

Anne Morriss: Focus on the third that are solvable. 

Amanda Ripley: Well, focus on the third that are solvable, and also don't assume you're ever gonna solve those. It's as the psychologist Esther Perel says, it's less about the content, it's more about the form. Like, it's about how we are engaging in this dynamic and understanding that and taking a step back from it and trying to like, do that differently as needed. That's more important than getting to a resolution. 

Anne Morriss: And I think it's a beautiful example of the payoffs too. So, and it's easy to visualize. So in a romantic partnership, the payoff of conflict, which we, which is, is intuitive, I think, uh, is, you know, deeper intimacy, deeper connection, more authentic communication. All of those things are on the other side of engaging. And to your metaphor about exercise, it still feels bad. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: In moments. 

Amanda Ripley: That's right. 

Anne Morriss: All right, so now let's go to the other side of the spectrum with bad conflict, uh, which you call high conflict. Is that a special type of bad conflict or is all bad conflict in your lexicon high conflict? 

Amanda Ripley: Um, so high conflict, to answer the question, is sometimes called malignant conflict in the research or intractable conflict. It's the kind, it's a special kind of conflict that becomes conflict for conflict's sake. It's usually an us versus them kind of conflict. We become increasingly confident about our own superiority and righteousness and the other group or person's deep inferiority and threat to us. In this state, we make a ton of mistakes. And this is the thing that is really important for folks to understand, is that all of our normal cognitive biases, which we know are plentiful, all of those get much stronger. So we literally, for example, lose peripheral vision. 

Anne Morriss: Wow. 

Amanda Ripley: In high conflict. Like we do not see things that are happening.

Anne Morriss: Blind rage. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. Blind rage is a phrase, now that I think about it. You literally lose sight of things. And so when opportunities arise, right? Not to resolve and we all get along, but like opportunities to do something to interrupt this, you don't see them. 

Anne Morriss: Mm-hmm. 

Amanda Ripley: And eventually you end up mimicking the behavior of your opponents without realizing it, and harming the thing you went into the fight to protect. Whether it's your kids in a high conflict divorce or your country in high conflict politics. 

Frances Frei: Will you give an example of the mimicking? I'm super intrigued. Uh, I'm sure I've done this. 

Amanda Ripley: Sure. Yeah, Frances. So one of the four fire starters that we mentioned earlier is humiliation. Humiliation is a really interesting one that I think is so underappreciated in so many conflicts we're seeing. 

Anne Morriss: You call, Amanda, you call it the nuclear bomb. 

Amanda Ripley: Yes. Of the emotions. Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: Which has really moved us. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. It, it has helped me understand things that were inexplicable to me before. Like it's kind of like once you see it, you're like, oh. Like if someone's behaving in a way that does not make sense, look for humiliation.

Anne Morriss: Yeah. 

Amanda Ripley: Like even if they shouldn't feel humiliated, do they? So to answer Frances' question about what this looks like when people repeat the behavior, mimic the behavior of their opponents, Evelyn Lindner, who has studied humiliation and conflict, she found that when she did interviews of people in violent conflict zones like Rwanda, the people who had been humiliated, who were the victims of, of violence and dysfunctional conflict, often then became humiliators.

Frances Frei: I see. 

Amanda Ripley: In their own little world, right? Like, you know that old saying, hurt people hurt. It is true. So you often will, we all will, take that sense of shame or degradation and just displace it onto someone else. Whoever is the nearby target of convenience, whether it's our opponent, right? Or if we can't access them, then maybe it's our boss or our school superintendent or our kid or our wife, right? That needs somewhere to go. And that's where you get into real trouble. You know, you see this in politics all the time where people are upset on one side because of the incredible cruelty, name calling, and prejudice of the other side. And then they begin to use cruelty, name calling, and prejudice in their rhetoric in response. And this just perpetuates this cycle, unfortunately, right? Often without us realizing it, that we're doing it. 

Frances Frei: Yeah. Totally resonates. Thank you. 

Anne Morriss: So Amanda, let's hang out on the edge here with high conflict. What are the other fire starters beyond humiliation? 

Amanda Ripley: Okay. 

Anne Morriss: So that will reliably get us into this state, right? 

Amanda Ripley: Like these are the, I think of them as like trip wires where like they will set off some kind of reaction. Um, and so the first one is humiliation. The next one is, uh, a false dichotomy or false binaries, where we split the world into two camps usually. So we start really, and the more fear and anxiety people feel, the more they engage in, in this splitting as psychologists call it, where you just start to sort everyone around you, everyone you see in this conflict into one group or the other. This is totally understandable and normal behavior for humans. The problem is in a pluralistic, interdependent world, it's, it tends to backfire. Because you miss all the people who don't fit, and you begin to generalize about large groups of people that you truly do not understand. So that's where we get into those cognitive biases and mistakes. An obvious example is countries that have only two political parties tend to be more politically polarized. Because I can think in my head that I can generalize about 77 million people who voted in a certain way, even though in reality that is just on its face absurd. Right? I don't, I will never know even a fraction, a small fraction of those people. 

Anne Morriss: And then, according to your work, groups in general promote unproductive conflict. But we live in a world where we have to divide up into groups. Even inside organizations, we have to divide up into teams. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: And I don't wanna jump prematurely to solutions 'cause I, we, we, I still wanna understand the problem, but give us the other two. Give us the other two. 

Amanda Ripley: So we've got humiliation, false dichotomies, or false binaries. Then we have corruption. So this is very simple. When institutions are not trusted to do the things they're supposed to do. Uh, whether they should be trusted or not is almost irrelevant. It's like, are they trusted, are they not? And if they're not trusted, then people will tend to take matters into their own hands. Right? Understandably. And it will generate a lot of unnecessary conflict because we're seeing ghosts. Because we don't trust the school board, we don't trust our ex-husband, whatever. Okay, so the fourth one, and this is also a very important one, that most people, or I certainly was not sufficiently aware of in the past, which is the presence of conflict entrepreneurs. So these are companies or individuals that are exploiting conflict for their own ends. So they are really juicing the conflict. They delight in the conflict, sometimes because they get profit out of it, but just as often, if not more, because they get a sense of purpose. They get energized by the conflict. They get a sense of comradery, of meaning, of importance and power from the conflict. And so we have now, you know, unfortunately, built a bunch of institutions from social media to politics to journalism, to really glorify and reward conflict entrepreneurs. I don't think it will always be that way, but that's how it is right now.

Anne Morriss: This is a show called Fixable. So we like to fix shit. So let's talk about moving out of high conflict. Moving ourselves out, moving the people around us out, creating a context where it's less likely to get traction. I'm really moved by where you started us, which was when we're in this state, we are less creative. Less able to solve problems. We are less intelligent when we're in a state of high conflict. We can't see clearly. We don't see our options. We get very muddled and confused in our thinking in this state. And yet the good news is we have the, we put ourselves there, and so we have the power to take ourselves out.

So talk to us about moving away from this very distortive human experience. 

Amanda Ripley: Yes. We need that, to move through the world and solve problems. We need a sense of what is possible and what is getting done. And the whole reason I wrote the book High Conflict was to follow people who were stuck in dysfunctional high conflict and shift it into good conflict so that we could create a playbook for how it is done.

Anne Morriss: It's a reason to believe, Amanda. 

Amanda Ripley: Let's do it. So everyone I followed, whether it was a politician stuck in high conflict in California, or a gang leader stuck in high conflict in Chicago, to a synagogue stuck in high conflict, uh, in Manhattan. All of these groups, all of these people, they did do similar things to shift out of high conflict. One of the first things they did was to distance themselves from the conflict entrepreneurs in their midst. Sometimes that means changing who's in your newsfeed, your social media feed. Sometimes it means, you know, hiring a new lawyer or a new advisor, or if you're a politician. There are different ways to do this, but it starts with identifying who they are and importantly, trying not to be one. So I think we wanna be careful here not to fall into the same us versus them thinking when it comes to conflict entrepreneurs, which is very tempting, I know, speaking for myself, but...

Anne Morriss: We believe in the multiple minds. So I'm sure we all have a conflict entrepreneur inside us. 

Amanda Ripley: A hundred percent.

Anne Morriss: And we just wanna put 'em in the back of the bus. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah, absolutely. Just notice when you're getting some like, uh, an extra high off the conflict. And there is something very energizing, right, about knowing that you are right and you are better than, and you are certain and convicted. That is a true high. But as Curtis Toler, who's the former gang leader in the book, as he says, anytime there's a better than and a less than, there's always room for war. And this gets back to your point about groups. Yeah. Groups are fine. Like groups are a human thing and there's no way around it. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. 

Amanda Ripley: And groups can actually have a really stabilizing effect on conflict, because if they have norms and traditions that promote pro-social conflict, they will enforce that among each other. So that, that is hugely beneficial depending on the norms and traditions of the group. But I think in general, when we get into groups, we wanna make sure that there's some fluidity. So that we don't get stuck. 

Anne Morriss: Meaning people, people participating in multiple groups?

Amanda Ripley: Ideally. 

Anne Morriss: We're not just living in these binaries. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. Like ideally, sometimes you can actually set that up. I talk in the book about how when I was working at Time Magazine, by chance, there had been this week where the editors went on a retreat, which like journalists never do. They're not very good at stuff like that. And so, so it happened that the writers, so often us versus them, journalism as writers versus editors. There's others, but that's one, right? The writers were in charge for the week of the magazine, and of course at first we thought, this is, this is amazing. Finally, we're gonna make the best magazine ever and not make all the stupid mistakes that the editors make. And of course, by day three we started to make the same compromises that they usually make, because we could now see the constraints that they were under. And it was an incredibly productive management interruption. Right. Intervention, without anyone intending it to be. But there are companies that do this on purpose, right? They kind of move people around, are very systematic when they have different locations. Often the headquarters becomes one, uh, one binary, and then everybody else. So kind of having that constant back and forth, having people experience what it's like to be on the other side and, and really highlighting the stories of people who have shifted between them and learning from them so that there are ways to do it, right, but you wanna just try to keep those groups a little bit fluid if you can. 

Anne Morriss: And is this contact theory, is this the same thing or is this different? 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah, yeah. So contact theory is like the one intervention that's been shown to reduce, uh, prejudice, basically, among humans. And it means that you want to have relationship under the right conditions, right? But, you know, basically being in relationship is the only way to, only really well proven way, um, to get less dysfunctional prejudice over time. 

Anne Morriss: So the, the idea is that I am exposed to the humanity of my so-called adversary.

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. And even better, I now have a new transcendent identity as someone who works on whatever problem you're trying to solve with that other, right? So ideally it's not just, oh, I went to this, you know, potluck supper and talked to a bunch of, uh, you know, white people or Jewish people or Republicans. It, it's like, and then we worked on trying to come up with a new playground plan for the neighborhood, or something that we worked on together. 

Anne Morriss: Frances, you're always talking about that. The power of doing something purposeful with other people. 

Frances Frei: Yeah. When we give people purposeful work to do together, amazing things happen. And so it sounds like that's, that's right in the sweet spot of this.

Amanda Ripley: Exactly. 

Anne Morriss: Okay. So let's say I'm starting to see some of the signs in myself. I'm turning Frances into a two dimensional cartoon version of her. 

Amanda Ripley: Mm-hmm. 

Anne Morriss: And I'm carrying less that she had a bad day. And if I, I'm at work, and I'm starting to feel these things. How do I bring myself out of this state? 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. And I, I think that's a great example 'cause we've all been there, right? I mean, where we've started to feel like, we start building a narrative in our head about this other person. And then the brain will find evidence for that narrative. You know what I mean? 

Frances Frei: Confirmation bias. Yeah. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. Now you're, you're off and rolling. And so everything they do is gonna fit into that narrative, and sometimes that'll be true and sometimes it won't.

So the, the best answer, which is sort of annoying, is you have to kind of spend more time with them and get more curious than you wanna be. It, it's not a super satisfying answer, but it does tend to complicate that narrative a little bit. Um, this is, this is difficult when you're dealing with high conflict people or conflict entrepreneurs. Right? And so there's specific guidance for that, right? Which we can talk about. But in general, for most people, it involves, you know, finding some way to get to know them outside of this dynamic that we're in. Right? And is it, you know, taking a walk together, which the research shows is a good way to kind of break outta those cycles? Or is it doing something purposeful together that's outside of the normal scope? Is it breaking bread? Obvious things, right, that we know are useful for humans who are trying to like find some connection. 'Cause we know you need like five to one ratio of positive interactions to negative. This again, is from the Gottman research. Um, so we wanna find ways to boost that, uh, savings account, so to speak, so that we have a little more, a little more forgiveness in our hearts towards them. 

Anne Morriss: I, go ahead. 

Frances Frei: May I ask a follow up? I, I want the answer to, I feel it creeping up in me that I can do something on my own and that I don't have to involve the other person. Now, I'm an extraordinary introvert, and so this is just my way. Is there really nothing I can do without the other person? 

Amanda Ripley: I think you probably should start there, right? I think it's a good idea, Frances, before you do anything else, is trying to work through. And we have some exercises we do with folks, which some of which you can just access for free at thegoodconflict.com and we have some tools in there. But you wanna start with thinking about and externalizing, like writing down, ideally like it's wild. You, I'm sure you both know this, but the research on like writing down what's going on in a conflict or in a difficult situation is so much more helpful than just ruminating in your head on it. And I resist this a lot. I don't know about you, but I'm like, the last thing I wanna do is like journal about something. That's just not, no. 

Frances Frei: That needs a rebrand. It totally needs a rebrand. 

Anne Morriss: I do resist it as a verb. 

Amanda Ripley: Yes. And interestingly, there's a lot of research that shows that talking about yourself in the third person and the other person in the third person when you're writing is much more effective than saying I and they. So that's wild, right? But just something to try. Um, so you basically describe what happened, you know, write down what happened as direct as you can be. This person is super annoying. They are always, um, turning things in late and acting like, um, it's a charming quirk and they don't take accountability. And then I look bad, or in this case, Amanda looks bad, if you're trying to talk in the third person. And just kind of get it out of your head onto paper, right? So you can kind of see it. And usually in just in doing that, something will come up, right, that you hadn't noticed before. But sometimes, you know, you need to do some more things. But that's a good place to start, is to try to figure out what is it about this that is bugging me? And there's an exercise that folks do in AA and recovery, which is like, what is threatened here? And so that's something worth asking, like what is threatened? You know? 

Anne Morriss: That's a great question. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: What I love about that exercise too is I can imagine I'm, I'm just picking out conflicts in my own life. I can imagine that getting it down on paper in this form too forces me to confront that this story that I have believed 100% to be true may have a couple gaps in the plot point here, and I may not be the hero of the story that I thought I was. You know, like the putting it on paper, I think, has a chance, it invites me to confront some of those gaps.

Amanda Ripley: Yeah, exactly. And not always, it depends on how far along things are. And I mean, look, some people do really appalling things. Like sometimes things are not complicated. Like sometimes things are fairly simple, but when you put it down on paper, right, it does give you a tiny bit of space from it, which is what we're trying to do. In every kind of conflict, even violent conflict, we're trying to slow down the conflict and get a little space from it. William Urie, the negotiator, talks about pretending in your mind that you're going to a balcony watching the conflict, watching yourself from above, almost like disassociating, honestly. But you're trying to see it from a little bit of a remove, and that way you, you make fewer mistakes, right? So it feels less personal and less threatening. 

Frances Frei: Wow. 

Anne Morriss: So how do we create norms and structures and behaviors that, inside organizations, that promote healthy conflict? And I'm thinking about the answer, or I'm thinking about the example of the select committee on the modernization of conflict that you wrote about so beautifully. We were so moved by that. The, the leader of that team, you know, most, most people listening are not politicians, but the leader of that team made some very deliberate choices that not only moved, the Congress is an environment where, to your point, you know, the risk of high conflict is everywhere, and I think being reinforced by the media environment, but he created this separate universe inside that world where there were very healthy conflict and extraordinary performance, if you just measure output, extraordinary performance followed. 

Amanda Ripley: Hmm. 

Anne Morriss: So what, give us some texture on that, and what are the lessons that you take from that example? 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. So that committee, it was wild because they needed to have a super majority to get anything done, but they were divided cleanly, half and half between Republicans and Democrats, and they were meeting right after January 6th at a point where many Democrats did not even wanna be in the same room as some of the Republicans. So there was a lot of rage and fear that was driving the conflict. And so Derek Kilmer, who's one of the chairs of that committee that you're, that you've mentioned, did some very creative things. First of all, he talked to people like Esther Perel, the psychologist. He talked to coaches, he talked to people that you normally don't think to talk to when you're asking for congressional testimony. And he took their advice and really tried to think about conflict instead of politics. Right? First think about human behavior and conflict. So the first brilliant thing he and his co-chair William Timmons did is they brought in a facilitator and had a behind closed door confidential session about January 6th.

So they leaned into that conflict. Didn't try to avoid it or suppress it or ignore it, and that was really smart and scary, right? But that meant that they each got to speak about their experience on that day. And one of the Republicans told me that he felt like, although he didn't agree with some of the versions of that history that he heard, he now understood the fear that some of his fellow members of Congress had felt. And when you, once you see that, it changes everything, right? Because then you realize, oh, this is real. They're not just trying to politically manipulate the situation. Like they were really frightened, and had good reason to be in many cases. So that created enough of a space that they could then do other things, like honestly, things that any good kindergarten teacher would do that do not happen anywhere in Congress. That's what Derek Kilmer did. So they had at committee hearings, they would sit every other like, boy, girl, but Republican, Democrat, you know? Uh, that never happens. Like they're always cleanly separated. And it had an interesting, so I testified before this committee, which is how I got to know them, and it had the interesting effect of, you know, because they weren't all the super famous members of Congress, you didn't always know who you were looking at, like which group they were in. And that was kind of awesome, right? Because then you weren't making a bunch of assumptions about what they were saying before they said it. Um, but he also did things like, again, like, this sounds so obvious, but it never happens. Like he brought all the members of Congress would sit at the same level as the witnesses. Um, so they weren't up on high, you know? Like, again, basic stuff. They would, William Timmons, his co-chair, would, really insisted on having dinner together every so often. Again, this does not happen in Congress. So having dinner across the political divide. And you know, they had a hell of a time just finding a space they could use in the massive infrastructure that is on Capitol Hill that would allow them to do this. So, so here you see how Congress could make this much easier, right? And that really lies at the feet of the party leaders of both sides. 

Anne Morriss: What did you learn from that example, from going deep on that example? 

Amanda Ripley: I think for me, it showed how you can even within a truly messed up system, carve out a little corner of sanity. It's not ideal, you know? I mean, they'd be the first to tell you that they need the whole system to get reformed, but sometimes I think we think, oh, this system is so messed up that it's not even, there's nothing I can do. But actually, system change starts with small groups of individuals, right? So there it's not one or the other, it's both. And so in this case, they were able, despite all odds, to create a little oasis. Not that they all, by the way, it's not like they agreed. And that's not what we want, right? We don't want members of Congress to agree on everything. Like that doesn't make sense for a country of this size and complexity. So they didn't agree on many, many things, but they understood each other better, which meant they could get some things done and they got a ton done. You know, there was a lot of recommendations that they made that they super majority agreement on that were unanimous in many cases. So, in the past, committees just like that have, uh, actually dissolved without getting any recommendations passed. Um, so it is possible even in a dysfunctional context to create some functional conflict.

Anne Morriss: Yeah. And then back to where we started on the payoff, I mean the, it, you used some mild sentences there, but in terms of the productivity of this committee compared to other committees, it was, you know, at a zero what they were able to do on the other side of it. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah, it was radically better. And also just they in, they just, again, it was less soul crushing to go to work every day, you know? So, living with contempt in your heart is not a great way to live. It's not good for you physically or mentally. So the more you can understand your enemies, the more joy and curiosity you're gonna feel in your time on this earth. And that's not a small thing. 

Anne Morriss: In your whole life. 

Amanda Ripley: Yeah. In your whole life.

Frances Frei: Yeah. Yeah. We often think about the phrase disagree and commit, which people say all the time. It's actually, um, it doesn't work. And so we often say that it's a three step process. You have to disagree, understand, and then commit. 

Anne Morriss: But I, I think this tension is really important to this conversation because I feel like where people can get stuck is on this idea, which I think is a false dichotomy, is that if I, if I humanize my adversary in some way, then I am somehow endorsing these behaviors that I know to be, you know, misaligned with my own value system. 

Amanda Ripley: Mm-hmm. 

Anne Morriss: But to me, what's powerful about that story is you doing the work to turn this person into a more dimensional human being. Which made, which made your life better. The point is that the payoff for you in doing some of this work is that you get to be closer to this highest and best version of you that can see the work clearly, that can make smart decisions, can move strategically through their environment. To me, it's almost like a vision, like you restore your full field of vision.

Amanda Ripley: Hmm. 

Anne Morriss: When you come out of the state where other people are two dimensional evil cartoons with single motivation. I'm not saying there's not evil in the world, right? I'm not saying that there aren't choices, there's not cruelty in the choice, but we're trying to put you in a position to navigate the complexity of this environment as effectively as you possibly can. Right? And if we just trust our biology, if we just default to our reactions to the world, then we are gonna fail in that mandate and that obligation to ourselves to be as effective as possible in the situation. 

Amanda Ripley: A hundred percent. Yeah. 

Anne Morriss: So to go from a cartoon villain to a complicated three-dimensional human is a very powerful pivot. And there's no endorsement anywhere in that journey for behavior that you don't agree with or for values that you don't share. 

Amanda Ripley: Right. 

Anne Morriss: That's not what this is about. 

Amanda Ripley: And it's more like, do you want people to live rent free in your head? 

Frances Frei: Oh my gosh. 

Anne Morriss: This is hour one of a 12 hour conversation we could have with you and honestly wanna have with you. What do you hope people take away from, from scratching the surface on this profound topic, honestly? 

Amanda Ripley: Well, I love to quote a friend and colleague of mine named Monica Guzman. She says, in in high conflict situations, anyone who is underrepresented in your life will be overrepresented in your imagination.

Frances Frei: Oh, that's good. 

Amanda Ripley: So that's why you gotta get to know them better. And even if you don't hang out with them, which might not be the right thing for you, right? Depending on the situation. Understanding them better or people like them better, just like an anthropologist or a detective might, is going to help you rightsize this person or this group or this problem in your head so that you're not creating all of that additional suffering. 

Frances Frei: That's really good. 

Anne Morriss: It's really good. It's really good. All right, we're gonna leave it there and I'm just gonna sit with that. Amanda, thank you so much for being on the show. I hope you'll come back. 

Amanda Ripley: I'd love that. 

Anne Morriss: So we can continue convers this conversation. 

Amanda Ripley: I learned a lot from talking to you and I've just been taking notes over here. So anytime.

Frances Frei: Uh, right back at you. Thank you.

Anne Morriss: Uh, Frances, that was so satisfying just in the sense that we have been thinking about her words and ideas and examples for a long time, and to finally meet her and connect the insight to this, you know, deep thinking, complex human was, was just super professionally satisfying. 

Frances Frei: I'm so glad she's in the world. My gosh. 

Anne Morriss: What are you gonna take away from this conversation? 

Frances Frei: So much. I mean, the, the bad news of the conversation for me is that I can't do as much alone as I wanted. So I really hoped that I could solve a bunch of conflict I had with other people alone. And she said I could make a little progress, I can't make complete progress, so I'm disappointed in that. But I'm, what I'm gonna take is that we have to do some things we don't want to do, but they help. You know, exercise. I don't always wanna do it, but it helps. Writing things down in the third person, getting like, understanding, to your point, going from the cartoon caricature to the three-dimensional person. So I think the other part is I'm gonna have a little bit more can do spirit. I'm not gonna be activated solely by wanting to, I'm going to give a little bit more credence to needing to, uh, in order for me to ultimately be better. You know, reading the book, using the ideas, it just came to life. I don't know what I was expecting. Uh, but we're in really good hands. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. And I'm gonna push back a little bit on that and I'll bring my coach's hat to this one. 

Frances Frei: Please do. 

Anne Morriss: Which is that, I think, and my bias is I spend a lot of time in one-on-one conversation, and then people go out in the world and come back, and that's the modality of coaching. I think the hardest part of this work. Maybe not in terms of minutes, it's not the, it's not the biggest part of the work, but the hardest part of the work is the inside job that is being willing to access our curiosity, being willing to pull, to question our own storyline. Being, you know, being willing to tap into the courage of that contact theory that she described so beautifully requires. All of that is the individual work.

Frances Frei: So there's still a significant inside job. 

Anne Morriss: I think most of the work is individual. 

Frances Frei: I'm so relieved. 

Anne Morriss: That's the good news. The bad news is it's really hard. 

Frances Frei: And it's really unpleasant. 

Anne Morriss: And it's a form of discomfort that as human beings we prefer to avoid because we really like telling these these stories and then believing them 100%.

Frances Frei: Oh, it's so much confidence. When you said, I tell a story and I believe it 100%, but then I have to see it on paper and I'm no longer the hero. I was like, oh my gosh, that's me. That is me. 

Anne Morriss: Yeah. My other takeaway is this is a rich conversation. I want us to come back to it in various ways. And it is a, and we see this every day in our work. It is a huge part of our experience at work. And I think to the spirit of this show, with a little bit of effort, we can get very far down the path of making our own experience of work better when we get better at conflict. And I hope that this conversation for our listeners was one step towards that goal.

Frances Frei: If you wanna be on Fixable, please call us at 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253 or email us at fixable@ted.com.

Anne Morriss: Fixable is a podcast brought to you by TED and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss.

Frances Frei: And me, Frances Frei. 

Anne Morriss: This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Daniella Balarezo and Roxanne Hai Lash. 

Frances Frei: And our show was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.