Priya Parker Wants You To Fight Better
This one offers a way to approach conflict in a way that deepens our connections with one another, and our communities. Priya Parker, a facilitator and acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering, joins the show to discuss how to fight better. She and the hosts dig into the ways you can approach group conflict in your personal life, why digital tools are not designed for conflict resolution, and how to know it’s time to walk away. It’s all covered in her new book THE ART OF FIGHTING: The Transformative Power of Conflict (out this September!).
Photo Credit: Fernando Palafox
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Transcript
The following transcript is AI generated.
Doree Shafrir (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise Hu (00:17):
And I'm Elise Hu, and we're just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums. And I'm super excited for y'all to hear today's conversation because it is with one of the world's leading experts on groups and gathering, Priya Parker, who something like eight years ago came out with The Art of Gathering, which really helped us reframe the importance of coming together, how to better come together, why we need to come together for community purposes. And now she's out with a new book, which sounds like it's not about connection and community, but really is. It's called The Art of Fighting. How about that for Atise? We'll get into it.
Doree Shafrir (01:00):
Elise, what's going on with you?
Elise Hu (01:03):
I'm glad we're talking about fighting because I had this great weekend in Mexico City with a group that I had never traveled with before. And I was actually curious, I asked my friend Steve, who was the one who put up the bat signal and said, "Hey, I'm going to have this Airbnb with four bedrooms down in Mexico City for three weeks. Anybody who can come down, just come on down. Just come on down." And I was like, "Well, Steve, you didn't know who was going to take you up on this. What if it was a group that didn't jive?" Because he leads group trips all over the world. Oh,
Doree Shafrir (01:36):
Wow.
Elise Hu (01:37):
One of those companies, I mean, it's like his side job. He's mainly a photographer, but he also leads groups of high school aged boys whose parents pay for them to go to Alaska. He'll take the boys to Alaska or go to Fiji or wherever, Tokyo. And so I'm like, "You know that if there's one squeaky wheel or something gets off in the dynamic, things could go awry." And it was like, I feel like now that I'm 44 years old, I've gotten to a point in my life where curated my friend circle enough or it curated itself naturally such that if I'm going to ask friends of mine to show up randomly in Mexico City and they say yes, the ones who say yes, it's going to be pretty easygoing. It's not going to be a problem. And he was right. It was a very cool group that came together.
(02:27):
It was the four of us plus some friends, and then each of us had some friends who were locals who lived in
Doree Shafrir (02:33):
CDMX. Oh, how
Elise Hu (02:34):
Fun. And so we had different combinations of groups of six to eight over the course of the weekend. And it was really awesome, except at one point the Airbnb didn't have running water, which was a bit of a panic because I was like, "Well, if anybody gets sick and we don't have flushing toilets, that's going to be a problem." But it didn't last for too long. So that got solved. Plus we got a credit. Thank you so much. Got a credit out of that. Yeah. Yeah. It made it worth it to not have running water for about eight hours.
(03:07):
But I bring this up in connection to Priya Parker because Steve was talking about how he wanted to have a relationship conversation in which he just stayed up all night and talked for six hours straight about nothing. He's like, "I feel like you really get to know somebody when you just get drunk or whatever and you're out really late or you just stay up really late and you just talk and talk and talk and it can be you're just covering, you're running the gamut and by the end of it, you're spent but also energized and you're more bonded to each other." And I was like, "What I like
(03:46):
To do in order to get to that same end is have a really good fight." I feel like if I go two or three weeks even by burying some of the things that are annoying me and my little pecadillos in the relationship or there's been fissures and it's kind of the same fissure all along, having it out, really having the big fight where we're really vulnerable and we take our armor down and we say kind of mean things to each other that we wouldn't normally say unless it was kind of heated or we were in the middle of a conflict or the exposure of the conflict. And if done right, if you practice the art of fighting and actually repair from that and metabolize it and deal with the vulnerability hangover that Priya Parker calls it, the vulnerability hangover afterwards, I find those to be very bonding and get us the same place.
(04:42):
So yeah, I think y'all are in for a treat when we talk to her.
Doree Shafrir (04:46):
Yeah, her book is good too. It felt very of the moment.
Elise Hu (04:52):
And to be clear, she's not talking about internet fights. She's not talking about getting into it on threads, which is not really productive and not something that needs to be practiced as an art.
Doree Shafrir (05:08):
Are you on threads a lot? Do you go on threads a lot?
Elise Hu (05:10):
Because I think the algorithm is very suss. Something is very strange about that algorithm. It tends to send me, and I don't know if this is true for y'all, it tends to send me stuff that seems untrue. I follow tennis threads, for example, and the ones that are promoted to me, at least when they show up on Instagram for example, are made up things about some of the professional tennis players or it's seeding some conflict or trying to Djokovic cries or Djokovic leaves or some stuff like that. And I'm just like, why is this showing me this? I don't like that. And then I don't know what these accounts are a lot of the times. Maybe I
Doree Shafrir (05:53):
Just haven't
Elise Hu (05:54):
Curated my feed very well. What is your threads showing you?
Doree Shafrir (05:57):
It's showing me some tennis stuff, but it's also showing me a lot. It's showing me a lot of recreational tennis players, but a lot of like, "Hey, I'm looking to play tennis in Los Angeles. Does anyone have any?" And I'm like, they all feel like bots? And I'm like,
Elise Hu (06:16):
"Yes.
Doree Shafrir (06:17):
There's something
Elise Hu (06:18):
Very botty
Doree Shafrir (06:22):
About threads." And I'm like, "Why are suddenly all these people using the same phrasing and language and everyone suddenly wants to play tennis in Los Angeles?" I don't know. Maybe I'm just too cynical, but it has pinged for me a few times where I'm like, "Who are you really?"
Elise Hu (06:42):
Right. Oh, that's the other thing too. I went down a rabbit hole on Threads one time about Trump maybe wearing a diaper. And so now I get all this stuff about Trump and whatever he's wearing underneath his suit jacket. And I'm just like, "I don't really need all this.This isn't going to keep me on the platform or keep me coming back to the platform."
Doree Shafrir (07:05):
Right.
Elise Hu (07:08):
So besides my Threads gripe, I have one other gripe, which is I have found that I am now a person who is very particular about acoustics in bars and restaurants. Because over the weekend I'm at some restaurant that was so beautiful and it was outdoor indoor and it was a lot of glass, which is problematic for sound purposes,
(07:31):
But there was A lot of glass and a lot of plants and it was all overgrown and lush. And that's what I love about Mexico City. It's so lush and the food was excellent, but it probably had some Michelin star or something, but could not hear the person I was speaking to next to me at the Restaurant. This drives me crazy.
(07:50):
And it needs to be a consideration when we design third spaces because the whole point of third spaces is to gather and to connect. But if I'm yelling, it's unpleasant. And if I can't hear you, then we're not even communicating. So that happened over the weekend once, but then last night too, a friend of ours does a get together for riders in the area and it's in the middle of town, it's in the middle of the grove farmer's market. And I was yelling at the top of my lungs in a top level fight level yelling in order to just be like, "Hi, I'm Elise."
Doree Shafrir (08:32):
Oh, that would drive me crazy.
Elise Hu (08:33):
I did not last.
(08:35):
Yeah, I had to get out of there. Rob happened to keep me running into people, so he was doing whatever the opposite of an Irish goodbye is. He was doing the long extended
Doree Shafrir (08:43):
Goodbye where I
Elise Hu (08:45):
Had already walked to the other side of the bar to make a break for the exits.
Doree Shafrir (08:50):
And he
Elise Hu (08:51):
Was just working the crowd like Joe Biden back in the day.
Doree Shafrir (08:54):
Oh my God.
Elise Hu (08:56):
At the South Carolina primary or something. And by the end, I mean, I said to everybody I was saying goodbye to, I was like, "I can't hear you. You can't hear me. I can't.
Priya Parker (09:08):
I
Elise Hu (09:08):
Don't want to yell anymore. Bye." I sound like Larry David, but there's something about acoustics that's really getting to me.
Doree Shafrir (09:17):
I mean, look, that would really drive me crazy. Oh
Elise Hu (09:22):
Boy. Yeah. You don't want to wake up the next morning after a supposedly easygoing night at a bar with a sore throat.
Doree Shafrir (09:31):
No, no, not at all. Not at all. All right. Well, let's remind everybody that they can call or text us at 781-591-0390. Email us at forever35podcast@gmail.com. We've already gotten quite a few recommendations for shoes for people with plantar fasciitis. So if you have more recommendations for those, holler. You can visit our website, forever35podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. We are on Instagram @forever35podcast. And of course you can join our Patreon at patreon.com/forever35. We have a lot of fun over there. You can join us at the free level and just get access to the newsletter that we send out, which is a ton of fun, pod highlights, product reviews, discounts. I always throw a fun TikTok in there. It's a good time. At $5 a month, we have our weekly casual chat, which you can now watch on video. We do live casual chats every few months.
(10:42):
You have access to our community chat on the Patreon app and a lot more. And for $10 a month, you also get ad-free episodes, and we give you a little shout-out on the podcast each and every month. Also, we have our monthly pop culture episodes.
Elise Hu (10:57):
We do.
Doree Shafrir (10:58):
We do. Which are super fun, where we give pop culture recommendations of what we're watching and listening to and reading. And then we go into the chat and people have their own recommendations and it's super fun. So check that out. Again, it's patreon.com/forever35. We have our favorite products at shopmy.us/forever35. And Elise, do you want to intro Priya officially?
Elise Hu (11:27):
Yes. 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, The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict is out soon in September and available for pre-order now. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, Southern Africa and India. She studied organizational design at MIT, public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Political and Social Thought at the University of Virginia. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
Doree Shafrir (12:07):
All right, we are going to take a short break and we will be right back with Priya. Priya Parker, welcome to Forever 35. We're really excited to have you here.
Priya Parker (12:24):
Thank you so much for having me.
Doree Shafrir (12:26):
We start off all of our guest conversations with a question about self-care. So do you have a self-care practice that you could share with our listeners?
Priya Parker (12:40):
I try to, in the mornings, the moment I wake up and it's still sort of a dream state, I try to A, not look at my phone and B, or I should actually say B, I pick up my journal and if I can, I spend a few moments writing down my dream.
Elise Hu (13:05):
Yeah. And then what do you do with it?
Priya Parker (13:08):
I mean, it depends on how long I'm a parent. I'm a mother of two kids and it depends on the day and it depends on who's crashing through the door. But depending on how long I have, first I just write. I write it down and I have a journal that I keep them in, but it's not the only thing I write in there. And then over, particularly for specifically, I don't know, strong dreams or dreams that I have been thinking about throughout the day, I will look back at it every few days. And then with some kind of really big dreams, I'll often carry them with me for sometimes years. So sometimes I'll go back and really look at the very specific details of those dreams. And I mean, I guess I've never said this out loud before, it was like I take my dreams seriously.
Elise Hu (13:57):
Yeah. Yeah, me too. Me too.
Doree Shafrir (13:59):
Elise, I feel like this is right up your alley.
Elise Hu (14:02):
Yeah. After the call, I'll share the name of my Jungian dream analyst. We do sessions purely with dream material.
Priya Parker (14:12):
It's beautiful. It's beautiful. I'm laughing because if you shared it on the call, they're going to totally blow up. I
Elise Hu (14:21):
Know. I
Priya Parker (14:21):
Should start getting free
Elise Hu (14:22):
Sessions
Priya Parker (14:23):
Or something. A code.
Elise Hu (14:28):
Well, Priya, congratulations on the new book. You are known as somebody who helps us gather and gather well, and you were taking a different tack this time and taking on conflicts. The premise of the new book is essentially that we, in conventional wisdom or our mental models for conflict are all wrong. Why?
Priya Parker (14:51):
We are, most of us, pretty bad at fighting. We tend to oscillate between avoidance and pretending like nothing to see here, folks, or escalating and kind of burning the house down.
(15:08):
And I am interested in the questions of connection. The Art of Gathering is about connection. I'm interested in the questions of community. The Art of Gathering is about community. And over the last eight years, it's been eight years since I came out with The Art of Gathering, I'm a conflict resolution facilitator, so I wrote The Art of Gathering as a dialogue facilitator. That's still my professional background. I began to see that one of the reasons we are lonely is that we don't gather as well as we could, but another reason we are lonely is because we haven't been taught to fight well, and our conflict avoidance, our beliefs about conflict are actually keeping us from each other. So I wrote another book about connection.
Elise Hu (15:54):
What is it about conflict that you think can be so generative?
Priya Parker (16:02):
I think of conflict as relevance, period. I think of conflict as, I often use the metaphor of heat and conflict, we don't fight about the things we don't care about and we don't fight in community. I'm not talking about yelling at strangers on the internet, but we don't fight with the people that we don't care about. And we have this kind of myth or this misconception that, first of all, that conflict is bad, it's dysfunctional, and dear reader, it's not. Not all conflict is bad. Some conflict is highly functional. It is generative. But the second is that we believe if we are going to wade into this messy, icky territory of conflict, it's supposed to be with those we hate. And we're not taught that we're supposed to also fight with those we love. And conflict is generative in part because we're holding onto something that we care about.
(16:54):
And so when you deny the ability for that to be aired, particularly in a community or a group or relationship you're part of, you're actually creating a more fragile connection. You're also putting it at risk.
Doree Shafrir (17:10):
How did you personally learn how to deal with conflict?
Priya Parker (17:14):
Badly. I am a conflict averse conflict facilitator. I hate conflict. My hands get sweaty, my heart pounds in my chest. Sometimes if it gets really, really tense with someone I really love, I feel kind of dizzy. I hate conflict. And I come kicking and screaming to it in part because I learned from my own personal life that there's great loss and avoidance. And I write about this in the order of fighting, but I'm third generation ostrich on both sides. So even though my mother's Indian, my father is white American from Iowa, both of them came from lineages where it's like, "Good people don't fight." And my parents many years ago ended up separating and then divorcing. And when they announced their separation, everyone was shocked, myself included, because they never fought. And so I learned from a young age that there's great loss and avoidance, and it's actually my mother from a young age, and then I became very interested in peer mediation and conflict resolution in elementary school and the middle school and then college.
(18:34):
But my mother, I mean, God bless her, basically realized like, oh, she has an inheritance that says good people and particularly good women don't fight, don't speak up. And so she was hellbent on making sure that she tried to teach her daughter the skills to face the conversations in her life.
Elise Hu (18:53):
Well, that's a great segue because when we are approaching a group conflict, and I know obviously you wrote a whole book about this, but for the purposes of this interview, when we are approaching some sort of group conflict, whether it's personal or business, instead of just hoping the problem goes away or repressing it, what are the questions we need to ask about the dispute? So
Priya Parker (19:15):
The first is to just get really, really curious and ask what I call obvious questions, not smart questions.
Elise Hu (19:26):
Okay.
Priya Parker (19:26):
Don't try to be clever, don't try to be sophisticated, don't try to be smart. I tell this story in the Art of Fighting, but it's a true story, but it's almost now told as myth in the New York Times. When you're a baby journalist, people often tell this story where there was this New York Times reporter in the '60s, Homer Bigart, who went to the South and reported all of this sort of pre-civil rights movement right before the Civil Right Movement and reported all of these wild stories from the South of white people in that moment saying all sorts of things that people would usually never say out loud. And his stories were full of these peppered through with these quotes and all of the other journals from New York being like, "How the heck does he get people to say this?" And so his successor went down Howell Reins and he went to all the same towns and he'd studied everything and he went in and he tried to be super smart about race and civil rights and all this stuff, and no one would tell him anything.
(20:29):
And he was like, "What the heck? How did Homer Bigart get those quotes?" And finally he went to Mississippi after a murder and he went to talk to, I think the police chief or senior person there, and he said to him, "Boy, you know a lot. That last guy, he didn't know anything." So we had to tell him everything and like Homer Bigart, be purposely dumb, ask obvious questions like what is happening here?
(21:01):
And bite your tongue, what do you think is happening here? And then if you're actually trying to figure out what to do, what is the need? What's the need here? And particularly for a group, it's not an obvious, there's not a right answer to that, but if a group of friends is fighting, if a family is fighting before often a big moment of a lot of conflict is wedding planning, asking underneath, are we actually fighting about the guest list or are we actually fighting over two really different visions of not just what a wedding is for, but what does it mean to be a parker? So to just start by becoming super curious, and you may be a part of it also, so it can be harder when you're a part of it, but to sort of ask, what do we think is happening here?
(21:50):
Why is this happening? What has happened? And often groups enter a moment of conflict by what I call was popularly called a triggering event.
(22:02):
So someone steps on some live wire, they don't realize what it is, something happens, and then everyone has to figure out what it is. And it can be super simple. I know of an example of a bunch of guys, they were all friends, they all worked in a tech company and a group of eight or 10 friends and half of them got laid off. And one of the friends who did not get laid off still worked at the tech company, his birthday was coming up and he texted a link to a really fancy restaurant with a tasting menu to the group. And he said, "Come to my birthday, got us a table for 12, but the implication was everyone would pay for their own seat." And three of the guys who were laid off sidebarred, the ultimate pre-conflict revolution.
Elise Hu (22:57):
The ultimate pre - When the conflict situation is like the group chat breaking off,
Priya Parker (23:03):
The sidebar.
(23:04):
When the group chat goes silent, it's usually because there's a smaller group chat. And they sidebar and was basically like, "Dude, this is totally, does he not understand our situation?" Kind of mad, also embarrassed. Again, you can sort of see you start telling stories about this guy. Do you say something? Do you not say something? Do you just pretend you can't go? Perfect tiny little instance. And one of the guys text, he was hurt, he was mad, he thought it was in poor taste and he paused and he thought about what he would hope if he had done the same thing would happen. And so he sidebarred with the birthday boy and said, "Hey man, so excited to celebrate with you and a few of us are worried that we won't be able to afford this place."
(23:57):
And a few days later, the birthday boy sent another text to the whole group and said, "Change of plans! Dinner at my place. Wear your best dancing suit." And this is a tiny, tiny micro conflict, but you can see how a moment like that actually brings up so much and could actually be quite fragile in the group, right? Maybe they go, maybe they don't go, maybe they pay all the money, but then for years think of this guy as his out of touch friend. That guy did him as solid by actually educating him, but that's a vulnerable act. Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (24:30):
You touch on this in the book, but what you just mentioned made me think of it, which is how do we identify those sort of seemingly small fissures that down the road can lead to really full-blown conflict? And I'm thinking of the example you give with the environmental group.
Priya Parker (24:52):
I structured the art of fighting in the life cycle of what happens when a group goes into conflict. So the part one of the book is called Terror, like when there's a triggering moment and whether or not you want to face it and how to decide. Part two is called grapple when you actually set up the fight, and part three is cleave, whether you change, cleave to cut or to bind, change or come through it. And in the first third of the book, part of what I, in chapter two, I help you diagnose what type of fight you're actually in.
(25:26):
And I am interested in. And by the way, all groups fight. In fact, groups can't form without a fight. You have to decide what are we? What are we doing? How are we sharing power? What are we up to? What kind of people are we? And that happens through fighting, arguing, disagreement. And so one of the things I've seen as a conflict resolution facilitator is we tend to overreact to loud, messy, big, but fundamentally doesn't really matter. And we tend to underreact to fights that might seem really tiny, but actually have the potential to become existential, which means. All I mean by existential is when a group of people have to contend with the questions, well, who are we and how do we do this?
(26:15):
So the example of the environmental group is an environmental group in Philadelphia, a Quaker inspired environmental group called Equate, and they were years ago, incredibly successful. So ironically, one of the triggers for group conflict is massive success. And so another trigger of group conflict is a perceived hypocrisy. So you say you're doing one thing, you actually do another, but I lay these out in the book, but this group had the blessing and the curse of massive success. They had a massive win. Direct action lobbied a bank, PNC Bank, to stop investing in fossil fuels and mountaintop removal. And it attracted a whole new generation of activists. So there's this influx of all of these new members and they had to figure out a new campaign. And on one of these campaigns, as they were walking, they were doing a march to bring attention to the environment, a new member, an activist, they were passing by a prison and this new member stopped and hosted without anyone authorizing it, a teaching near the jail about bail reform.
(27:38):
And one of the members sort of pulled her aside and was like, "No, no, no, no. What are you doing? That's not our issue." She's like, "All of these issues are interconnected."
Elise Hu (27:48):
And
Priya Parker (27:49):
That was a small moment. Again, she got slapped on the wrist, but they kept on marching. But five years later, that tiny little moment ended up blowing into a full-blown organizational reckoning, meaning who are we? What is our theory of change? Are we a primarily Quaker organization or are we not anymore? Are those our roots? Can white people fight for economic and racial justice or do they need to be diverse? Again, all of these questions, really good questions
(28:24):
Began, and they often begin at what I call these hairline fracture moments. And in modern life, we choose. Most of us choose the groups we're part of. Part of the reason I wrote The Art of Fighting is because I don't think conflict skills should be specialized. We have conflicts. All of us have conflict in our life, whether it's with our friends, whether it's in a team, whether it's with our family, and to just hope for the best is actually not taking advantage of all of the skills and the tools that we actually have. We're just not necessarily taught to use as a normal everyday thing.
Elise Hu (29:01):
So beyond just being aware and awareness of these little fissures that could become major quakes later on, what are the conflict skills that you think we ought to develop and how do we better strengthen those muscles?
Priya Parker (29:18):
The first is to, as you said, become aware of your own conflict style. We were talking earlier, conflict averse, conflict seeking. How would you both define yourselves? What's your relationships to conflict or heat?
Elise Hu (29:32):
Well, like I said off the bat, I have found maybe more in adult life now that I am a parent and I've been divorced, I like conflict. I feel like avoiding it has actually led me down kind of the wrong path. And so now I really try and force questions, force big questions in my relationships, but I think I had to learn that Through experience,
Priya Parker (30:02):
Like all of us.
Doree Shafrir (30:04):
I think I've gotten better at it, and I think my friends now are also better at conflict, but I think because I was more avoidant in the past, I have a lot of friends from my past who are very avoidant. And so when conflict has come up with them, it has often not ended well.
Priya Parker (30:25):
And it sounds like your current friends, you didn't use this language, but you've sort of developed a culture where you bring things to each other.
Doree Shafrir (30:33):
Yeah, exactly.
Priya Parker (30:35):
And for me, the Art of Fighting and The Art of Gathering are purposely books that are trying to help the group, trying to help the community. We have so many books and apps and tools for the self. I mean, we have a whole industry called Self-Help.
Elise Hu (30:51):
Sure, sure.
Priya Parker (30:51):
And part of what I'm trying to do, and I'm not the only one, is trying to develop an industry that is also about group help, like the group help industry. And part of why I ask what your conflict styles is like is because conflict styles are also a culture. And so if you're the only conflict seeking one and you're in a culture that's conflict avoidant, you're going to be punished. And so part of what I hear in both of your answers is starting to also, I mean, someone has to do it, but normalize, basically shifting the belief from saying something is an act of warfare
Doree Shafrir (31:28):
To
Priya Parker (31:29):
Saying something is actually an act of investment,
(31:32):
An act of connection. But that's a mental shift. And so awareness is actually a big part, to go back to your question. The second part, and I do this in groups and teams and organizations, is actually taking a shift from believing that most of us do that conflict is sin or dysfunctional to reframing it as conflict is relevance. It's actually first at the mental, it's like the mental model level. You can come in and have all the great skills in the world, but if the culture punishes it, your skills aren't going to help. This is actually a group. It has to be a group agreement at some level. And then in terms of skills, there's so many wonderful skills about how to get better at conflict, difficult conversations, crucial conversations, getting past yes, getting past no. A lot of these wonderful books in our field, in my field have existed for decades and they're bestsellers for good reason.
(32:24):
And they're full of these skills, and the majority are actually still focusing on the one-on-one, how to have a better relationship with your spouse or your boss or your friend. And those skills matter here too. But there's a second layer within the Art of Fighting, which is that groups need infrastructure. Something happens on the group chat, one person behaves in a way no one else wants. What do you do? What's the sequencing?
Elise Hu (32:50):
And if there's no clear leader, so let's say it's like a group chat among parents or something, that you're all together because your kids are on this type of group chat. Same soccer team. Those are the ones that I just quietly leave.
Priya Parker (33:06):
Those are the most intense.
Elise Hu (33:07):
Right. So in that case, in situations where there isn't a clear leader, how does infrastructure, how do norms get established and whose responsibility is it?
Priya Parker (33:18):
The answer is we don't have them. So I interviewed a wonderful digital anthropologist, her name is Rahaf Harfoush, who studies digital life of communities and fandom. And she said to me, "Our digital tools are not designed for conflict, not designed for healthy conflict. They're designed to escalate, to flatten, to pull in the binary, to inflict rage." She's like, "If you're a new influencer, you're on Instagram, the best way to grow your following, pick a fight."
Elise Hu (33:49):
Piss someone off.
Priya Parker (33:51):
And so I said, "What do you do with your friend groups?" And she said, "Well, for my..." Again, this is why I'm like the community actually matters. What is the poorest boundaries of the communities you're applying these ideas to? For her with a group of friends who I think are sort of also professionally linked, when the group chat starts getting heated, they have a rule. Again, over time, they have a rule that they pick up the phone. They pick up the phone. And so one of the challenges of modern life is that many of us. And one of the beauties of modern life is many of us, even in the parenting thing, we join a Facebook group when you have your first child, you join the neighborhood group when you first move to a neighborhood. And so because these often are, they're sort of like anonymous, familiar places,
(34:35):
You don't all know each other, the norms aren't totally set. Unless there's a really strong moderator, which the groups that last the longest do actually have very clear rules and strong moderators, it's a mess. I talk about an example, there's a wonderful facilitator, restorative justice practitioner called Yuko Yuchikawa, and she said to me, "People think conflict only happens in bad places, but conflict happens everywhere. And one of the places conflict most happens are on playgrounds and in community gardens, places that are supposed to be sweet and for connection." She was specifically talking about community gardens and she says, "People will come together for connection and then when they start talking about what to plant, all of our unspoken norms and cultural preferences and beliefs across race and class rear their head." And so one of my favorite examples in the book is actually a playground fight on a parent listserv and how it goes off the rails because of the dynamics you just described.
(35:38):
Right.
Doree Shafrir (35:39):
So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.
Elise Hu (35:51):
Let's talk about the back third of the book then and how we know when conflict is insurmountable. We've been talking about healing.
Priya Parker (36:00):
Yep.
Elise Hu (36:01):
What about the flip side?
Priya Parker (36:02):
The last third of the book, as I mentioned, the section is called cleave. It's one of my favorite words. It's a contronym and it's a word that contains within it its opposite. So to cleave means both to bind or to stick to, and it also means to cut, to cut away. And so the last three chapters of The Art of Fighting is first is called the aftermath and how after the fight, there's actually a lot of work to do. What's the meaning making? How do you handle the vulnerability hangover or the regret? How do you shape, how do you water the garden of the group? Then the final two chapters is do I stay or do I go? A lot of groups that should end don't. We think of ending and death as failure, but actually some of the best groups, by ending, it's actually an acknowledgement that they've achieved their purpose.
(36:53):
And so one of my favorites, the second to last chapter is about groups that choose to die or realize it's time. I look at a theater group that this was a couple decades ago, a bunch of playwrights, 13 playwrights who realized that it's almost near impossible. You can write a play, but it's very hard or it was very hard to get them actually developed. They're expensive, they're multi-stakeholder problem, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they brought together a group of 13 playwrights and they said, let's pull our resources, pull our newsletters, raise money and be a group as long as everybody in every playwright gets enough funding to produce a play once a year. And once we've completed our task, we dissolve. And they did this and a number of their plays became really famous and people started paying attention to this group and some people started getting really attached to like, wow, they called themselves 13P.
(37:48):
Wow, this is real. This has a lot of relevance. There's no rules of what you could make or write. The only rule is you can't do anything that would destroy or threaten the group
(37:58):
Until it ends. Then the final playwright did their final play and there was a few members who were like, "Oh, but this is so great. Why would we end it?" All of our instincts. And the two founders said, "No, we said we would die." So they hosted, this is very playwritery, they hosted an implosion party where they would implode. And it was at the public theater in New York City. They all showed up, they talked about their best plays and favorite plays. One of the playwrights was also part of a band and she just happened to have a song that the words were, "We're going to die." So she rocked out on stage and they gave it a good death.
Elise Hu (38:37):
Yeah. Meaning can come from finite things. I mean, look at our lives. We know we
Priya Parker (38:42):
Will die. Absolutely.
Elise Hu (38:43):
Yeah. And that gives it meaning.
Priya Parker (38:46):
One of my favorite, most moving parts of the book for me, I was very moved by the story when I first heard it, was I just write funerals aren't just for people. And look at examples where again, counterintuitively, I shouldn't say counter-culturally groups, families choose to come together at these moments of deep tenderness to say goodbye, not to a person, but to a house
(39:12):
Or a company or an art piece and how meaningful and beautiful it is for all of the people in there to actually just reflect what was this and how did this shape me and what am I going to take into the world? And one of my favorite examples is from a family called the Howlett family and this woman named Susan, her mother and father had lived in their home, their childhood home for 50 years and her father passed away and her mother finally decided it was time to move to a retirement home. And most families, I think then maybe one kid flies across country and helps pack it up. But in this case, their entire family, every adult child and all of their children took a week off and flew to first go through the house together and go through every single object and ask the question, "Where does this belong?" Which is actually a powerful transitional question.
(40:12):
Where does the salt shaker now belong and with whom? And they would each claim different parts, the parts that she wanted, she would take. But on the final day, they gathered and lit a candle in her home once the home was empty. And then she described a wind came through the garage port and she said, "Dad blew out the candle." She was like, "Dad always had a special relationship to the wind." And they all share their favorite memories and their home was always open to everyone and anyone visiting dignitaries, college students stranded in snowstorms, folks who had nowhere else to go. And one of the younger, the grandson who the grandmother raised said that he would now host the family gatherings. And then as the very final act, the grandmother went alone into her backyard and she played the trumpet and she went and she played a trumpet solo in the dark to say goodbye.
(41:08):
And then the next day they all gathered in her retirement home and they lit a candle.
Elise Hu (41:13):
That ritual is so important, I think. The ritual of saying goodbye and marking and ending. And thank you for sharing that. And the collective
Priya Parker (41:22):
Ritual that we're all witnessing, we're all holding this thing. This thing was good, which doesn't mean that it doesn't need to end.
Doree Shafrir (41:31):
Priya, it's exciting that you get to share this with so many people coming up. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the events you have coming up for the book?
Priya Parker (41:42):
Yes. Thank you so much. The first is on September 4th, on Friday, September 4th at noon Eastern. I'm going to be and invite you all and your listeners to join me and Lupita Nyongo, the Academy Award-winning actress, Lupita Nyongo, to join us on a Zoom, a virtual conversation celebrating the launch of The Art of Fighting. And we'll be talking about all things conflict and tackling real life dilemmas that you submit live on Zoom. And it's a thank you from me to you to anyone who has pre-ordered the book by September 4th. So if you'd like to join us, here's how it works. You pre-order the book, you pre-order the Art of Fighting from any US retailer, and then you fill out the form to register. Or if you've already pre-ordered the book, there's a transaction number on any of the book, you can just go to my website, priyaparker.com.
(42:37):
There's also information there. And submit a conflict you're navigating within a group, a friendship or community for a chance to talk about it live with me and Lupita. And then I'm also going on a book tour to 11 cities in September, to DC, New York, Boston, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle, Bainbridge Island, Bentonville, Huntsville, Miami, and a virtual event on September 12th. And so please come. We're going to be talking about fighting and conflict. I'm going to be in Wonderful Conversation Partners with America Ferreira in New York and Elaine Welteroth in Los Angeles, Clint Smith in DC, Daniel Pink online. It's going to be a great time. One of the hosts may even be a mother of mine.
Elise Hu (43:13):
Ooh. Ooh,
Priya Parker (43:15):
Okay. Hey
Elise Hu (43:15):
Mother. Hey
Priya Parker (43:16):
Mother.
Elise Hu (43:18):
One mother.
Priya Parker (43:20):
One mother.
Elise Hu (43:20):
Yes.
Priya Parker (43:21):
So come on out. But if you're interested and you're just wanting to become more skilled or just even curious about the conflict and heat and relevance and connection in your life, pre-order the art of fighting and come hang out with me and Lupita on September 4th.
Elise Hu (43:39):
Well, you're such an amazing storyteller and thank you for thinking of the collective and thinking of the larger group and community and all the work that you do. Priya Parker, thanks for joining us.
Priya Parker (43:49):
Thank you so much for having me.
Doree Shafrir (43:53):
Priya was great. Also kind of inspiring to go get in some fights. Get into it. Yeah. Elise, we are going to enter the intention zone. Yep.
Elise Hu (44:08):
Here we are.
Doree Shafrir (44:09):
Last week you said you were going to try to get seven to eight hours of sleep a night. How did that go?
Elise Hu (44:16):
Okay. It was going great. It was going great, except then I got super into the Hulu show, Furious, starring Emmy Rossam, and then I had to binge it. And then a lot of times I couldn't get to the episodes until quite late at night, like 10:30 at night and there were 45 minute episodes. So then I was losing sleep on the front end and I always lose it on the back end now because of zero hour. I have to get up at 6:20. So I was doing it. I would give myself a B minus, a B minus.
Doree Shafrir (44:49):
Oh, okay.
Elise Hu (44:50):
I'm now caught up with Furious on Hulu, which you all should all watch. It is incredible. And
Doree Shafrir (44:55):
It's so
Elise Hu (44:56):
Wild to me that it came, this show, which is a twisty procedural, came from Liz Meriwether who did New Girl on Fox. Oh, how cool. And it has that kind of zaniness too in it, but in a very complex and character driven crime thriller procedural. So anyway, love Furious. Doing pretty well on the sleep. How did you do on strength training?
Doree Shafrir (45:24):
Well, I did go, which was great. And then I'm going to go to a Pilates class tomorrow.
Elise Hu (45:33):
Awesome. So
Doree Shafrir (45:34):
It sounds like you're doing it. I'm trying to do it. I feel like one to two times a week is probably what I can handle right now, but in an ideal world, I think it would be a real twice a week regular thing, but I don't know. I still have to figure out how I can fit that in. So this week I realized that I drop Henry off at school around 8:00, 8:05, and then to get back home from his school is in the thick of rush hour traffic. To get to his school, it goes against traffic, so it's not so bad. But then coming back, it's like the height of rush hour, the worst direction for traffic, and it takes a really long time if you just turn around and come home. And you want
Elise Hu (46:25):
To maintain your sanity.
Doree Shafrir (46:26):
And I want to maintain my sanity. So I'm trying to schedule morning activities in the vicinity of his school or even a 10 to 15 minute drive from his school, whether that is coffee with a friend, a work date, a tennis date, a walk, anything that even just gets me to nine makes a huge difference because coming back at nine is half the time of coming back at eight. So that is going to require me to be pretty proactive about it, which I'm not always the best at, but I'm really going to try to make an effort. So I mean, I guess worst case, I just sit in a coffee shop by myself for an hour.
Elise Hu (47:14):
Or go for a walk
Doree Shafrir (47:15):
Around. Or go for a walk or whatever. I don't need to rely on other people's schedules to make this happen, but it's also a good excuse to see my friends who live on a different side of town.
Elise Hu (47:28):
On that side of town, yeah.
Doree Shafrir (47:30):
Which is nice. So yeah. So that's what's happening there. He gets out early enough that even though I'm going in the direction of rush hour traffic, when I pick him up, it's early enough that it's not that bad. So it's not like I need to leave two hours before he gets picked up.
Elise Hu (47:47):
Right, right. Yeah, that's good. I mean, it's pro-social to try and make dates with friends.
Doree Shafrir (47:54):
Totally. If you're
Elise Hu (47:55):
Going to kill that hour anyway.
Doree Shafrir (47:56):
Yeah,
Elise Hu (47:57):
Exactly. It's sort of like my intention because I got back from my trip and I had a bunch of texts from people who I haven't seen in several months, friends who live in town, but just in Burbank or in East Hollywood or whatever. They're like, "Hey, I need to talk to you about this. Can you get together for coffee? Can you get together for lunch?" And so I am going to be intentional about doing some of my catch-up lunches and breakfasts now that the kids have a more regular schedule. Because sometimes in the summer they had surf camp. Luna had surf camp. It only went to noon because she wasn't going to surf for eight hours a day. Right. And Ava, same thing for beach volleyball. So now I have the middle of the day again, which is blissful, and I'm going to see some friends who I haven't seen in a while and just have some catch-ups, IRL.
Doree Shafrir (48:44):
Love that. Okay. Thank you so much. Forever 35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Samee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is Acast. Thanks everybody.
Elise Hu (48:59):
Talk to you next time.
Doree Shafrir (49:00):
Bye.