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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
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answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
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at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
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lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
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that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
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highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
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in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
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guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
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all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor
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Elise Cortes.
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Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has
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been brought to you with passion and price since February
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of twenty fifteen. Great to have you back again this week.
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I'm your host, doctor at least Cortes. If we've not
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met before and you don't know me, I'm an organizational psychologist,
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management consultant, local therapist, speaker and author. My team and
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I at gusto Now help companies to enliven and fortify
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their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture and
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inspirational leadership activated by meaning and purpose. And did you
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know that inspired employees outperform their satisfied peers by a
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factor of two point twenty five two one. In other words,
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inspiration is good for the bottom line. You can learn
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more abouts and how we can work together at gustodashnow
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dot com or my personal site at least Coortes dot com.
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Getting in today's program we have with us today the
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authors of Conflict Resilience Negotiating Disagreement without giving up or
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giving in a toolkit for coming together in a conflicted world.
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Robert Bordon, a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, founder
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and former director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program,
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and founder of the Cambridge Negotiation Institute, and also Joel Salinis,
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medical doctor, a behavioral neurologist and clinical scientist at the
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NYU Grossman School of Medicine, founder and chief medical officer
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at ISAAC Health, and former Harvard Medical School faculty slightly
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impressive human beings. We'll be talking about why people are
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so adverse to conflict and move into such aggressive postures
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when faced with it, or when they just completely run
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like I like to do, and learn to employ their
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three part system to develop what they call conflict resilience
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for ourselves. Bob Joins is from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and doctor
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Joel joint Is from New York. Welcome, gentlemen to Working
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on Purpose.
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Thanks for having us.
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Really amazing. As I told you before we got on air,
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what you have created here in this book, Conflict Resilience,
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It's really really stunning, impressive work. And you know, I
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could also hurt somebody with this book. It was so
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so dense and full of information. The stories are amazing.
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You know your story about your mom, Bob and the
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shop store. I mean I could just so relate to that.
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I know it just a cringe worthy and true and true.
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I got it.
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I got it.
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And those things leave an imprint. As we'll talk about
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I'm sure. So, well, let's talk about why this book
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is just so important. Talk about a timely book, gentleman.
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You know, we live in a world of very divisive
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conflict today, so let's just talk a bit about why
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this book is just so important.
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Yeah.
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Well, you know, we came We each came at this
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book with some different difference as an experience, but then
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a real joining about why the timing would be right
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for me.
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I think this book, or the idea for the book
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and the idea for conflict resilience started almost a decade ago.
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I spent twenty one years teaching at HARVD Law School,
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and the beginning about a decade ago, I started to
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notice a very perceptible shift in the kinds of in
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classroom conversations and to make something very complexuch more simple,
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it went from interesting and diverse and sometimes conflicted to
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pretty dull and boring. And what I knew because I
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was on the admissions committee, I knew that we were
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still recruiting very interesting people with very different political views,
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but that something had shifted, and I did not think
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it was primarily the kind of skills. I mean, people
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have different levels of skills in this and we can
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up their game. We hope our book does upguard their game,
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but that what it shifted was that people were less
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willing to actually enter into really hard conversations. They tended
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to for a whole bunch of reasons that we can
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get into later, avoid because it was easier to avoid,
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because the cost of the conversation might be very high
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in terms of kind of online cancelation or career cancelation.
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Because because of social media, people didn't.
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Really know how to disagree.
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And so somehow I gave a talk actually in twenty
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eighteen where I use this word conflict resilience to try
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to distinguish it from conflict resolution. The idea being if
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we can't actually sit with the discomfort of our disagreement,
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if we can't listen with generosity, and if we can't
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represent ourselves in an authentic way but also in a
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way that increases the lightly that the other could hear us,
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then we could never get to the other things that
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I was teaching, which was conflict resolution or negotiation or mediation.
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And so that's kind of the world in which I
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started to think about this and started to see polarization
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and then enter into this this amazing wonderful friendship that
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I had with somebody across literally across the river, because
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Harvard Law schools on one side of the Charles River
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and Harvard Medical School and Mass Generals on the other
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side of the river. To enter doctor.
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Salinis, Yeah, I came at this from a different but
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related angle. So a behavior neurology just means I work
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with people affected by al Zember's disease and related disorders,
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and a lot of the research that I've done has
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been really focused on brain health and in particular psychosocial
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determinants of brain health, So how our social relationships shape
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our brain health. And one of the things that I
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was noticing in the literature or time was just how
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rates of social isolation and loneliness have been steadily increasing
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and really trying to understand why why is it that
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we've been having this kind of really concerning trend when
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things like social isolation and loneliness seem to be really
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big health risk factors. It increases risk of mortality gear
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than obesity and smoking. And I think in trying to
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understand any potential solutions here, I think one of the
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things that we came became clear over time was just
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there's this real barrier or gap around connection, and specifically
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around how we can really navigate conflicts with each other.
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With each other, it's almost like we're missing kind of
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that kind of like childhood skill set to some degree
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that can help us figure out, you know, when we
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when we disagree with each other, how we can how
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we can get through it. I think one of the
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one of the things that's just really clear about connection
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in general is that without conflict, there is no connection.
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So it's really interesting how we can better better at
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navigating that. So I was really fortunate to connect with
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Bob who has a very specific skill set on how
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do we navigate these things. So together we brought in
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both the practical aspects of his field and my field
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to try to put together some really useful and usable
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tactics here.
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I think it's stunning, and I love your collaboration. I
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do want to celebrate that. I mean, I've really been
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a big fan of law years in general because I
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love the way they think you know your traffic and words,
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and it's just, you know, it's stunning. And so you know,
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brain science, your your world. Doctor Sonius meets you know,
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the world of negotiational law and being able to use
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language to be able to connect and get a point across.
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I just really want to celebrate that you've come together
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to do that. How did the two of you come together?
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I mean, how did you guys actually meet and decide
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to do this.
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Yeah, we just.
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Met in the kind of larger, kind of Harvard professional universe.
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And it turned out also, it turns out there's a
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lot of conflict and big research medical centers, and so
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I was actually doing some work at Mass General. You know,
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conflict is everywhere, and so we just became friends.
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Really, I mean this started more as friendship.
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And I will say I very much credit Joelle on
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the idea of writing the book together, because I was
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kind of thinking about, you know, is this something, this
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book worthy or whatever, and then Joel said kind of
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approached me and said, would you want to do something
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on this? And my initial instinct was like, how would
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that work? But one of the great things about negotiation
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in general as a field, and one of my draws
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to it is that it's deeply interdisciplinary and it always
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has it draws on game theory and behavioral economics and
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then social kind of psychology. Uh and so why not
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brain signs right, and and and especially in this rapidly
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developing field that you know Joel has such expertise in.
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And so even though I think my initial reaction was
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like a little bit like, well, I don't know.
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You know, and then and then like the more I
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thought about it, I was like, what a what a
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brilliant idea. So, Joe, I don't know that that lands
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accurate from your.
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Totally it was in was very complimentary. I mean we,
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I would say, we engage in a lot of conflict
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as we're writing the book in terms of like.
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Which you allude to also in the book you throughout, Yeah, exactly.
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I mean my my perspective of like medical the medical
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world and sciences, I'm always trying to figure, Okay, well,
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what's what's behind this, Like what's going on in the brain?
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How do we study this? How do we break it
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down to its component parts? And Bob has a lot
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of really amazing experience, he has a lot of familiar
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with with the research done in this area. But I
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always kept on coming back in with like the razor
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sharp kind of like science leans of like wait, what's
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like how do we deconstruct this? How do we replicate this,
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What are.
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The funniest things about Like I love what we're doing
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these podcasts.
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Because well we'll say, oh, we had.
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A lot of conflict, and I was thinking like, oh, yeah,
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not that much.
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But that's also in the book, because that's right.
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That's it, this idea of his idea of conflict tolerance
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and the way we may people in general, they experience
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something as getting to the level of conflict very differently.
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And so what for me might have been a very snappy,
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fun conversation about a story we might include or not
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because I like to tell stories, or maybe Joelle like
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riffed on some part of the brain science and I
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was like, yeah, this is I'm lost here. I just
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thought that'd be fun. You know, at some point in
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our relationship we realized that maybe sometimes you actually thought
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we were more in a conflict than that was.
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It's interesting, and I think this is so critical to him,
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and one of the many reasons I wanted to have
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you on is so critical. I'll just quickly share and
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then I want I do want to get into the
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promise of developing conflict resilience and what it really means
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to for relationships the world of work communities in the
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world at large. But I can tell you my mother
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was married five times for the time she was twenty eight.
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I'm from the first marriage when I got married at
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thirty five and started having you know, discussions whatever you
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want to call them with my then husband. The first
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arbam we got into, I literally serving the room to
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see which pieces of furniture I'd be taking with me,
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because conflict for me means we're leaving, we're moving houses.
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That's what it means to me, right, And so that
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visceral feeling, you know, that's you know, as I know
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you've you've you've taught us in the book doctor Joel.
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You know, they got coded right, and neur really coded
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for me. So I had to un learned that over time,
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and I didn't fully unlearned it, frankly. So let's talk
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about just, you know, what could the world and our
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relationships and our world of work communities look like when
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we learn this stuff.
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Gosh, I mean, I would just say, it's just so
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much more vibrant, just so much more creativity, so much
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more connection. Bob has this expression that he says that
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that I really enjoy just like all of the yeses
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don't matter until you get to the first no. And
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it's just so true. It's this, you can't really be
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truly authentic and without having some conflict in there. And
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so if you're if you're really not seeing any conflict,