How to Handle Group Conflict Without Tearing People Apart
This story is part of Inside Love, our series exploring what it means to love through science and curious conversation.
We are living in divisive times. People are sorting themselves into political and ideological camps. Disagreements within communities, friend groups and families can quickly become a stark choice: you’re either with us or against us.
So how can groups fight without tearing each other apart? In her new book, “The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict,” facilitator Priya Parker explores how fighting with care can deepen the relationships we’re afraid of losing.
“We haven’t been taught to fight well,” Parker said. “We oscillate between avoidance and burning the house down.”
Parker offers another possibility: staying in the room and seeing a conflict through to its resolution. “Friends who fight and come through it are actually closer,” Parker said. “It is beautiful on the other side.”
We talk to her about the strategies groups can employ when sparks fly.
Guest:
- Priya Parker, facilitator; strategic adviser; author, “The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict”
Lesley McClurg: Your original book, “The Art of Gathering,” famously brought people together for really unique parties. Did some of them just go really bad? Why are you turning towards fighting?
Priya Parker: There is so much conflict in gathering, and particularly in the planning of gatherings. “The Art of Fighting,” in a lot of ways, is my second book about connection. I am interested in connection. And so much of what I see is that we are more fragile as communities, in part because of our conflict aversion.
Lesley McClurg: Was part of your motivation, beyond tense wedding planning, what we’re seeing between neighbors and inside town halls that are blowing up?
Priya Parker: I am a facilitator, and during the summer of 2020, I was invited into a number of group and organizational reckonings. If you remember that summer, it was the summer Black Lives Matter and the first summer after the pandemic hit, there were a lot of reckonings inside of organizations. As a facilitator, my peers and I were brought in, and because people were in virtual work, a lot of those reckonings were inside little squares on Zoom. My work had always been in person. Even if people are facing each other and having a conversation they’d otherwise rather not have, you can use your body, if they run out of the room, you could chase them. But all of a sudden in the Zoom, you’re just hitting a little red button and anyone can leave. So, it was a really complex time.
As I was watching and as I was part of many of these reckonings, I noticed that we haven’t been taught to fight well. We oscillate between avoidance and burning the house down. And as I was in many Zooms, and these organizations would agree with me, we often don’t have either the skills or the actual infrastructure to know how to have a healthy group fight. So I wanted to write a book that began to ask not how do you yell at strangers on the internet, but actually, how do we fight with those we want to belong to.
Lesley McClurg: Avoiding conflict is no better than burning the house down, as you put it. Talk about that because you learned that lesson from a young age.
Priya Parker: My parents both come from lineages — my mother is Indian, my father is white American — where when conflict arose, we kind of stuck our head in the sand, we’re ostriches. When my parents divorced when I was about nine years old, I and everyone around them was shocked because they never fought. And so I learned from a young age that there’s great loss also in avoidance and that human connection can be as threatened by unhealthy peace as it is by unhealthy conflict.
Lesley McClurg: And a fight can sometimes define what a group is about.
Priya Parker: In fact, fights actually form groups. You can’t become a group without a storm, without a fight. There are four phases of a group formation and the first is form and the second is called storm, which is when a group has to decide it is worth making this a thing. It’s almost like couples have the DTR that define the relationship. Are we dating? Are you my boyfriend? Are you my girlfriend? Are we poly? Are we monogamous? It turns out, groups have to go through a similar phase. What are we, what are we about, who’s in charge? And when we are unwilling or unable or unskilled to have these crucial conversations about who we are and what we are doing around here, our groups end up dissipating. They never actually form.
Lesley McClurg: We’re really living in a time of boundaries and canceling. Social media makes this a lot easier. We can ghost our way through conflict. Have we gotten a lot quicker to leave? And how can people move past those moments where you just want to step out?
Priya Parker: We sure have. It’s easier to bounce than to bother. This is also uniquely part of being alive in the modern era, which is that we tend to, for better or for worse, choose our groups. We choose our friends, we choose our workplace, we choose our institutions of worship. It’s never been easier to leave, in part because we have so much choice. In our great-grandmother’s village, you didn’t have a lot of choice. There were not a lot of places to go. Even in traditional communities, you run into each other at the grocery store or at the market. You can’t avoid each other for that long. Yet in modern life, in part because of an abundance of choice and in part because we can hide from each other through our screens and text messages, it’s never been easier to not face, and yet it is keeping us really lonely.
Lesley McClurg: It seems like we need to practice because I am also very conflict-avoidant. It sounds terrifying to get my sword ready. Right after the election, I had friends who went in very different directions. It surprised me a lot. There is still a lot of tension in this group of friends, and we never talk about politics, but it’s creating a lot of distance between us. So, if I wanted to get everyone together to have these hard conversations, what are some of the infrastructure or tools you mentioned in the book? How would I do it?
Priya Parker: The first thing, back up a little bit. Don’t start with a specific form in mind of what this group needs to be. First ask, what is the actual need of this group?
Lesley McClurg: Friends, we’re friends.
Priya Parker: Do you need to talk about this difference? And if so, how? The idea of bringing them all together at the table and talking about politics, that will probably go badly. I would start first by asking yourself, what is the actual need here? What are these people to me? Not all conflict avoidance is from fear. Some of it is from wisdom. In “The Art of Fighting,” I actually have a group of girlfriends who’ve been friends for 30 years; it sounds like your group a little bit. During the pandemic, they hopped on these Zoom happy hours and they realized very quickly that they were very far apart from each other — politically, socially, even perceptions of the pandemic. It threw a number of them into an existential crisis. Are these my people? Is this still my group? And so part of what I worked on with them is to go through a set of questions to decide whether to face or not. And then what is it that you’re facing? Questions like, can I continue to engage meaningfully? Do I care enough about this group to take this on? Do I still have a longing for this group? Is this conflict touching on a core value of mine? Does the group need to reflect those values for me to be a part of it?
My hope with “The Art of Fighting” is not that it gives us better answers, but that it gives us better questions. Ask yourself, what are these people to me? Is it important to me to be in relationship with people who have different viewpoints from me, or is this a red line? It’s first a set of questions for oneself and then beginning to ask, well, do I think by saying something we’re going to alter one another? And if you still have longing for these people, part of my advice to you would be to actually talk less, have fun together, remember why you’re friends, go have a blast. Sometimes a community actually needs to talk less. What they actually need is a soccer game.
Lesley McClurg: It sounds like I just need to go dancing with these people.
Priya Parker: At some point, you may have to ask, is this the group that I thought it was? And maybe they become your fun group.
Lesley McClurg: Just putting that title on it made my whole system align in a really good way. But let’s say there is a group conflict that really needs to be had, and I’m ready for it. We’ve defined it. What are some of the tools to use while you’re in that moment? How do you create a ritual or a space where a productive conversation can happen?
Priya Parker: I had a mentor called Randa Slim, and she would always say that 90% of the success of what happens in a room happens before anyone arrives. First, engage in a period of what I call the pre-conflict resolution. When I work with a team or an organization, and they’re getting ready to come together for some kind of facing, one of the questions we ask is, are we having the right conversation? Are we having the right fight? What do you think is happening here? What is the purpose of this organization? What is a conversation you’re always having that feels like it is never getting resolved? And just really listening. Sometimes it’s good to have people have some reflection time, whether in a workbook or with a trusted person, so that they can actually sort out their ideas and feel some of their emotions before coming into the higher-stakes room.
Then, once you’re actually in the room to set up, let people understand how it’s going to go, how long it is. Where are we going to be hosting this? Something as simple as not having it in a glass room where other people can see. Don’t have it at a restaurant where other people can hear. Some of these are very practical. Get the table out of the room if possible, which is sort of counterintuitive. Tables often block connection. Then also spend time preparing your own body. Conflict is physical, deeply physical, just not often in the way we think. Not necessarily between people, but in ourselves. So also beginning to prepare ourselves to be able to go into the room and hold healthy heat.
Lesley McClurg: What is the goal? At the end of the day, there’s probably still going to be differences. So, what are you trying to achieve in that space?
Priya Parker: There’s a facilitator named Sethu Nair. She told me, you’re trying to create a space where people can actually safely say what they need to say. Now, what does that mean? I have an example in the book where I look at one of the first formative fights between the founders of Burning Man. They had gathered together in Marian Goodell’s dining room. This was in 1998. They had experienced a crisis the summer before. Someone had died. And as Goodell described, it was Mad Max out there on the Playa. And they came together and had to ask, can we create infrastructure and hierarchy if we are trying to also create utopia?
Lesley: That’s a good question.
Priya Parker: And the conversation that they were having was, what do we pay ourselves? The values of the group up until that point was they were all equal, so they should all make the same amount of money. And they started comparing rents, and that revealed differences. One lived in a more expensive area, two others were roommates, one had a rent control apartment. Goodell was sitting there clutching this yellow legal pad, and one of the founders said, “Well, everyone should make $30,000.” And she exclaimed, “That’s irrational!” And then she took a deep breath, and she spoke the dangerous truth. She said, “We shouldn’t all get paid the same.” And someone shot back, “How could you value yourself more than us?” Ouch. If she was willing to say it and they were willing to hold it, it expanded their geography of possibility, but it also could have gotten her kicked out. And so part of the infrastructure of a group fight is to make it safe enough for someone to speak their dangerous truth. And their dangerous truth may be, “It really hurt my feelings that you didn’t invite me to your wedding.”
Lesley McClurg: You talk about how we shouldn’t stop for the most offended person in the room. And you have a great example of this in your book. Talk about what happened in that workshop with 80 progressive leaders.
Priya Parker: I was facilitating a workshop about community and gathering. I had just begun speaking. Everyone was in a circle. I was speaking about gathering and community. I was using the word tribe. And a person stepped forward and took a mic and said, “I take issue with your use of the word tribe. I’m indigenous. And you are appropriating the word tribe.” The room tenses up. I tense up. But I’m very practiced at this. I breathe. I put my feet on the ground. Again, I’m the facilitator. I have authority. I’m holding a mic. I’m in a position of privilege. I look at her, and I say, “Thank you. I will consider it. And I may not change how I’m speaking. Tribe is a sociological word. It’s a word that exists in many cultures. It’s a word that has existed in many contexts for thousands of years.” And then I looked, and everyone’s holding their breath. And I said, “Don’t let the room be defined by the most offended voice.”
I was brought in to help them expand their geography. Years later, some of the members from that moment still bring it up. One of them said to me, “You helped us get unstuck so that we could have wider conversations and not stop if someone is offended.” And let me be clear, I didn’t think the woman shouldn’t have said what she said. I think she should say it. It’s really important. It’s a very good point. I want it on the table. We are a worse group if it’s not on the table. These are core fights. And so I tried to make her feel felt. I gave air to her offense, and I didn’t let the room be defined by it. And we widened the scope of possible conversation that day.
Lesley McClurg: If we do this, if we can learn how to do this [fighting] better, do you have a bigger goal? Do you think we can get through this divisiveness in our country?
Priya Parker: Most people I know are in pain. Most people are lonely, even within their intimate partners. Every group fights. Every group I know, friend group, family group, has some mess inside. Part of the invitation is to first say this is a mess and learn to grow the relational longing to be in a mess with you, to grow our capacity for each other, to grow tolerance for each other, to grow joy with each other because the only way out is actually with one another. It is beautiful on the other side. Friends who fight and come through it are actually closer. It’s actually quite intimate to admit hurt. It’s quite intimate to call someone out with care and, in a way, to protect the group and figure out who we are and what we want to do around here. Once you get through it, you’re much more sturdy. You’re much more resilient. This isn’t a moment to keep walking away from each other. We’re going to be incredibly lonely and incredibly bored. It’s so beautiful to be with each other, but part of the art of fighting is to bring in warmth and humor and joy and not just have this serious, angry side over here and this fun, playful side over there. It’s actually all together.
One of my favorite examples in the book is a church. A woman called me up saying her church is going through a reckoning like so many churches during the summer of 2020, in part because they hadn’t worshiped together. Their core function to come together every Sunday, to be together in communion was now on a live stream. She said, “We’ve been missing each other, both literally, but also liturgically.” They were tearing each other up about all sorts of stuff like Christianity and Black Lives Matter. And this was a majority white church. She said, “It feels exhausting trying to bring people together, to have these really hard conversations. Everyone’s exhausted.” And someone said, “What if instead we threw a parking lot party? We threw a party outside of the church. Dunk the deacon?” And someone else quickly Googled: how much does it cost to rent a dunk tank? And they were like, “It’s 250 bucks, should we do it?” As they were planning this kind of ridiculous party, they started feeling relaxed. They hosted this parking lot party, and they had the church band play cover songs, they had a dunk tank, they had cotton candy, and they basically just practiced being together again, which after the pandemic was a big deal. One of the women wrote to me later, and she said, “It was so beautiful.” And as people left that day, I kept hearing the phrase, “I didn’t realize how much we needed this.” What they did that day was they didn’t go for the wound. They didn’t go for the jugular. They watered the garden.
Lesley McClurg: May we all water more gardens and really get to the other side of this moment and beyond. Inside our friendships, obviously, but beyond for our country. Thank you so much, Priya.
Priya Parker: Thank you so much for having me.
Lesley McClurg: Priya Parker is a facilitator, as you heard, and strategic adviser. Her new book is “The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict.” Inside Love is a new production of KQED, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. Our email is [email protected]. Our engineer is Brendan Willard. Our producers are Susie Britton and Emiko Oda. I’m Lesley McClurg. Thank you so much for listening.
This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.