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240: The Beauty of Conflict with CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke

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This is one of my favorite conversations in five years of podcasting — AND I made the silly error of not checking my inputs when switching over to Zoom for this one! 🤦🏻‍♀️ Forgive me, and I hope you’ll bear with the audio on my side to hear the many priceless gems from CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke, two instant friends who I know you will love as much as I do!

We talk about why conflict is necessary to move past mediocrity, tools for tough conversations, calming ourselves when triggered and tempted to use familiar (unhelpful) coping mechanisms, and why courage = vulnerability + curiosity.

Get full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/240 »

More About CrisMarie Campbell & Susan Clarke

Co-founders of thrive! Inc., CrisMarie Campbell, an Olympic rower, and Susan Clarke, a former marriage therapist and Equus coach, are the authors of The Beauty of Conflict: Harnessing Your Team’s Competitive Advantage and The Beauty of Conflict for Couples. They also have a podcast with the same name: The Beauty of Conflict for dealing with conflict at work and at home. 

As partners in work and life for over two decades, they’ve adapted their proven step-by-step process honed working with Fortune 100 Companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, AT&T and San Francisco Giants to help long-term couples use conflict as a catalyst to greater intimacy, passion, and fulfillment. Their work and expertise have been featured in notable outlets like The Today Show, NBC, and Shape.

Topics Covered

  • Conflict is a gift, the source of amazing transformation

  • How well can we tolerate discomfort? The tension within you and another person — we weren’t taught how to process and talk about our feelings 

  • Fear of feeling is like holding a beach ball under water (we think we can outsmart our emotions)

  • Coping mechanisms when in fight or flight: argue, talk faster, take frantic action, sleep more or less, use the wrong words, obsess over information 

  • Must risk being exposed; can’t put too many tools and rules in place

  • Deep listening and not just straight to fixing

  • The 5-5-5 Tool — 15-minute dialogue container

  • It’s not what you do, it’s what you do next 

  • When there’s conflict: different opinions, strong emotions — there’s a choice to Opt-out vs. Opt-in

  • Three styles of opting out, or getting rid of tension: Superstar, Accommodator, Separator

  • Intimacy = into me see 

  • Courage = vulnerability + curiosity 

  • How they’ve navigated marriage, business partnership, and authoring two books

  • It’s okay to be me: the good, the bad, the messy, and the beautiful 

Resources Mentioned

Check out other episodes of the Pivot Podcast here. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen, and if you enjoy the show I would be very grateful for a rating and/or review! Sign-up for my weekly(ish) #PivotList newsletter to receive curated round-ups of what I’m reading, watching, listening to, and new tools I’m geeking out on.