This term of healthy conflict, we know from decades of research that teams that are able to have conflict, they're able to voice disagreements, express different opinions, push back on one another, have lots of better results, including more innovation, better work outcomes, stronger relationships. That's one that people often just can't wrap their heads around. They think that conflict is what damage relationships when it actually improves them. Welcome to Changing Conversations, the podcast where we bring you insight on how you can harness the power of conversation to make change happen. My name is Katrina and I'm here with my colleague Stee. And today we are talking to Amy Gallo. Amy Gallo is a workplace expert who writes and speaks about effective communication, interpersonal dynamics, gender, difficult conversations and feedback. She is the bestselling author of Getting Along, How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People and the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict, as well as hundreds of articles for the Harvard Business Review. I'm really looking forward to sharing this conversation with you. Enjoy. Welcome, Amy. Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. We've been looking forward to have this conversation with you and you've got so much good advice out there through your podcast, through your books and so forth. And I just wanted to start by sort of narrowing the lens on our conversation. It's good for people to know that they can get lots of advice if you're working with a difficult person or getting challenged by that in your workplace. You can find a lot from Amy on that. So go out and look for that. But for our talk, we will focus in on teams and what it means to, I don't know, have healthy conflict in teams and how you're research and work feeds into that. So to get the ball rolling, maybe you can help us understand how healthy conflict can bring us better business results. Yeah. Well, I think this is a concept that a lot of people really feel quite the opposite, right? When we think about conflict, especially in today's world, given how conflict is portrayed in society, we're portrayed in society, we're portrayed in society, online, in our politics. People think conflict is something you want to avoid at all costs. If you can avoid it, you want to squash it as soon as possible. But this term of healthy conflict, we know from decades of research that teams that are able to have conflict, they're able to voice disagreements, express different opinions, push back on one another, have lots of better results, including more innovation, better work outcomes, stronger relationships. That's one that people often just can't wrap their heads around. They think that conflict is what damage relationships when it actually improves them. And we also know it leads to more inclusive work environments, more inclusive teams, because people, when they don't feel like they have to walk on eggshells, they don't have to hide parts of themselves, you know, swallow their opinions, they tend to feel much more included. And welcomed in those teams. So there's so many upsides of healthy conflict. The problem is most of us are too busy trying to avoid it, or stifle it, that we don't get those benefits. And how, how would I start? So if I'm a leader out there, and sitting, okay, okay, firstly, interesting thought, I personally, do not like conflict at all. So if I were leading a team, I would probably like, yes, harmony, everybody get on. But then if I'm sitting here hearing that and saying, well, how do I even start with this? What, what do you, what would you say? Well, I think there's two simple things that you can start with. One is, I just said, talked about all the upsides of conflict. All those same things are downsides, if you flip them, if you don't have conflict, right? Because the opposite of conflict, which is a normal, healthy part of interacting with other humans, the opposite is what Patrick Lencioni, who wrote The Five Dysfunctions of Teams, calls artificial harmony. And artificial harmony, this idea, I mean, you're both nodding. I assume that you have been in teams that have had this, or you recognize it, worked with teams who have it. But it's a sense that we act as if we get along. But in reality, there's all this unspoken ideas, resentments, there's maybe festering conflicts that don't get voiced, a lot of back channel conversations, maybe even some backstabbing happening. And so there's all those downsides. So as a leader, one thing I think you can do is think, remind yourself that the sort of fake harmony that I'm going for is not good. This is bad for my team. The second thing is just to start saying out loud to your team, we're going to disagree. Debate is a good thing. We want to hear difference of opinions. You may not even believe it when you first say it, but start and you're going to have to say it over and over because most people are like you, Katrina. You know, where they don't like conflict. And so to get them to engage in conflict, you have to hammer it home over and over that this is okay. Not only is it okay, but it's welcomed and valued and will be good for our team. I think it's a super cool perspective. And I can't help thinking that there's a couple of, you could say, enablers to make that happen that are critical. And from my experience, I mean, if you have a leader who makes the claim that you just exemplified really well, you have to authentically be a person who is invitational to different views and who can hold opposing ideas at the same time without panicking, without feeling this is not good. And I think there's something about authenticity and I would say train your ability to, or your comfort level with tensions really as a human. And when it happens, train your ability to say this is good. This holds an invitation for us to stay calm, lean into it. Yeah, and get more clever. And I just think that from a very, very basic level, I mean, it means that in a team, you need to have a language for how to hold a conversation. As an example, most leadership teams that I work with, there is no language for what is a real conversation or what is a curious conversation. And that means that most leaders intuitively feel that they need to have a perception, an opinion on something. And then you share your opinion. Whereas to get clever, we need to more have a perspective and we need to, to a large extent, you could say, explore our individual reasoning. So explore different ways to think about a subject rather than us bouncing, perspectives or perspectives or perceptions rather. And I've just, so what, what's your thinking on this thing? Conversations in this. Yeah, I mean, that's just so, so well said. And I think I have a friend who's a leadership consultant who, a leadership development consultant named Ron Carucci, who says too many leaders think they need to be answer ATMs, right? Like you go up to the person, you go, here's my problem, here's the input, give me the answer. Right? And I think what you're talking about is having more than the answer, but having curiosity, intellectual humility, the ability to say, I don't know the ability to change your mind. And Katrina, you were alluding to also the need for emotional regulation. So you have to be able to stay calm when someone disagrees with you, when the cut, when two people on the team start battling out, right? Like you have to be able to regulate your emotions so that you can fit with the difference. Or the discord and help the discord and help the team. Your job in that moment. And I'd be curious how you all think of this when you work with teams, but like the job, your, your job at the moment is to facilitate a conversation. Not, yes, you want to get to an answer, but you don't get to an answer by declaring it and making it. So, I mean, sometimes you have to do that as a leader, but rarely it's, you more want the team to talk it through, bring in all those perspectives. But how do you, how do you, how do you do that? When you have, say you have a team, I mean, everyone will have a different threshold or different comfort level for tension. So we're talking about an issue, a tension that, you know, is a little bit tricky and there's a lot at stake and maybe even politics involved. And some people will feel, oops, just by the mentioning of it, this is awkward. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I haven't prepared. Others will just feel, yes, let's bring it on. So depending on your, your childhood and how familiar you are with dysfunctional parents or whatever it is. And your culture and your, like, there's so, right. You bring all of that. So what do you do that? How do you do that in a team where that threshold is very different? Well, one thing I think leaders, I've seen leaders do really well is to sort of narrate what's happening. So when that tension comes up and you notice some people are, you know, starting to slide under the desk or tense up or look like they're about to, you know, run out of the room or you can just name it and say, this is an important debate to have. We're fleshing out these different perspectives. It can be really uncomfortable because we're disagreeing. And you know what? We're not used to disagreeing. So I know we all have different perspectives on the value of conflict, but this is an important conversation to have. And I just ask all of you to stay. Okay. I like that. Just, yeah. Just sort of have them. And I actually saw Esther Perel, who's a psychotherapist. She has a podcast and several books. I watched her do a live interview at a conference that I was at and she, her, her guests were having pretty blatant conflict. And she stopped the whole recording and just said to the audience, there are about a thousand people in the room. And she said, I can feel the tension in the room because we are not used to. Watching people disagree. And she said, I just want to name that so that everyone who feels maybe a little uncomfortable right now knows why. Right. And she made the point, which I think was really helpful, which is we, we have developed so much technology, so many shortcuts and hacks to make life frictionless for ourselves and for our teams. We want things to be smooth, but that friction is where you get innovation ideas for momentum. So let's reintroduce some of that frictionless for momentum. So let's reintroduce some of that friction so we can get there. I mean, have you seen teams who've consciously introduced these concepts into their work? Yes. Yes. And I was actually with, with a leader a couple of weeks ago in a different context, but we got to talk about this. And she said that, and she said that, that for the last year or so in her management team, all the management meetings they have, and they have one, I think every second month and it's normally half day or full day. And for the last year, the, the motives of that meeting was that they up towards it. They agreed what are the most pressing tensions that we need to think about and explore together. And, and, and then they, of course, prepared a little bit to be able to tee that. I mean, it is a framing of the issue and that in its own right is an art because if you frame it less invitational, you also tee up an opinion war. But whereas you, you tee it up the tension as a, how might we, or we're exploring something here together to get to a better choice than any of us could have done by themselves. When I heard her talk about that, it, it reminded me of how different that feels compared to most management meetings that I'm part of. And, and they are very often a very well orchestrated process of corporate theater where every business unit owner will bring something to the table and everyone hopes that the others just stay out of it and says, fine, you run with that. And, and, and I mean, really, I mean, is that, is that the level of hope we have for what we can do together? I mean. I'm sorry I'm laughing, but it's so, you're, you've articulated so many times I've seen it where like, they're like, no questions. Awesome. But I'm done. Right. And they've nailed, they think they nailed it because there were no questions. It went really well. It went really well. We created absolutely nothing together. But I also think that we are kind of obsessed with solving and quite recently, recently, um, I keep returning to that. I don't know if it's actually Einstein, but the thing about spending, you know, 95% of your time on the problem and then going to the solution. Cause I think that's also the framing is when we say, okay, we're going to talk about the tensions and we're also saying, and we're going to stay in the tension for a while. We don't have to solve this right now. And I think it brings a different energy to the, the conversation. Honestly, I just think we're obsessed with wanting to feel done. Check, fix that. Go do. Yeah. Well, cause we think, you know, I, I ask leaders all the time, do you work in a high pressure, high paced, uh, sector or environment or organization? And no one ever says no, right? Like no one thinks they, and that urgency creates this false need to just keep moving. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving when, and I've never thought about it. Actually that Einstein quote, I always thought about it. If it's Einstein, I don't remember who it is, but that I've always thought about it the way you said it, that it's about framing. But I think there's an element there too. If you spend 95% of the time talking about the problem, it also means it gives it, you're sitting with potential solutions for a long time. Right. Like you're, because as you're framing the problem, of course you're thinking about solutions, but they're, you're giving them, you're giving yourselves and your colleagues and your collaborators time to process what, so those solutions might look like before you start to narrow the options. Yeah. And I think the framing part has this fertile feel where, where it's actually open in the sense that we, we, we are just exploring something here. There's, there's, you know, the moment, you start thinking about the solution that you know. But it, it makes me come back to like the beginning of talking about healthy conflict because it, the parameters for healthy conflict, I think are better tuned or, or more appropriate for being in the exploration of the tension. And it's a different thing. And maybe there is also a healthy conflict on this, but when a decision's been made and then, you know, and then you chance to, you know, challenge it or a decision was made two weeks ago and then you challenge it or a month ago. And suddenly we, I think the more time that passes and looking, uh, retrospectively, um, to address, you know, a conflict there, I feel like the more time that passes, the more that has the potential to just build up and build up. So this, this conversation has just made me think about, yeah, maybe practicing it in the problem of, you know, framing phase will help when you're actually needing to learn from what's happening in reality there. I don't know how that speaks to you. Yeah. I mean, very much because the, one of the norms that I try to get senior leadership teams that I work with to commit to, you know, among the, some of the ones we've talked about, right? Conflict is normal and healthy. We say what we mean. We mean what we say, right? All of which is embedded in what we've talked about, but also is disagree and then commit, right? So disagree when, when the conversation's happening, that is the time for the disagreement. It's not undermine the decision slowly over time. Cause you never agreed with it. It's not come back two weeks later, you know, armed with all of these facts and arguments and under, and I think you mentioned it too. Like you have to interrogate the ideas and your assumptions and your perspectives in that moment. It's a, it's a, it's a, co-created process and that's very deeply uncomfortable for people, but imperative to do if you're going to get that, those perspectives and let them inform the decisions that you all make too. But then you have to commit. So it, and it may be that let's say the three of us are working together and I'm an outlier. I'm like, nope, don't think it's a good idea. We interrogate, we do all the work. Once we've made the decision and you, maybe you two outvoted me, or maybe I said, okay, fine, let's do it that way. I have to commit. I can't, I can't be a drag on the work. I can't be, you know, I can't under undermine it along the way. I really have to be on board at that point. Can I add to that? I think, I think I like what you're saying because I sometimes feel that if you are not a very patient person, you need to get to a decision at some point and someone with your example, Amy, you need to give in here. We will go with this option. I think, I think, I think, at least for me, if I'm forced by majority to go in positive for an option and I don't buy the reasoning, then I won't do it. If, if, if I understand the reasoning, I have no problem going down the example you just mentioned, Amy, about, okay, I actually, I understand that you can look at it this way. And it makes sense. I would have thought about it differently, but I accept that that's, that's the way to think about it. And you seem to agree and I'll go with you, which is different than here's the option we'll go with. And I outright don't agree. And I think your reasoning for getting to it is flawed. And I think that distinction is, is because I've also seen a lot of examples where CEOs or CXOs are forcing an organization to say, okay, now we just commit and we need to do this. And this is about execution and the deep understanding and knowing and the deep resolved feeling in the organization is not there. So you can get a shallow commitment and that'll take you into more problems. I think. And I think it's on the person, let's take that. We'll continue the example of us. It's on the person that me, right? As the person who disagrees, it's on me to ask the questions so that I can wrap my head around it. Because I think that's the, we, we get into this battle of, you have to explain it to me in a way I understand. And you have to participate in that conversation as well and ask the questions because it's very possible that you understand the logic and understand the perspective and still disagree with it. And I think that's okay. You're, what you're talking about is having this, it has to make sense, even if it's not something you fully believe. And so I feel like it would be on me to say, okay, explain it to me again. What about this? Are we connecting this dot? And, and then I do, you know, I do think that there are times where you still have to get on board, even if it's something you don't fully understand or don't fully, because otherwise the conflict doesn't, I mean, thinking about a team I worked with and it was the question about hiring and they had to, they were hiring this person that one person on the team was like, no, I just don't know. I just think this is the wrong person. But they had sort of run out of options. They needed someone in this role. And he could not get on board with the logic and he agreed to it and still felt uncertain. But it was also then he had to be open to the person being suitable for the role, which he was to his credit. But if he had been like, still think he's wrong, you know, had to ice that person out when they showed up and had kept voicing that opinion, it could have really ruined the team. I think it's interesting when you're in that mode, how much is about the, the desire for control and how much is about, you know, because I think if for the times where we're able to put the collective goal in front of everything, then you can, you can probably give in to lots of different options. It just comes to me that control would be the primary reason why I would be like, absolutely not. We're doing this way. Or, yeah, control and maybe just adding to it, trust. So this thing that I can, I can be in situations where I would have done something differently. But the overriding thing in my involvement is that I actually trust the people in the team I'm in. So if you feel that we would go that way and I disagree, it's more important that I trust you and say, okay, just by, just by being who you are. Yeah. And our legacy as a team makes me back, whatever. This makes me think about something. We were just talking about the state of the world and, and all the interesting things about that. But I wonder, so what does fear do to the, so the ideal setup is that we have healthy conflict, that we disagree, we share our different opinions. But there is a higher likelihood right now that due to different circumstances, we are all having a little bit more fear in our systems. So how do we deal with that? And yeah. What do you think, Amy? Well, I think you just named sort of the three biggest enemies of healthy conflict or destruct, you know, things that destroy healthy conflict and ego, right? The need for control, the need to be right. Distrust, I think is, you know, also very high. If you don't trust the people, you're not going to engage in, you may not engage in conflict at all, but you definitely won't engage in healthy conflict. And then third fear, which is connected, obviously, both to ego and to the people. And to, and to trust. And it's, that's where the need for psychological safety really comes in is that how do we create an environment where people don't have to fear, at least in that, the bubble of the team, they don't have to fear. But you might have the cognitive load of larger fears and the risks that you're thinking about for your organization, given current political environment or, you know, pressures that might be put on the organization. That fear might be there, but can you create a space where it's safe to say what's truly on your mind to not to say, I don't know, to ask the hard questions. And it's without that, it is really, really hard. You know, and I see teams, I'm sure you do too, that don't trust each other. And it's, it's, that is the, the sort of foundation from which you can do this work of having healthy conflict. And there can be proxies, right? If you don't trust one another, maybe you as an individual feel safe because of your position or because of your privilege. But it's, it doesn't, it's a very hard to substitute something for that, for that. I think in this domain, this thing about you don't know what you don't know. I mean, so if you have never been with a team with a high level of trust where you went in and whenever you were together grappling with something, you were creating art, you were creating something that none of you could have done at the same level alone, that feeling of accomplishment together, like, wow, where we took this conversation, this was, this was, this was really unique, we couldn't have done. If you have never had that experience, you have been in a corporate environment, you have defended your turf, you have, you have convinced the world by, you know, performing in your own right, then it's very, very difficult to even voice this. It's very difficult to, to create a yearning for, wow, we could have a much more curious, courageous conversation between us that would help our business because you don't know what it is. What do you do, Amy, when, when you run into leadership teams that have no reference besides, oh, they've heard about a sports team somewhere, you know, who was awesome and blah, blah, but they've never felt it. Ted Lasso. What do you do? One of the, one of the exercises I use, because it's, trust is built over time, right? You're not going to do a four hour workshop or even a month long engagement and create trust. But one of the things is to start getting people to name what they experience. And, and you mentioned earlier to the teams that talk about the tensions, right? The framing of the problem. That's that exercise. I try to get, so I'll give them some examples of common tensions that teams experience, right? Speed versus quality, focus on the, what's best for the company versus what's best for the client, revenue versus purpose, right? Try to sort of articulate what some of the common tensions are and then get them to name some of the tensions that they're experiencing. Yes. Because once they start voicing out loud, it helps, it becomes less about Amy versus Katrina. And then it's more about this, this bigger issue. And that for me sort of gives that space in which they can at least start to say like, yeah, you know, my team cares about quality because of this and this and this. And, you know, we got dinged by the CEO last, you know, last year because we didn't do that. And this team is saying, well, we're, you don't understand. We're going to understand the pressure we're under to move fast. And so it starts to create, it sort of opens up the tent, right? Frames, this gives this framing so people can start asking, having those, those questions. One of the other things I've done with, with teams is just a very basic, like create a user guide to you because there's, when there's distrust, there's a lot of misinterpretation about behavior. Yes. You know, Amy, Amy shows up to the meeting and doesn't talk because she doesn't respect us, right? Rather than the fact, well, maybe Amy's afraid because of this and this. Maybe Amy's shy or maybe Amy's processing and she has to come back later. So creating a user guide to yourself, and usually I tell people it has to be one page. And it's just a description of how do you think of yourself? Introvert, extrovert, how do you communicate? What are things people have might misinterpret about your behavior or about what you say? Yes. What's your, what are your values? Things that, that really help others get a sense of who you are. Have you ever done something similar with, with teens? Yeah. And I think building on that kind of really getting to know each other. And yourself. And yourself, I suppose as well. I think we often talk about the value of, you know, you meet up for meetings in the day, but actually having dinner together or an evening. We sit, you know, we sit, you know, by either physical or metaphorical fireplace and like actually sharing something about yourself. Cause I think when you humanize, when I, when I realized that, okay, Steve, you're a person, you have a family at home. You like doing things and, oh, I like that too. Or, you know, you have some, something that humanizes them. So that in that moment where you've said something that I completely disagree with, you can kind of fall back on. Okay. But he seems like a kind of decent person. So what could he see in this that I can't see myself? So yeah, I think definitely working with it in, in that kind of way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we give people the benefit of the doubt when we know them better, right? We know, we know that we're much more open-minded. I mean, there's the, the fundamental attribution error, that social psychology concept that if we, show up to a meeting and, and Steve comes in late and I think, oh, you know, so disrespectful, disorganized, you know, whatever. I come up with all these reasons that have to do with his personality about why he showed up late. I show up late and in my head, I'm like, well, there was traffic and I had that other meeting I had. We make, we externalize our reasons for negative behavior and we internalize other people's. Yeah. And when we, when we have the context, the shared context or shared understanding, then we're much more open to, you know, all right, Steve has three kids at home and they're always, I remember him talking about how it's hard to get them out the door for school or, you know, you start doing, making the, the external attributions as, as well, as opposed to the internal ones. So that, so we, we don't have a load more time. I just wanted to touch on one thing before we, we also head to the end of this, this recording. And that is now we've been talking about others and people in teams and all the good ideas around that. And I thought it could be interesting to hear about you guys and the way that you've pushed your boundaries when it comes to these topics we've just been talking about, because I think it brings it a home into a different grounding. And I'll just start by sharing one experience that I had because having heard all these nice theoretical things about what should work. I invited for a meeting in a team, a project team that was called surfacing the tensions, a heart emoji, just trying, beginning to try to acknowledge my discomfort already at that point. And then I, I said, yep. So this is a session where we get to talk about how the different tensions we're, the different tensions we're experiencing and so forth. And I hated that meeting so much. It was the right, it was the right thing to do. But I realized while I was in it that I wanted the resolution of what we were talking about in the moment of having that conversation. But that resolution isn't going to come because these are big problems that we were discussing. So, I wanted to share that as an example of somewhere where I've pushed myself to try something and that I think it kind of worked, but I learned some stuff. But I'd be curious to hear what have you tried that kind of pushed yourself out of your comfort zone in bringing this kind of healthy conflict into play? I can think of, I can think of two things and, and, and, uh, they might not be as contextual precise as yours, but, but, uh, for me, in, in, in the meetings that I somewhat is responsible for, I have this sentence, uh, brewing all the time that is, what is the conversation we're not having? Um, what's the conversation we should have? What's the courageous next conversation that, so just to give me a little more, uh, faith in, making the invitation or being a little more courageous as to actually, uh, be vulnerable and, and, and, and maybe take a stab at, at shaping it. That's, that's, that's the one thing. And then at the same time, acknowledging that everyone will have a different perspective on that. So how can I, in one hand, have the courage and potentially also the ability to frame a real issue? That's a conversation we need to have, but, but, but hold it very, very lightly and invitational for other people to, to nuance it, to help frame it better than I can do alone because you have a different perspective. You may, may have a more granular view on something. So both the, the courage to, to, to say it and frame it and, but then also letting go of being too much in love with my own perspective. I have your idea of that. That, that happens on good days. Oh, very nice. Good moments. Good moments. Yeah. How about you? I, I, I definitely, my, my edge is that I, my learning edge is that I, I think I'm right all the time. And I really, and it's, it is, it's a, I, I just invite, I have the archetype in my book getting along of the know-it-all and I, I identify with it so much. And it's, I really have to watch when I feel this. It's, I can feel it in my chest. My chest gets very like, um, solid and like sort of pushed forward of like, nope, I'm right. Like, you know, and, and I, and I have to, I really have to watch that. And then I ask myself, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm completely wrong? And just have the thought exercise, not of the ego loss and all of that, but the thought exercise of, well, what would it mean to this conversation if I would, if I was completely wrong? And it makes, that gives me just sort of broadens my perspective, softens my shoulders a little and lets me listen better because then I have to learn. And sometimes I find myself going, nope, I'm right. I'm right right back there. So I have to, I have to work on that. The, the other thing, and this was a lesson I learned. I had a really hard conversation. This was a few years ago with someone on a team where I had to give them some feedback, but the team sort of nominated me to give them feedback that they had, um, said something that was a intensive in a meeting. And I, you know, you would think as someone who writes and talks about difficult conversations, the comic book that I'm perfectly comfortable with them, but that's not true. You know, I still have my own hesitations. I'm still human. Right. And so it took me a good 24 hours of working myself up for this conversation, planning it, see, you know, planning out what I would say. And she had a terrible reaction. She was like, you're absolutely wrong. That is not true. That's not what I said. That's not what I said. That's not what I said. I meant. I don't think anyone else interpreted it that way. And it just sort of blew up in my face. And then I went back the next day, tried to have the conversation again. It went a little bit better, but it was still, I would declare it a disaster. And three months later, we sort of just moved on. I was like, all right, I gave the feedback. What can I do? You know, three months later, I heard from another colleague that that colleague had gone to her and said, oh, Amy really gave me this really important feedback a few months ago. It really helped. It changed the way I saw things. And I, it was such a good reminder that difficult conversations are not measured by how smooth or comfortable they feel, but, and they're not even measured by that moment or even that week, but really the long-term goal. And sometimes you'll just have to be patient and being, and sit with the discomfort, right? Our relationship was not great for a while. And I wanted to do everything to smooth it over and to say, you know what, you're right. We knew you didn't mean, but I had to sort of stick with my values, stick with what I had promised the rest of the team I would do and then wait. And, and we did get right back. We not, I didn't ever say anything to her, but I didn't want to be like, you know, but it's funny. My know it all in this could have been like, see, I was right. I know, you know, I'm right. But instead I had to just sort of sit with it. And then we got, we got back into a good rhythm. Eventually it took another few months after that, but, which was a long time to wait, but it was. Yeah. So that's, that's a big one for me is just the patience of waiting for the result of the, of the conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing. Um, and I think now is the right time to sort of round off and we always round off by asking, what is it that we are going to take out of this conversation into the next one based on the different things we've been, uh, we've been talking about. So Steve, what comes to mind for you? You know, something you mentioned, Amy, um, I don't know if I'm using the right word, but, uh, this thing about when you're in that conversation and you're trying to move the conversation somewhere and get to where, whatever you call it, conflict, or we're talking about an issue that we're grappling with. Um, I think that this idea about, this idea about in the conversation, naming it, naming what is actually happening right now. I think that's something that I very rarely do. And I think I'm, I'm victim of being quite comfortable, even when the tension is quite high and acknowledging that there will be other people in the room that might have a different threshold for, for tension comfort. Um, and the naming of it somehow, offers, um, you could say a balcony perspective where you somehow you can stay in the conflict, but you're also getting a balcony perspective on what's happening. I think that can ease, uh, our nervous systems a little bit so that we can stay longer. So I thank you. Thank you for that, Amy. Yeah. Maybe I can also just follow on by saying the thing that is going to stick with me is, is this thing that you said at the end, but I think it's a common theme throughout that, um, and, um, you know, don't measure the success of, uh, I guess what you're intending to do by how it felt in the moment and actually giving it time. So trying to stay grounded, trying to stay in the tension. It's okay if it doesn't feel great, but then see what happens and actually do your measurement piece a little after. So, um, that's, yeah, that's really helpful. What about you, Amy? What sits in you? Well, Steve, it's a question you asked you around the, um, around what, when you really fundamentally disagree with a decision that's being made and you feel forced to do it. How do you, how do you sit with that? How do you, how do you, and, and, you know, I, I shared the sort of disagree and then commit. And I, and I think I agree. That's a good team norm. It's just hard to do personally. And so I think one of the things I'll continue to reflect on from this conversation is what's required in that moment when you really disagree with a decision that's being made, what's required of you to be able to continue to be part of the team, a productive part of the team and continue to push the idea forward. And what do you need to do internally and externally to make that okay? Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been such a pleasure having this conversation with both of you. How did this conversation resonate with you? Get in touch via the link in the show notes to share your questions, challenges, and opinions. And until next time, take care. Bye.