Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - Esther Perel: How to Feel More Connected, Respected And Valued At Work & Home #557

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Are we expecting too much from our jobs - and is it costing us our health, relationships and happiness?   This week I’m delighted to welcome back someone who is regarded as one of the most insightful and original voices on modern relationships, the psychotherapist Esther Perel. Fluent in nine languages, Esther has her own therapy practice in New York City, serves as an organisational consultant for multiple Fortune 500 companies and is ALSO the author of the New York Times Bestselling books, ‘Mating in Captivity’ and ‘The State of Affairs’.   Although Esther is probably best known for her teachings and wisdom on our romantic relationships, more recently she has turned her attention to our work relationships. The occasion for this appearance on my podcast is to celebrate the release of her brand new 100-question card game designed to transform your work culture – one story and one relationship at a time.   In this thought-provoking conversation, we explore how our expectations of the workplace have shifted dramatically – and why it’s creating both opportunity and strain. Esther shares that in the past, work was primarily about survival, duty and financial stability. But today, many of us are looking to our jobs to provide identity, belonging, fulfilment and even self-worth.   We discuss: Esther’s four key pillars of healthy workplace relationships – trust, belonging, recognition and collective resilience – and why these needs mirror those in our romantic lives How unresolved workplace issues can lead to emotional exhaustion, poor health choices and a reduced capacity to connect at home How our increasingly digital lives are reducing the everyday social skills we need to connect, communicate and collaborate How our personal relationship history – our “unofficial CV” – shows up at work and influences how we handle authority, conflict, feedback and boundaries Why managing conflict well can deepen connection – and how curiosity and honest self-reflection can transform how we show up in all areas of life  Throughout our conversation, Esther offers compassion and clarity, breaking down complex emotional patterns into simple, human truths we can all relate to – and, most importantly, act on.    She encourages us to approach work relationships not as transactional, but as relational, inviting us to bring the same level of curiosity, empathy, and accountability that we would bring to any meaningful connection.   At a time when so many of us are feeling isolated or overwhelmed, Esther’s advice shows that even small shifts in how we relate, listen and respond can spark meaningful change at work, with our families and ourselves. I hope you enjoy listening.   Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore.  For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com.   Thanks to our sponsors: https://airbnb.co.uk/host https://thriva.co https://calm.com/livemore https://join.whoop.com/livemore   Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/557   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee Hey guys, how are you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. This week, I'm delighted to welcome back someone who is regarded as one of the most insightful and original voices on modern relationships, the psychotherapist Esther Perel. Fluent in nine languages, Esther has her own therapy practice in New York City, serves as an organisational consultant for multiple Fortune 500 companies, and she's also the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Mating in Captivity and

The State of Affairs. Now although Esther is probably best known for her teachings and wisdom on our romantic relationships, more recently she's turned her attention to our work relationships. And the occasion for this appearance, her second appearance on my podcast, is to celebrate the release of her brand new 100 question card game designed to transform your work culture, one story and one relationship at a time. In this thought provoking conversation, we explore the idea that in the past, work was primarily about survival, duty and financial stability. But today, many of us are looking

to our jobs to provide identity, belonging, fulfilment and even self-worth. We talk about the four key pillars of healthy workplace relationships, how unresolved tensions in the workplace can have ripple effects on our wider lives, how our increasingly digital lives are reducing the everyday social skills that we need to connect, communicate and collaborate, and why conflict, when handled with curiosity and care, can actually strengthen and deepen our relationships. Esther and I both also emphasize the importance of self-awareness and that's a willingness to look at our own role in recurring relationship issues is the starting point for lasting change. Esther is a quite wonderful

human being. She's eloquent, erudite and warm. And throughout her conversation, she speaks with compassion and clarity, breaking down complex emotional patterns into simple human truths we can all relate to and most importantly, act on. Esther, welcome back to the podcast. Pleasure to be back. So I've been very much looking forward to having this conversation for a while now. And what's really interesting for me is that myself and many people are familiar with your words and your teachings in the context of romantic relationships.

But of course, you're broadening out your focus now into the workplace. And I know you've been doing that for some time. So I thought an interesting place to start would be this. So I thought an interesting place to start would be this. What do you think is unique about the modern workplace? And what are the consequences for us in our lives if we are experiencing problems in our jobs? So the first thing is that the workplace has fundamentally changed its meaning. We are bringing to our relationships, personal and professional,

a host of needs that we used to bring to our communal life and to our religious lives. We are wanting from our work to give us a sense of belonging, identity, community, and meaning. And those are not needs that used to be traditionally associated with work. If relationships as a whole are often defined by our ability to creatively and adaptively respond to changing circumstances. I mean, that is one of the foundational elements of a vibrant relationship, is its adaptability and its flexibility. That is now demanded from us in the workplace more than ever,

because with everything that has changed, primarily around remote work, distributed work, global work forces, and technology that is an AI particularly that is completely changing not just the work landscape but our entire society. We have never had to adapt faster and more, but we are adapting to something that we don't know. We are adapting with uncertainty. We are adapting to a world that we have no idea

what's coming because it's a complete revolution that is happening to us. And this is all happening as you go to work every day. It's kind of the ground on which you stand at this moment. Now, relationships in general are not necessarily permanent, but they're even less permanent at work. So we want to experience belonging and intimacy and connection, but we also want to move or

sometimes need to move every two years. So it doesn't really lend itself to what we really want. Belonging usually is a process. It takes time. We develop it. Here we want something that is very instant. And it's hard to do this kind of instant thing on a little box, like the one that we are looking at ourselves in at this moment, even though we are so thankful that we can have this conversation,

you and I, thanks to technology. We have very little context. You know, here you are, you see me in a frame, I see you in a frame, and we are going to try to have an important conversation about meaningful things without any context. And context is essential to understanding people and relationships. So therefore, if the modern workplace has changed so much, if our relationship to our work has changed so much, what are the consequences for us individually when there are problems in our work? Look, we all know that if you have a bad day at work, it comes home with you. If you have a bad day at home, it goes to work with you.

So these two spaces that are the poles of our lives at this moment are very interconnected. If you feel diminished and unseen, undervalued, stressed out at work, you bring some of that tension. It lives in your body and it comes home with you. If you experience at work a sense of elation and recognition and ambition, you come home and if you don't get that same thing at home, you start to have a reaction. Why is it that those people can appreciate me and you can't? So these two spaces are constantly in conversation with each other, way more than we like to recognize. What I would say is this, no amount of free food or benefits or privileges or gyms will compensate for a miserable relationship

at work. I mean, we all know what it's like to stay awake at night fretting about something and somebody, you know, who sometimes is sleeping perfectly fine for that matter while we are ruminating and obsessing about how we're going to handle this. So we tend to not think about relationships in the workplace as much. We talk about collaborating, collegiality. We have other words for it. But in fact, at this moment, relationships are fast becoming the bottom line of what we're looking at in the workplace.

It used to be that they were soft skills. Soft skills often meant that they were feminine skills. Feminine skills often meant that you can idealize them in principle and disregard them in reality. And now it's really become the competitive edge. How people relate, how these relationships affect culture, and how the culture and the relationships affect performance and achievement. It's one straight line. Yeah. And what's really interesting is when you were talking about work stress or conflict at work and how we bring that to our home lives,

it's not just us bringing it to our home relationships. It also impacts our behaviors, right? Because if you come back really stressed out because you feel undervalued by your boss and you're really tense when you come home, you're more likely to want the sugar. You're more likely to open the bottle of wine. You're more likely to scroll for three hours on Instagram instead of doing something perhaps more helpful in your life. And so for me, it's very clear that work relationship stress will absolutely impact your lifestyle behaviors.

So let's run this off. You know, you come home, this is great image, right? So I see you, you're coming home, and you're irritable. You're irritable. Your frustration threshold has lessened. Then you want that little sugar, which of course creates another reaction. Then you may want to scroll,

but you certainly don't want to talk to somebody. And the last thing you want is someone who says to you, you didn't pick up the milk. You know, you don't want, you don't, oh, you are, you have a space that small before you start to react, right? Because of what happened. But you're not necessarily going to tell the people at home

what just happened at work. You may at best even say, I had a tough day, don't give me, you know, don't pile up on me. But you're not gonna really explain much because you don't necessarily me, you know, don't pile up on me. But you're not gonna really explain much because you don't necessarily feel good about it and you don't necessarily wanna be vulnerable again. So you won't get the empathy that you want from your partner that would hopefully understand

what happened so that they could give you a break. You're just simply gonna say, give me a break. And this transposition between work and home happens all the time. When you go to work, you bring that story with you. But when you come back from work at home, you have all the after effects of what happened to you physically, how it manifests in your behavior, in your self care, how it manifests in your relationship with others, and then how it manifests in your behavior, in your self care, how it manifests in your relationship with others, and then how it manifests in your ability to even be interested in another,

adults or young ones for that matter, to be able to give, people come home and say, I gave everything I had, I'm spent, I have nothing left. I have nothing left. So I need to fill up in order to get more of that energy. And that filling up isn't of the best kind. So it's everything you describe in terms of the physical experience, and then it gets attached directly to a psychological and to a social dimension. And you have all three at the same time, the physical, the psychological and the relational. Yeah. It's so fascinating. As I've been thinking about workplace relationships and actually

looking through the questions in your new card deck that you've created to help people improve their work relationships, which we're going to talk about shortly. I was thinking a lot about my father and my father's generation. Okay, you've already mentioned how what we want from our workplaces is different. And in a previous talk, I saw you give pre-COVID actually, it was at Southwest by Southwest in 2019, which is really interesting how you were talking about some of these things before the pandemic. But in that talk, you said that work these days is there to provide personal fulfillment, purpose and identity development. Now if I think about my father, who grew up in India and came as an immigrant to the UK

in 1962. Would never have thought about this. Oh yeah. To create a better life, right? And dad literally worked himself into his grave. He worked that hard, you know, we might've spoken about it last time you came on. He only sat three nights a week for 30 years. And actually in my work, I talk about burnout and I talk about this misalignment with our

inner values and our external actions. And I think about, if I said to my dad, dad was still alive, that hey dad, what did you think about fulfillment and purpose and identity developments at work? He'd probably go, son, what the hell are you talking about? I had one goal in mind when I came here. It wasn't about enjoyment. It was simply about two things. It was about making enough money to send home to make sure my siblings and parents were looked after. And it was to make sure I had enough to give you and your brother the very best start in life that I could. And I think about that a lot, Esther, because I think it really, although that may seem like quite an extreme example,

I think it beautifully illustrates what you're saying. Work used to serve a different role in people's lives, but it's completely different now, isn't it? First of all, I don't think this is extreme at all. This still very much reflects many immigrants' experience who come, who are sent by the family, who take care of two families, one here and one at home, and who experience the joy or the fulfillment from exactly that, having been able to take care of the siblings at home and the young children here becomes the fulfillment.

Yeah. and the young children here becomes the fulfillment. I've fulfilled my role, my duty, my obligation. This is what makes me happy, so to speak. And not the intrinsic value of the work, but what the work enables me to do outside of the work. And that is a fundamental difference. Still today, some people experience intrinsic value. The work itself has to give me meaning, satisfaction, fulfillment.

And some people experience the work as much more functional, pragmatic. But the meaning comes from what it allows me to do. And usually, it involves taking care of family. So I think your dad, and the way you described him, is a beautiful representation of a very frequent experience that has not changed. In the West, on the other side, and this is your generation even, I mean, you could say

every dad like yours, his children have already internalized the new values. And the new values is work is no longer just a production economy, nor is it even a service economy. Work is an identity economy. And that's where the words fulfillment and meaning and development and all of this start to get attached with work. It's a fascinating thing that it often takes one generation for the meaning of work to literally shift.

And I think what's very interesting is that you can't separate this shift from how society has become less communal and Western society and less religious. Because these needs have always existed. What's changed is that we have brought these needs to work. In the West, people often take 10 more years between having studied or finishing high school and maybe establishing family or choosing partnership.

That's 10 years in which the job is the hub for all your social needs. At the same time, it is an impermanent place to fulfill those needs. So never has work meant as much, never have people expected so much from their leaders, and never has the leadership ability around relationship been so determining of the achievement and the performance in the workplace. They've always been connected, but it has really gone exponential. And I'm very glad that I was already talking about this before the pandemic. I mean, you know, none of us could have predicted the pandemic, but that shift was already in the make. And AI now is just accelerating all of that. Yeah, you mentioned the word expectation,

and that's an interesting word because generally speaking, or one way of looking at happiness is in relation to, you know, the more expectation we have, the harder it's going to be potentially for some of us to be content and happy with our lives because that expectation is never being fulfilled. So it's kind of interesting how, you know, using my dad as a kind of avatar to sort of think about this, work had one goal for him. He didn't expect it to do anything beyond that. To the point where actually, thinking about it now, my dad used to be in obstetrics and gynaecology when he first came to the UK. And I only learned, Esther, a few

months before his death, all the problems that he had. Like he never complained once, right? That was the immigrant mentality in the 60s and 70s. My dad was like, no, no, this is a new country. Doesn't matter what discrimination I face, I put my head down and I get on with the job because that's what I'm here to do. And I'm grateful. And I'm grateful for the opportunity. Yeah, I'm grateful for the opportunity.

And I only learned later that my dad was an exceptionally good surgeon who, in his words and his friend's word, would train the local doctors. And five years later, they jumped the queue and they'd make consultant. And after about five or 10 years of doing this and training the local British born doctors, to the point where he changed the speciality to the point where he changed the speciality in which he worked to provide stability for my mum, me and my brother. He hated that speciality. I've, I've, I learned later, but so I find this so interesting. Where did this kind of change in expectation come that actually work has to provide more. And you also said that now, you know, we want that sense of belonging and that feeling of, I don't know, community and whatever it might

be at work. But we're always got one eye open as to what are the jobs around there? Could there be something better? Which is like we have in marriages, right? Or relationships, which you talk about so beautifully that, you know, is there something better out there than there could be? But that's a problem, isn't it? You're touching on three very important things. So the first one, the expectations of work, I think you understand them best when you understand the changes of meaning in relationships as a whole. You know, relationships, your dad comes from a model of relationships that is organized around duty,

obligation, loyalty, and community. The gender roles are fairly fixed, and there is a lot of clarity. He doesn't ask himself 10 times a day, is, you know, what does this mean for me? Is this exactly what I want to do? Does this fulfill me? He knows the role and he fulfills the role.

And so in that model worldwide till now, there's a lot of clarity and very little freedom and very little personal expression. The satisfaction comes from having done what you were supposed to do and having done it well. Watching you must have been the greatest source of joy, you and your brother, you know? And maybe being able to bring a few other people

from India over as well. And doing those things, in effect, the expectations were clear and the outcome was easily measurable. We shifted our entire model of relationships from duty and obligation to choice and options, from values to feelings, from role to identity. And when relationships used to be tight knots that you couldn't extricate yourself,

now they are loose threads. That's what you describe when you say, I'm here, but I'm already looking at what else is out there. Loose threads allows me to go in and out of relationships, be it work. You know, I ask audiences, how many of your grandparents lived and worked in the same place where they were born? And if not, if they moved, how many, by the way, the majority of people will raise their hands.

Grandparents lived and worked in the same place and had the same job for 30, 40 years. The second group either moved and then had the same job for all these years. The second group, I say how many of you moved and they had one or, you know, they had maybe another job in the career. And now how many of you have had more than three jobs in the last five years. This is an enormous shift. The majority of people raise their hands. The younger you go, the more that is the reality. And so what drives it? My needs, my expectations, my sense of realization, and my feelings of authenticity.

Authenticity means that I have to be true to myself. That means that I have to know myself really well, which is a very hard thing to do when you're young. Who knows themselves so well when they're young? And to figure out what truly matters to me. We have never had to make more decisions in life. It's a tremendous freedom and it's a tremendous burden because it all rests on us. It's not, I know what I did for my children, therefore I can be happy and rest in peace. I can leave this planet and know that I did what I supposed to do. Now we can fret till the last day and wonder, did I really have as meaningful and joyful and rich a life as I wanted? So to understand why our views of work have shifted, we really need to understand a much broader fundamental

shift that comes with individualism and capitalism and secularization in which relationships have fundamentally changed their meaning. We've never needed more of it. And at the same time, we're becoming highly socially atrophied. We are losing our social skills by the minute in our contactless world and all of that. And yet we need them more. And the younger you go and the more you see desocialization taking place, a kind of a de-skilling of an entire generation

and the ones following. And that is going to become very interesting in the workplace as well. I think that the reason the workplace is talking so much more about relationship is A, because of AI and technology, and B, because we are seeing an entire, we have for the first time five generations in the workforce at the same time. Five generations with very different sets of expectations and, you know, from your dad to your grandfather, you know, all the way down. And those younger people are coming in with very different social experiences as their

managers. Yeah. Not only five different generations, but potentially if you're in a remote team or even if you're in person, people from all over the world. So they've got different cultural beliefs and ideas about what work is, what is appropriate behavior at work, what is inappropriate behavior. You've got this whole complex mix, which is leading to lots of conflicts in the workplace. Did your father have many British friends, British-born friends?

Or did he stay primarily in an Indian community? Honestly, I think my dad was so busy working, he rarely had any time for any friends, but the few that he did, I would say were within the sort of British Indian Bengali community. But again, I don't think friendship even played a role in my dad's life. It was single-minded. Because, you know, as you talk about these things, it strikes me that there's no good or bad, right? That everything has a consequence, right? So, you could argue that for some people two or three decades ago, there was a... And again, I'm not saying that this is the case in every situation. There was a simplicity in the sense of you knew what you had to do, there wasn't this kind of infinite choice about what you

could do, which of course gave you stability, you weren't endlessly wondering, is there something better? But of course that probably constricts your ability to express yourself and find those things, right? But have we gone- What is the tension? You either have stability and certainty, and that's the emphasis, or you have the emphasis being on freedom and choice and mobility, and that's the emphasis.

And of course, we all need both. We all need both. These are the two fundamental sets of human needs, but some cultures emphasize more one and some more the other. That's what's changing. You mentioned before about social atrophy and communication skills and a generation

perhaps who are having different inputs into them in terms of learning the skill of communication. And I remember again, I think back to your 2019 Southwest by Southwest talk, even three or four years before that, Sherry Turkle wrote a book, Reclaiming Conversation. And I can still remember one of the lines in that book or one of the paragraphs where she was basically explaining that teenagers back then in this technological world, many of them preferred to communicate electronically on text message because it's more predictable. You can edit, you can get that reply perfect before you send it, whereas in real time conversation, you can't do that.

So, I guess coming back to the workplace relationships, I want to talk to you shortly about the different ingredients to all relationships and how that's different at work. But I guess the kind of meta skill we need for every relationship, whether it's our intimate, romantic or work relationships is the ability to communicate. So is there a generation of kids and teenagers and people in their 20s now who don't have the same level of communication skill as two or three decades ago? And is that also one of the big problems in the modern workplace that people just don't know how to communicate anymore?

This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Over the years, my family and I have had some wonderful trips away using Airbnb, whether for holidays or for me, for work. Sometimes I travel to record episodes of this podcast and in the past, I would always book a studio, but more recently, I book Airbnbs. In fact, last September I was in Oxford recording conversations with Bessel van der Coke and Daniel Siegel and I actually used the living room of my AirBnB as a recording space. It felt like a home away from home. Which really got me thinking, so many people travel for work or holidays leaving their homes empty.

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predictor of cardiovascular risk than typical cholesterol tests. Thriva can also give you insights into your metabolic health, hormonal health, and so much more. For listeners of my show, Thriva are offering an exclusive offer of 20% off when you enter the promo code LIVE MORE at checkout. Just visit thriva.co to get started today. That's T-H-R-I-V-A.co. Thriva, listen to your blood. Yes, but I would say it's even broader than that. You know, there's a question that I have asked. I just did my first US tour and in every city with in front of thousands of people, I would

ask people, did you grow up playing freely on the street? And the vast majority of people raised their hands. And then I would say, and how many of you have children or know children that are still playing freely on the street? And then you get a smatter of fingers going up. It was shocking. And what I was trying to say was this, the playground, whichever version it has taken all over the world throughout history, was the most important ground for social negotiation,

where we learned our social skills in an uncoreographed, unmonitored, unscripted way. We played, we fought, we made up, we made rules, we broke rules, and we literally learned to be with people who were different from us. What we have now, and it's really not just for the young people. Of course, we all have talked ad nausea about our faces in the screen, you know, and our digital lag when we speak to people and we go, uh-huh, uh-huh. And it's like we're there, but we're not really listening.

I spent so much time telling people, can you repeat this? Because my mind is so fragmented, wandering, going from one thing to another and staying focused and just really taking it in has become much more difficult. We are in a contactless world, increasingly in a contactless world to the point that when someone holds the door for you, you don't even look at them.

You're busy, you don't even look at them. You're busy. You're somewhere else. We have a set of apps that are beautiful, predictive technologies that are fantastic. They make sure that I never get lost. They tell me what to listen to, what to watch, what to eat, where to go. But at the same time, they're giving me the illusion of an always on on demand frictionless delivery of my every delight to the point where I don't practice one of the most important sets of skills for relationships, experimentation, trying something, being wrong, shifting, bifurcating, going in a different

direction, dealing with uncertainty. Did I say this well? Did I not say this well? Why should I bother with that? AI will tell me how to say it. Today I can send you an apology note and it's absolutely not clear if I actually feel any remorse. If I even wrote it, if I even sat with what I did to you. But the note will sound very good

because the AI knows exactly how to apologize on my behalf. And that combined with the social isolation that is no longer, by the way, the COVID isolation, which was imposed upon us. At this point, there is a kind of a self-imposed isolation. Do you know that 74% of all meals cooked in a restaurant are no longer eaten on the premises of the restaurant. Wow.

That 30% increase in the last 10 years of people eating alone in the restaurant. And I'm saying food because it is par excellence the most important social gathering, social ritual that we do worldwide. So we have at this point, we are choosing to be alone. When people build apartments, they no longer build them here in New York with big windows so that you can see the outside, but with big walls so that they can make sure that Netflix has its screen, you know, for delivery. It's in everything that in all the different industries, the effort is to make people's life comfortable alone, not with others.

If we think that this doesn't affect how we go to work, how we communicate at work, and especially how we deal with conflict, disagreement, difficult conversations, because this contactless thing, this frictionless world is one in which you don't have to deal with complexity, you don't have to deal with doubt. Shall I go this way or shall I go that way? Well, let me try, oh, I should have gone and well, now I have to deal with having made a bad mistake. I'm gonna change my mind.

I'm constantly sharpening, sharpening my awareness. This tool in our hand is actually not making us more confident and less anxious, it's making us more anxious. So we don't wanna face people, we certainly don't wanna have a difficult conversation. You know, I see siblings who would rather cancel each other on Snapchat than actually have a fight about what they disagree about.

I mean, it's phenomenal. Yeah. You know, this all comes to work. The idea that this can happen here and not affect directly what's happening on the team is ludicrous. Yeah. There's this illusion, isn't there, these days, that the perfect choice is out there.

It is possible to make the perfect choice is out there. It is possible to make the perfect decision. Yes, but people are by their very nature. Imperfect and unpredictable. Yeah, and also, as I get a year older and hopefully become a little bit more wiser and mature, I feel it's not necessarily the choice you make that matters the most. It's how you frame that choice. It's how you make sense of that choice. Or as Ellen Langer from Harvard puts it, you know, it's not about making the right decision.

It's about making the decision right. And I really love the idea about it is an uncertain world. You know, there was no such thing as a perfect decision. Whereas the modern world is trying to more and more sell us the illusion that it is possible. So bringing it back, Esther, to the workplace, right? Okay. Because I really want to talk about these four pillars that you've identified of workplace relationships, trust, belonging, recognition, and collective resilience. Can you sort of explain to us what those four things are? And also what is different about

those when we look at it through the lens of work than through the lens of our romantic relationships? Because I can read those four things and go, well, actually with my wife, I think it's also important that we have trust, belonging, recognition and collective resilience. That is true. That is actually one of the points that we are making is that we are finding, okay, let me give you a little bit of context to how this came about. It's a whole project that I developed that came out of the card game that I had created during the pandemic. When we spoke, I thought, I'm not just going to talk about social isolation and disconnection and loneliness, and I'm going to actually create a fun tool that helps people stay connected rather than just bemoaning the loss of it.

And so I created a card game. Where should we begin? A game of stories. Stories bridges for connection. Stories reveal you to the others. It's fun. We are storytelling creatures. And then I noticed that people would take these cards

to the workplace, but then they would have to have somebody sit in the room separately and take out all the cards that had a pink triangle, because they were the questions that involved sexuality. And you don't ask those questions at work. So then I thought, well, why don't I just create a game for the workplace? So Culture Amp, which is my partner in this project,

basically said, you know what? We don't want to have to take out the cards that don't fit the workplace. Let's create one together. And what we got was the years of relational expertise that I bring combined with 1.5 billion experience survey data points that they could provide. That was unmatched. So now I was no longer just in the creative sphere, but it was the creative meets the

data science. And that's when I said, okay, now what are the four important dimensions? And the interesting thing is that they are the same dimensions, be you at home or be you at work. That's the point of it. The context is different. They manifest differently. So first is the feeling of trust and trust, which is basically, do you have my back? You know, can I count on you? Are we in this together? And I think that it is one of the most important pillars of a relationship. The moment a relationship develops, so does the experience of trust. That you won't put your interests ahead of me.

That we are interdependent on each other. And that when you make a decision, you think about the effect that it will have on others, that the job does that, that the individuals in the job do that. So trust, number one. Number two, sense of belonging. And the sense of belonging is the relationship of the self to the group. Can I identify with the values and the aspirations of the group? Does the group reflect back to me, my sense, my values and aspirations, and in a sense, connects me with something bigger than myself. So I'm not alone.

The sense of belonging is the antidote to our sense of I'm alone. And then the third one is recognition. It's respect and recognition. Am I valued? Not just am I a part of, but am I valued? Am I seen, recognized, and respected for my contributions? Who gets the credit? What are the power dynamics? Basically, that connects to that. And then the last one, which is to me the important one, is the collective

resilience. It's the ability to adapt flexibly and creatively to the changes that take place. That is the collect and that you do it collectively. Resilience has been so misunderstood as if it's a set of traits that exist inside an individual, when in fact it's our ability to tap into the resources that are available to us and at work that means as a group and that really developed for me during the pandemic. The understanding that we needed a collective sense of resilience is the same in the company, it's the same when LA is burning, it's not a unique person that can manage any of the big things that are happening to us. So these four dimensions became the pillars of relational health in the workplace as they are elsewhere and then created a set of prompts,

a hundred totally new prompts specifically for the workplace, for the off-site, for the team meetings, for the manager, for the one-on-one, for the colleagues meeting, that really would create the stories. And then to go and test them, to test them with thousands of people and to get the science behind it. That is something that as a psychologist that works in my own office, often with one-on-one or with one-on- two, it's the treat. It's when somebody says, this intuition is actually verified.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. Okay, I love it. So there's four areas, trust, belonging, recognition, collective resilience. So much I've resonated with in terms of what you just said. I mean, what you said about resilience there and how we've kind of misunderstood resilience and it is this, or we can look at it more collectively, I guess, than individual kind of reminds me a lot about, I don't know, these different cultures. We have I-cultures versus we-cultures, you know, that exist around the world. And actually only last week I was in London speaking to someone, Esther, who's regarded as maybe the greatest marathon runner of all time, the Kenyan marathon runner, Eliud Kipchoge.

And it's really interesting. He never ever runs by himself, right? So in the West, broadly speaking, running is often seen as an individual sport. He doesn't see a lot of it because I know it's a team sport, like even when he's winning and breaking world records, it's a team sport. Like even when he's winning and breaking world records, it's a team sport. And I thought, God, it's so interesting depending on where you grow up, depending on what the culture around you prioritizes ultimately, and of course influences how you see the world as an adult.

So I thought that was really interesting. What you all said about belonging, it goes back to what you said about, you know, what you often talk about is that it takes a village, right? That sense of belonging that you're saying is an important pillar of our work relationships. Again, going back to my dad's era, I'm not sure that dad necessarily needed to belong at work. It served the role. Correct. And he got his belonging from his family, right? But his family wasn't just the two of you and his wife.

His family was a wide, expansive family, an extended family that was a community. And that's a perfect example of when I say these needs used to belong in our communal lives, in our extended families, in our religious lives, and they are now brought into the workplace. Yeah. So you've often said that we're expecting too much from one person in our romantic relationships. Okay. Are we expecting too much from work?

Is what you're going to ask? It is exactly what I'm going to say. Are we, is it, is it an unrealistic expectation we now have off our workplaces, which is destined to constantly leave us feeling disappointed? I think... I wouldn't say that. I think that it's a development that we have to confront. I think that it redefines leadership. I think that it redefines leadership. We know that when leaders are actually dealing with the relational intelligence in the workplace, that the level of engagement is way higher.

The numbers I can't give you, but they are really, they exist at this point. So that's, culture has them. I think that what makes it too much is not the kinds of needs that we bring to work. What makes it too much is if we think that we can get it and then leave every year to the next job. If we create that kind of impermanence of, you know, and where that, that I need to move to the next place. And I think that the economy is going to change that very quickly. But until recently, for the last few years, there was a sense that if you stay in a place, something is problematic, you know, that the real drive is from actually moving to the next.

That is a challenge. It's like you don't develop commitment while you're at the same time saying it within three months, I'm going to stay another three months and then I'll see what else is out there. Yeah. It's kind of the, there's so many light bulb moments I'm getting thinking about this as there. So the similarity in terms of these core pillars between our romantic relationships and our work relationships. Okay. That's super interesting. Now, you know, I'm at this stage talking to you. I've been married for almost 18 years.

Okay. So my experience of marriage is that there's constant evolution. I would say I have a fantastic relationship with my wife, but it's different than it was 18 years ago. And I strongly believe that when you have conflict, if you manage it successfully and come out the other side, then your relationship is stronger than had you never experienced that conflict. That's my personal experience. I recognize that you're a world leading expert in this field, but I'm just sharing my experience from my marriage. What does well managed mean for you?

I would say well managed means instead of it being everyone getting reactive and sort of making all these accusations, it's much more doing it at the appropriate time when we're both feeling calm, making sure we've given each other time to express our own perspectives, understanding that no one perspective is necessarily correct with both individuals who see the world differently. I guess those are some of the elements I'm talking about. Okay. For me, the frame that I use as soon as I start to think conflict that simplifies, clarifies, but doesn't make it simplistic is that I often will check not what you're fighting about, but what you're fighting for. Now, you're going to see something very interesting.

When I tell you about what I think are the three main things people fight for, they are the three main things that are the most important in the relational health in companies that we just went over. For example, people fight over and for power and control. Who makes the decisions? Whose priorities matter more? whose priorities matter more. People fight for care and closeness. Can I trust you? Do you have my back? And people fight for respect and recognition.

Am I valued and do I matter? That's what they're fighting for. Even if they're talking about, be the kids, the money, or the in-laws at home, or be it the team at work. Those very same things, this is actually from the work of Howard Markman, are actually the three dimensions that we talked about just before. Trust, recognition, and belonging.

They're not exactly the same, but they're highly connected. Now, what makes the difference between managing a conflict well and managing and basically escalating is often the ability to not get caught into the particular topic that what we're fighting about. Because that about can change all the time. But if the theme is trust, if the theme is betrayal, if the theme is jealousy, envy, power, competition, and if the theme is recognition and respect, it doesn't matter what a specific item is. You really understand what is at stake, what's the core and what's at stake.

Once you have the what's at stake, you go away from the blame and the core and what's at stake? Once you have the what's at stake, you go away from the blame and the attack and the defensiveness, and you can enter a space where, I'm okay, I can hear that. That makes sense. Yeah. I can empathize with this even.

I have felt this too. And the difference is not between bad conflict or dysfunctional conflict and no conflict. There is no relationship that doesn't have conflict. That's very important to understand. And in fact, conflict allows you to learn so much about what matters to people. But good conflict doesn't escalate into constant blame without any accountability. It's all the other people's fault.

Constant defensiveness. There's nothing ever that I do that could, and the only reason I do this is because of you. If you hadn't, I wouldn't have. Everything gets tight like that. And it's extraordinary how difficult it is for people to engage in good conflict. Yeah. Now I love that. It's not what are you fighting about? It's what are you fighting

for? It's kind of very much how I look at human behaviour these days. It's not what is the behaviour. It's actually what's behind the behaviour. I think that's the secret to behaviour change. Same idea. Same idea for sure. And I guess mirroring sort of home relationships, conflict, romance and work relationships. The point I was sort of trying to think about is it's very easy to leave a romantic relationship because you think actually, you know, we keep fighting, we have this conflict here and you start somewhere new. And of course, it's all rosy at the start, maybe, but usually, or often the same theme will come up again. And I think we can perhaps look at workplace like that, or can we look at workplace like that in the sense that,

oh, we're leaving this workplace because I don't like the way the boss talks to me or the way I'm, you know, but ultimately you might have an opportunity to explore what am I bringing to this and I can change the job but unless I fix this or improve this. Yeah, I'm going to have this problem elsewhere. Would you know, would you, how do you see it? The mental wellness app, Calm, are sponsoring today's show. Do you ever feel like your mind is running in a dozen directions at once? When your thoughts are scattered, even the smallest decisions can feel overwhelming.

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Now I've been wearing a Whoop band for about a year now and it has had a transformative effect on my health and wellbeing. I've gained so many insights, how different types of exercise and life stress affect my recovery, how different evening routines affect my sleep quality, and overall I would say that wearing a WOOP band has helped me understand my own body much better. Now WOOP is the only wearable that turns your health and fitness data into personalized guidance and I'm pleased to announce that the all new latest latest Whoop is now available. 7% smaller and with 14 plus days of battery life. Now, I've been a doctor for over 20 years and honestly I don't think

that health wearables are for everyone. Some people become overly obsessed with the data and get health anxiety, but for many people like me, that can be absolutely game-changing. The all-new Whoop includes Heart Screener with on-demand ECG readings that you can share with your doctor if you want to, and HealthSpan, a new feature that demystifies the aging process and shows you how your daily habits impact your pace of aging, as well as hormonal insights for personalized guidance throughout your cycle. So if you want to improve your performance, longevity and overall health, get the all-new So I think that one of the ways I can enter into this question with you is this. I think everybody comes to work with an official resume

that tells the story of their jobs, their history, their studies, their internships, their jobs, all of that. But everybody comes to work with an unofficial resume. And that unofficial resume involves your relationship history. So it's incredible. The same way that in a romantic relationship, I could say that the way you are relating to your wife at times is a bit of an echo of things that you used to experience with your dad. At this point, that's a fairly accepted idea. There's a kind of a superposition between your family of origin and your romantic relationship. Well, I could say the same thing happens at work. There's a superposition between your family of origin and your romantic relationship. Well, I could say the same thing happens at work. There's a superposition between your relationships at work and what you have experienced in your

family of origin and then in your romantic relationships. So what is in this relationship resume is how you deal with authority, how you deal with change, how you deal with conflict, how you deal with conflict, how you deal with boundaries or lack thereof, how you deal with accountability. Do you take responsibility for things? Do you ever say, I'm sorry? Do you ever say I made a mistake? You know those people at work who they never say it was me?

They've never made a mistake. They're all over the place. How do you deal with competition? How do you deal with recognition? Do you take credit for stuff that isn't yours just because you want to make sure that you don't feel too much shame, that you didn't do anything, and you constantly are in this imposter fraudulent position? Do you let other people take the credit for the work that you did because you never feel that you can value yourself enough, that you have your own sense of self-worth that actually said, I wrote this, not this person, and actually stand up for yourself? Do you make other people fight for you and say the difficult things, or do you actually

understand that sometimes you have a confrontation? All of these relational dimensions come from your relationship history and they all show up at work every morning when you enter the door or open your computer. Yeah. I love the way you put that. And I guess the kind of natural follow on from that is if you're able to improve some of the ways that you relate to others, let's say in the workplace, maybe for some people it's less triggering or intense than at home in your

romantic relationship. Let's say you improve the way you communicate at work. Well that could potentially then translate to you improving the way you communicate with your children and your partner and vice versa? Because if they're similar principles, presumably these are transferable skills. Yes. Yeah. The answer is yes.

You know, if you understand, the first thing is what is it that I could do better? Obviously, I find myself in this situation, it's been three times now. I've got, you know, it's been three times now. Now I need to look at myself with honesty. It's my third job, I've been let go or I've had to leave or each time the same thing happened, the constant factor is me. Yeah. Just the partners change, but the constant factor is me.

Could I take a look at myself? So that's the first thing. Can I be in a state of self-awareness and self-confrontation that doesn't glide into instant shame and contempt, just really says, I struggle with something. Then change happens when you can grow and when you can develop these new interpersonal capacities. What happens to me each time? Well, I react, I don't react, I externalize, I internalize. What am I doing? What is the specific behavior interpersonally that puts me in this relational system? I observe something, I make assumptions,

I make conclusions with my assumptions, and I don't even check reality. I decide that people don't care about me or that people don't value me and now I look for it with a radar and it becomes a confirmation bias and everywhere I pick up on when I am being dismissed or devalued and then I become a victim. That's one. Or I do the opposite and I only look at places where I can devalue other people. It's endless, the situations like this. And they're very precise and very concrete. So once I say, what can I do differently? How can I improve? What can I change? Because if I change, the relationship changes. This is true with your kids, with your partner. If you want to change

the other, there is no more direct route than to change yourself. Because if you don't do the usual, the loop can't continue. So then you identify what is the developmental edge? Where can I grow here? What are the parts of me that I need to confront? And what are my limitations so that I don't push myself over the edge and end up doing nothing. And then you look at, you know, the readiness. People change when they are ready, meaning they have to, they have no choice, or they really feel like it's been so many times now they have to. Could be four jobs later, but the readiness is what gives you the drive and the motivation. The next piece that goes with the readiness for this change that you're talking about is the clarity.

I am clear on what I need to change. This is the evidence, I have observed the evidence, and I now need to, with that clarity, I need to confront myself. And now I need to have a different communication with myself. How do I talk to myself? By the way, I'm giving it in terms of myself. It's the same thing when it's about another person. What is the communication?

How do I articulate to myself with clarity and kindness, not with blame and contempt and harshness and criticism? I talk to me in a voice that I can listen. Otherwise, I talk to myself like whoever talked to me way back when, and I basically have internalized this kind of harshness. And then I anticipate the pushback internally. There's a part of me that wants to change and there's a part of me that says, no, no, no, no, no, it's not really that, but, but, but, but, and I want to defend myself and I want to justify myself. I am pushing back inside myself. I have different parts.

I have the part of me that wants to hold on to the old way and the part of me that understands that I really need to change. And then I have the emotional intensity that connects to it. What is the feeling that drives this whole thing? The sense of loss. I wasted so many years. The sense of regret. I wish I had done this differently. The sense of guilt. I pushed them away. I pushed my many years. The sense of regret, I wish I had done this differently.

The sense of guilt, I pushed them away. I pushed my partner away. I pushed my kids away. There's a lot of feelings that accompany all of this. So the readiness, the clarity, the evidence, the communication, the internal pushback, and the emotional intensity, that's a kind of a workflow in terms of working with internal change. It's internal and it's also interpersonal. I would use the same things.

And I would say it is no different whether you do it at work and when you do it at home. When you've discovered a new skill and it starts to really change your life, you realize that people respond differently to you. You will use it with your kids, you will use it with a bus driver, and you will use it with your manager. Yeah, no, I love that. And I certainly, I realized very strongly that my ability to improve the way that I and we manage conflicts in our marriage has absolutely transformed the way I manage conflicts with my team.

And I guess the way I frame it in my head is that if you can do it in your marriage and that really, that close relationship, you can kind of do it everywhere. At the same time, someone could flip that and go, well, that's too intense. I need to practice somewhere else. But coming back to this card game for a moment, Esther, because I'm really excited about it for two reasons. A, I have, maybe like you, I trained as a National Health Service GP

maybe 27, 28 years ago, right? When I started my training. And somehow over the course of my career, as well as being a doctor, I found myself communicating with large amounts of people all over the world and now have a team to help me with things like putting this podcast out. Right? So I've had to learn with no, I guess, in the first commerce training, how to run a business and how to manage a team. Right? I'll call that. Yeah.

I worked for 35 years alone in my office as a clinician. Yeah. I am still alone in my office as a clinician and now I have a team of 14. To help you. And I have, you know, I used to do everything alone and now I'm surrounded by people and I for the first time I'm learning to work with people. Yeah. It's a strange thing to say.

Yeah, exactly. And of course, if we have longer, we could really dive into that, because I'd love to share some experiences. But I've been thinking about, because a lot of the team is remote, and I'll be thinking about getting us all together before the summer in one place to have, you know, what people might call an away day or a team day. And I've never really done one like that before, but I'm thinking, oh, this card deck would be brilliant to use within the team. But then, for example, one of the questions in there is a first impression I had of a colleague that has changed.

Okay. Now I love that. But in terms of the actual logistics, let's say you're in a team of 10 people, however many it is, right? It doesn't matter. But is it appropriate to answer that question in front of that colleague perhaps?

You know, is that how, you know, if you think about these four ingredients, trust, belonging, recognition, is that how, you know, if you think about these four ingredients, trust, belonging, recognition and collective resilience, are these card games designed to be done within the team? And what if someone's feeling a bit nervous in that setting? So if you could, if you could help guide us. It's a great question. So let me start by saying I do not offer any food that I haven't tasted myself. So I have played this now for quite a while, the first game and the new one. By the way, the new one is this.

You haven't seen it yet. It's a small little one deck. It's beautifully designed. And we do it at every meeting. We do it on our weekly meeting sometimes. Just we start with a question and we pick the question. So the first thing is you know your team. If they've never done anything like it, this may not be the questions you would play in the first round. You pick a bunch of other ones. the last time I was really proud of our team, the part of my job that I'm most excited to talk about,

my go-to emoji instead of using words is, you take lighter ones. This question about the colleague is actually a question about assumptions we make about people, and in this case, how I was mistaken. So it talks about the fluidity and the flexibility of my perception. It talks about how this is a thing

that has collective resilience because it knows to change when it sees new evidence. This is what's underneath, right? It says, when I saw you at first, I thought you were that kind of a person and very rigid and stuff and not very friendly and all of that. But then I saw you one day, you know,

helping one of our colleagues and I thought, oh wow, that is not at all what I would have imagined of you. And it completely changed how I saw you. Now it says something about me, that I'm able to change my opinion. And then it says something about how in this team, people don't get stuck in their first impression. Super important, because that's a team that stays stuck in their first impression and

going to function very well. And then the third thing is we have flexibility. That also is very important. That's going to apply to many other situations. So that's the thing. Some of the questions you wait for the second round, third round. Some of the questions, it's very simple. You give the questions, you give the cards. I sometimes go like this, a person takes this card and it's like, you know, the thing about my partner, my colleague that I, and now I'm not inspired by this card. Okay, take another one. Nobody has to respond to a card that doesn't speak to them or that puts them in at ease. You know, sometimes I'm not going to say that because I'm a new person on the team.

So I'm watching to see how other people tell the story. The first person who tells the story is often the person who sets the tone for many. So it's very important that, and it's really important that it be a story and not just an answer. Yeah? That when I saw you the first time or, you know, remember one time you came and you said this and I took it like that and then you never clarified for me and say, I've been thinking about this ever since and this is an opportunity actually for me too. So it's very important that people

not be answering something they don't resonate with that puts the meal at ease. This is about play. This is about risk taking. This is about deepening the connections. This is about team building. And I think that question that you picked is actually an amazing question, but it may not be a beginner's question. Yeah. I love that. I also love the fact that we can play it, pick it. And if we don't want to, for whatever reason, share that one, maybe we don't know how to answer it or in that

particular setting, we don't feel comfortable answering it. I love the fact that it's voluntary and it's like, no, no, okay, choose another one. And you can also exchange it with someone else. That's another thing because I may not have, I don't know or I'm too new to speak that kind of stuff, but anybody else wants this card? And then somebody may actually have a good story to tell. And they say, yeah, I want that one. And then they tell the story about how the first time they met their new manager, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then something completely different emerged. So it's very nice actually, not just to say,

I don't want this one, can I have another one? But also to say, does anybody else wants this? Yeah. Although I could see how it would build, let me look at those ingredients, right? It would, I could see how that would build trust. I could see how it would build a sense of belonging. I guess recognition is built into some of the questions, right?

Because some of the questions would bring out, you know, I don't know, I haven't seen all the questions, but I guess some of them might. I never forget the manager who. Yeah. I never forget the manager who. The feedback I wish I had heard sooner in my career. Great. And also what you're saying about the first person who goes setting the tone, it also kind of sat alongside another question I had, which was, I guess, speaking personally in my team, I guess, I guess, you know, there's a discomfort in me even saying this, but I guess I'm in charge, right? Because it's my brand and my team. But you can almost, I mean, if we had longer, you could actually

unpick what my discomfort of even saying that actually says are right. But you can almost, I mean, if we had longer, you could actually unpick what my discomfort of even saying that actually says about me. But I never want it to feel like hierarchical, but I guess it is in many ways, because ultimately the book does stop with me. But I think it's also perhaps important then for the- You know what question I would start with you? Yeah, go for it.

Last heart decision I felt surprisingly good about. That's important then for the lead... You know what question I would start with you? Yeah, go for it. Last heart decision I felt surprisingly good about. What would you say? That instantly is a question about the leader. Yeah. I know what I'd say actually to that. And without giving too much information so the person's not identifiable, there was someone who had been on my team for a number of years. And I would say for about a year, a year and a half, there was just little bits of probably

frustrations on both sides building up for a variety of different reasons. And I think that through the lessons I've learned by being married for so long and what we were talking about before, I was able to do, I guess, a couple of things, which I'm really proud of. Number one, I made sure before I had a difficult conversation or what I thought might be a difficult conversation, I made sure that I had space and time around it so I wasn't just rushing it in. So I wasn't bringing my stress to the conversation. So I'm really proud that I was able to do that. Secondly, I'm really proud with how I conducted that conversation. I was very calm. I was

very complimentary and I just dealt factually with a few things. I wasn't judging, I was saying, hey, look, I've noticed that these things have happened quite a lot. And what was really lovely, Esther, for me is that at the end of that conversation, it wasn't about me letting someone go. We kind of mutually agreed that actually this just wasn't a good fit anymore. And so I feel that we parted company, but we're still in touch now and again. And we parted company with a really good feeling on both sides.

So I would say, if I, when you asked that question, I think that's one of the things I'm proudest of when I reflect over the last few years. Do you think that answers your question accurately? Yes, I instantly thought a leader often will use the example of letting go of someone as one of the hard decisions. It's a part of authority and leadership. Then you tell me this story and then imagine everybody else around the table listening to this story. That is the respect and the recognition that you receive for having thought about this, being deliberate about it, being caring and careful, being kind, the mutuality that was experienced at the end. Both people realized we are at a crossroads and maybe it's the fact that you stayed in touch, the fact that you're still thinking of it as a difficult decision that you had

to make, but that you did make shows that you are the leader, that you know to protect the group by making these decisions. It is so much in the story that you just told. And what I can say to you is you're just getting the questions and the cards. But this is tested on a number. I mean, the data science behind it is so strong that I can do what you just did now for every question. And then I can break it down with you with now I'm giving you the backstage of what would happen if you tell that story. It's a hard decision you felt surprisingly good about

you say it's both it was hard but it yielded something that you didn't even know was possible. You thought about it, you were deliberate, you prepared, you were intentional, you didn't just You thought about it, you were deliberate, you prepared, you were intentional, you didn't just jump down a throat. You ended with an experience of mutuality and reciprocity, with an appreciation for what had been, but what could not continue. A demand of richness about relational thinking that is in this one question and in this one story for you, it's huge. That builds a team.

Yeah. No, I love it. Look, I'm going to do that contact with my team when we get together. I will email you after, let you know how it went. So you can get that. But we, you know, just to finish off this conversation essay, which I've really enjoyed and I hope we get to do many more in the future. For someone who's been listening to us and has realized that, you know what?

There is friction in their workplace relationships that they have not addressed, that they've just tried to compartmentalize and lead to one side, but it's nagging and gnawing away at them. Do you have any sort of final words of wisdom for them in terms of how they can think about addressing it and improving it? I have many.

But the first sentence that came up for me that I have often said in sessions, be it co-founders, be it partners in life. And it has a context, of course. So the thing about giving specifics around relationship is always to start by saying this, everything takes place in context. There is no absolute, this is what you do. But there is an interesting thought when I say to people, the person who apologizes first has the power.

We typically want to think that the person who apologizes first, if I apologize first, I'm weak. No, you're not. If I say, I'm really sorry this happened, or I did this, I didn't mean to. It is quite often the case that the other person will say, it's okay, thank you. If I say, you did this, it is quite likely the person will say, and you did that. So there is something about coming out first that actually is a position of strength and confidence. It's very hard to find sometimes, but it is extremely

powerful and effective. If you have friction, the easiest, simplest thing sometimes is to say, you know, things are not good, or things have gotten really challenging, or we seem to be arguing about a lot of things, or there's a sense that you're no longer participating in this task and in this project that we have to do. Would you be open to have a conversation? And then the most difficult thing is that the conversation is not what you're going to say. The conversation is your ability to listen. The art of a conversation is in the listening, because if you listen well, you shape the speaking of the other person. It's like the bowl and the liquid. The listening is the bowl. The shape of the bowl will determine where the liquid places itself. So it's the

ability to listen without responding. You don't have to agree with anything you hear. You just have to be able to hear it because by definition there is another person or other people there who have a very different experience from you, who have a completely different story over the same thing. It is an amazing thing that two people who are looking at the same thing have a completely different story about what happened. amazing thing that two people who are looking at the same thing have a completely different story about what happened.

And sometimes it's just the, oh my God, I had no idea you felt this way, you thought this way, you saw it. That is not at all what I meant or what I saw or what I did. I'm so glad you had an opportunity to tell this to me. I wish I had known this three months ago. Now, as there's not a hundred other variations on the theme, but it is often amazing how the holding on is tight and tense and rigid and clenched at the teeth. But a small conversation creates a little pierce, a little hole in in there and the air just blows out. It's like being bloated.

Holding on is a form of bloating, psychological bloating. And then when something enters a new... And that doesn't mean you like the person from one day to the next. It doesn't mean you want to go out with them. It doesn't mean you want to even, you would much prefer not to work with them, but you're no longer tense. And now I'm going back to your first description, you know, when you talked about you come home, you're tense, you want to get sugar, you need to, you know, you need to chill and you certainly

don't want another person making a single demand on you. You know, you could have addressed all of this at work and you could have come home in a very different state. Now what you hear from me, and that's very true, is that when I talk to you, I'm not talking about what the other person is doing to you only. I always refer to what it is that you can do within the limits of possibility, because as you said before,

and the only thing you can control is yourself. So you take accountability, you explore the possibilities that are available to you. That doesn't mean the other person is not responsible, but the other person isn't here. So I can't talk about the other one. So therefore I talk with the person who actually can do something. That doesn't mean you're the only one, but you're the one who's in the conversation with me. And that is a thing that I need to warn people off. But you're not paying attention to. No,

no, I don't because they're not here. Yeah. Wonderful advice. Esther, honestly, you're an incredible lady. You're having such a huge impact on so many people around the world. The questions in the new card deck are fantastic. Thank you so much for coming back onto the podcast. Great. You know what? It's where should we begin at work?

And here we were and we've begun. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information.

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