Conflict Decoded Podcast

If we are to survive the current and looming environmental and economic emergencies and grow communities in which we thrive, we need to be able to relate and work together across difference. In this episode, Carmen Spagnola teaches the building blocks for cultivating secure attachment—the ability to help ourselves and others feel safe, seen, secure, and soothed—even with people we’re most challeng...

We have good reason to feel scared about what’s happening nationally and globally. And yet, as Sulma Arias, Executive Director of Peoples’ Action, reminds us in this week’s podcast, there are so many incredible opportunities for change in our own local communities. Whether it’s removing lead from the school playground or installing a stop sign where the kids are playing, we often have the most pow...

In part two of our conversation with Francesca Mason-Boring, we explore how to help well and shore ourselves up for the work of social justice. We discuss how to release demonizing and patronizing ways of seeing each other. And approach our work from a strong, clear place, disentangled from the traumas of the past. This podcast is part two to a two-part episode. In Part One, Francesca introduced f...

Francesca Mason-Boring is one of Katherine’s most beloved and influential teachers. She introduces listeners to family systems constellations, a profound healing modality for transforming intergenerational trauma. This podcast is part one to a two-part episode. In Part One, Francesca shares about the indigenous roots of this methodology. How it can support the healing of collective traumas that ca...

How do we make decisions that honor everyone’s needs, even in high stakes situations? Katherine explores this question with Miki Kashtan, founder of the Nonviolent Global Liberation community and the creator of Convergent Facilitation. In these times, we need new, revolutionary processes to help us get underneath the surface of our conflicts and listen for what is truly needed. Convergent Facilita...

Have you not known whether to speak up when hearing someone make a harmful comment? Wondered how to center the impacted person without causing further harm? Or what to say when you do speak up? If so, I hope you’ll tune in to the latest episode of Conflict Decoded—How to Address Harmful Impact with Nonviolent Communication—with clinical psychologist and Nonviolent Communication trainer @RoxanneMan...

In this episode of Conflict Decoded, Dr. Tracy Wallach, a systems psychodynamics expert, joins me to explore the often-hidden dynamics fueling workplace conflict. Dr. Wallach brings over two decades of experience as a leadership coach, advisor, and Senior Lecturer in the Gender, Leadership, and Public Policy Program at UMass Boston, where she helps leaders and teams better understand group dynamic...

In this episode, I’m joined by Dara Silverman, a somatics practitioner and anti-racist trainer, to explore how we can build strong movements with the capacity to create enduring change, especially in the face of white supremacy, patriarchy, and xenophobia. We talk about how to stay soft and accountable, expand our movements by “calling each other in” instead of shutting each other out, and center...

Does someone in your workplace, community, or another realm of your life frustrate or disappoint you? Do you want to know how to give them some feedback without damaging the relationship? I recently found myself in a situation like this, and my podcast guest this week, Heather Younger, organizational culture strategist and leading expert on active listening at work, reminded me of exactly what I n...

In this episode of Conflict Decoded, I sit down with Denise Padín Collazo, a veteran leader in grassroots organizing and author of Thriving in the Fight: A Survival Manual for Latinas on the Front Lines of Change. Together, we dive into the heart of what it takes to build a better world without tearing each other down. Denise shares her insights on recognizing habitual responses to stress, setting...

Our teams arguably offer our biggest lever for social change. And yet, teams are vastly ignored. In our conversation this week, Bennett Bratt, a team coach with over thirty years experience supporting teams, shares his personal mission—reversing the benign neglect of teams. If you find yourself struggling with frustration in your teams or a nagging sense that your team could be better—especially i...

In this episode, I’m joined by Jill Poklemba in an honest conversation inspired by Dr. Yanique Redwood’s White Women Cry & Call Me Angry. We get into the messy and uncomfortable realities of whiteness in social justice spaces—how it shows up in ways white people don’t always notice, and how terms like “progressive” can sometimes do more to mask internalized racism than reveal it. Jill and I explor...

One of the hardest things about being a leader is needing to make choices that will make someone you care about mad, no matter what you do. My guest for this week’s episode of Conflict Decoded, former Amherst, MA, town councilor and mindfulness teacher Dr. Shalini Bahl, knows this dynamic well. As Shalini shares in our conversation, to make wise decisions and move through challenging dynamics in o...

With so many interlocking, overwhelming crises in the world today, it can be so hard to find our role. But when we try to do everything all at once or avoid what needs our attention, we can show up in ways that we later regret and burn ourselves out. As long-time activist and Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Building Movement Project, Deepa Iyer, discovered through decades of organizing...

Conflict avoidance isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a survival strategy in the face of manufactured scarcity. Of course, there is abundant potential for leadership, wisdom, and trust. And yet, living in hierarchies, we perceive a scarcity of leadership. With expert-driven learning, we perceive a scarcity of wisdom. With separation culture, we perceive a scarcity of trustworthiness. When we don’t tru...

When we get into a disagreement, we often see the other person as the problem. But so often, our conflicts are rooted in systemic factors in our organizations and society, like pay structures and decision-making processes. To create equitable workplaces and communities where peoples’ needs are met, we must stop butting heads against each other and zoom out to see the changes needed in our larger o...

Sarah Peyton is a neuroscience educator, Nonviolent Communication trainer, and, as a good friend of mine calls her, “brain whisperer.” Her live events, online courses, and bestselling books have transformed my coaching work and have helped my clients and me unstuck from many limiting personal and interpersonal patterns. We talk about the neuroscience of blame, guilt, shame, rage, and demonization,...

Hello and welcome to Conflict Decoded, where we explore the hidden dynamics that keep us stuck in conflict in our workplaces and communities and share practical guidance to help us break free. My name is Katherine Golub. I’m a coach, mediator, city councilor, activist, mother, and the founder of the Center for Callings & Courage. I live on the ancestral lands of the Pocumtuck people, recently know...

Have you ever heard a self-help teacher or friend say the words—Don’t should yourself…? As if should were a nasty word? If so, what do you think about this phrase? For a long time, I’d hear people admonishing themselves for saying the word should, and it would rub me the wrong way, but I didn’t quite know why. Then I discovered that the English word should comes from the same root as the Dutch and...

Would you love a dedicated practice of proactively setting clear goals, priorities, and commitments to yourself? If so, I wrote this for you. Most of my clients don’t have a practice like this when they first come to me. Many spend their days putting out fires and reacting to the next request/demand that comes their way. Others are in the habit of prioritizing other peoples’ needs while rarely che...

A client of mine recently discovered that she’s pregnant and shared this question with me this week: “I really hope that everything is safe and sound with my pregnancy. I’m trying my best to stay positive, but I have moments of anxiety. I am wondering how to feel my fears while not being consumed by them and how to remain positive while not getting sucked into worst case ‘what-if’ scenarios. Sugge...

This week, a client in my mentorship program who’s leading the development of a brand-new community center, shared that while things are going really well, she’s also noticing a lot of uncomfortable feelings coming up in response to the work. She wrote: “Things are good, and I have waves of self-doubt and fear that make me anxious - Like, how can I possibly actually do this? Often it comes in the...

What most people call time management or setting boundaries, I call the work of crossing through little gates. Gates are moments where we say no to one thing in order to say yes to something else. Gates don’t always take the shape of doors, however. Sometimes, they look like thresholds, portals, crossroads, moments of truth, healing crises, or emergencies. When I’m approaching a big gate, I someti...

Sometimes along the journey through life, we come to a place where it feels like we’re pounding on a locked door. Maybe we come really close to getting our dream job, but they hire someone else. Or our partner leaves us unexpectedly. Or we pour our hearts into a campaign and lose. The time I most felt like I was standing at a locked gate, unable to open it, were the long years we spent applying fo...

When facing a big decision or life transition, have you ever heard a voice in your head saying any of the following?: What if you’re not ready? What if you regret your decision? What if you have no time left for anything else? What if it wrecks your relationship(s)? What if you burn bridges? What if you never find something as good as what you have now? What if things turn out shitty like they’ve...