The Beauty of Conflict

Let’s dive into the disciplines you can embrace to make your organization healthier. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie break down Patrick Lencioni’s four disciplines of organizational health for you to practice when leading an organization. They explain how building a cohesive leadership team, creating organizational clarity, overcommunicating, and building effective h...

Everything is connected, we are all unique, and all things matter. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie interview Andrea Nakayama, founder and CEO of the Functional Nutrition Alliance, who talks about how she helps people understand what’s going on within their bodies with functional nutrition, precision medicine, omics, and epigenetics. Tune in to learn more about Andrea...

Meetings are a work team’s playfield. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie break down the three key criteria for a successful meeting: having a collective objective, creating an inclusive space, and embracing conflict. They also speak about the importance of evaluating how a meeting went and measuring it to keep improving. Tune in to learn from Susan and CrisMarie how to...

You actually have the choice to be more confident. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie interview Alyssa Dver, CEO & Co-Founder of the American Confidence Institute, who talks about how to use science to help people grow their confidence. She explains what happens in the human brain when faced with fear and how to overwrite these neural pathways. Tune in to learn tool...

You can bring your body, mind, and spirit together to live a better life. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie interview Maria Victoria Albina (she/they), who talks about the somatic, cognitive, and breathwork approaches she teaches to have a felt sense of emotions in the body. Maria Victoria talks about expanding one’s window of bodily dignity by pulling from places of d...

All of us could die tomorrow, so we need to learn how to live. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie discuss the idea of responsibility in their lives, what being able to respond means, and being aware of one’s choices. Listen to this episode and think about how you can respond and advocate for your own life! For the full transcript, show notes, and resources, visit us at...

Have you identified the scary monsters that are hiding deep within your brain? In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie reflect on Pathways of the Past (POPs). They are automatic and often problematic, stress response mechanisms built upon past experiences ingrained within our brains, which they had already talked about with Annie Hopper in an episode that was part of their B...

For 2023, Susan and CrisMarie are excited to dive into their own material from a new perspective. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, our hosts kick off the new year by sharing their excitement about working together with Rali, a company with a platform that delivers educational content and experiences to entire organizations, teams, and other corporate customers. Partnering with Rali is a...

It’s the most wonderful time to pause, reflect on the highs and lows of the year, and see how we can grow for 2023. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan takes the stand by herself and shares her own reflection on what 2022 was for her. She recaps some of the big global occurrences that happened throughout the year but also dives into her achievements and experiences, talking about the...

It’s the Holiday Season, and we all know the joy doesn’t come without some stress attached. However, “‘tis the season to be jolly” after all. In this Beauty of Conflict episode, Susan and CrisMarie discuss how to shift that stress that will inevitably come to us during this season at the end of the year into gratitude and joy. There are many different types of celebrations and just as many expecta...

Have you ever said: “This meeting could have been an email”? Okay, well, us too, and there’s nothing more frustrating than meetings that don’t have a clear purpose. In this Beauty of Conflict episode, Susan and CrisMarie discuss work meetings and what to do to make them as effective as possible. They start the conversation by introducing an example of a meeting model companies can adopt. They brea...

Many times it’s risky to ride solo, so why not invite others to come along? In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie are joined by Jocelyn Hastie, an innate leader helping other women increase their self-awareness and create coherence between their values and actions. Jocelyn’s life changed for the better when she moved to the countryside after being diagnosed with cancer. Du...

Teams are made of humans, but what truly matters is how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie break down five critical aspects that are important to building a good and successful team. Identified in a research study done by Google, the aspects are Psychological Safety, Dependability, Structure...

You are the perfect starting point when meditating. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie had a very introspective conversation with Dr. Lawrence S. Conlan, a meditator and chiropractor, about how he’s integrating the human experience within transcendental meditation at Passionate Ease, retreats where he shares teachings he’s learned himself from high masters throughout hi...

Michelle Redfern advocates for women’s rights in business and sports, and here’s how! In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie sit down to talk with Michelle Redfern, founder of Advancing Women in Business and Sport about the work she’s doing advocating for diversity, inclusion, and gender equality in sports and in work sites. She starts with recognizing privilege and how tho...

Take your power and your privilege and share them with those who might need them. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie are joined by Gavriella Schuster, an author and advocate for creating spaces where there is diversity, equity, and inclusion. While in a leadership position, she witnessed and recognized many inequalities, injustices, and microaggressions that occur commo...

In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie are joined again by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, continuing the discussion about the knowledge in her book “Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life.” Picking up from the previous conversation they shared, this time, they discuss how to apply Whole Brain Living once you’ve already identified the f...

It’s time to get yourself fully connected! In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie are thrilled to be joined by Annie Thoe, Feldenkrais practitioner, teacher, and Movement Consultant at Sensing Vitality. Annie shares her knowledge about connecting one's awareness with the wisdom of nature and the body for self-healing. Annie’s life changed after finding a Feldenkrais practit...

The nervous system is surprisingly far-reaching within us. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie are happy to be joined by Irene Lyon, a nervous system expert, to talk about how working with the nervous system can transform trauma to heal one’s body and mind. Humans, unlike other animals, have a higher brain that has the ability to ignore signals caused by stressful situat...

In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie are joined by Annie Hopper, CEO and founder of the Dynamic Neural Retraining System, to talk about the Five Pillars of Recovery, steps she uses in her limbic system rehabilitation program. Annie suffered from debilitating chronic illnesses and chemical sensitivities as a direct result of limbic system impairment. After hitting rock bot...

In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie are joined by Jennifer Fraser to talk about the importance of taking action against bullying and how to repair the harm done to bullied and abused brains. These are also topics she covers in her latest book: The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health . While working at a private school, a case of bullying where teachers...

What is going on inside both hemispheres of your brain? In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie are joined by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor to discuss her newest book, Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. As you might remember from High School biology classes, the human brain has two hemispheres, with an emotional system and a thinki...

Systemic thinking can be applied to anything in life, because in the end: we are all connected. In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan and CrisMarie discuss how system thinking is related to everything in life: work, home, and relationships. There is a common thought that if the “weakest link” is removed from the equation, the problem will be solved, but we forget that we are all part of...

In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, CrisMarie and Susan are pleased to interview Csaba Toth, an incredible executive coach and writer of “Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times”. He shares what he’s learned through his journey as a coach, and explains what homophilic diversity and uncommon mindsets are. Human behavior is the only thing we can actually see from the outside, people’s perspectives or...

In this episode of the Beauty of Conflict, Susan has the honor to interview Micha Goebig, an accomplished coach and author, as she shares her journey in a male-dominated industry like the auto and tech field, how she started to create her own confidence, and how she works with clients. Micha moved around the US and Germany several times before settling down in Seattle, and the cultural changes wer...