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  • Writer's pictureThrive Inc.
    • Apr 7, 2021
    • 22 min read

Family and Belonging

All of us desire the feeling of belonging because it creates a sense of inclusion and family. People, governments, and cultures worldwide have tried to develop it by gaining more power, wealth, and security, but these methods haven't been successful in fostering a true sense of belonging.


Conforming does not lead to belonging either. However, when we see each other as equal, we can all belong for who we are, at a family, company, and cultural level. True belonging comes from being in a vulnerable state.


In this episode, we talk about how horses find belonging in a herd and how their desire to belong compares to this desire for humans. We want you to cultivate that inner sense of belonging so that you can bring your voice forward, and today we're showing you how. Remember, even if you get a bad response, at least you will belong to yourself.



If you’d like us to speak at your organization about conflict, stress, team-building, or leadership, work with your team virtually, or coach you or leaders on your team, reach out to us!


If you enjoyed the show, please share the podcast with your family and friends, or post a five-star review on iTunes. Rating and reviewing the show helps spread the word, which means less friction and suffering for everyone, and who doesn’t want that?



Learn More:

  • Why power and safety get equated to belonging.

  • What the definition of belonging is.

  • How to examine past feelings of belonging to find them in the future.

  • Why resilience is tied to a sense of belonging.

  • How our family can superimpose onto authority in the workplace.

  • How to increase your sense of belonging.


Resources:




Full Transcript:



Susan: Welcome to The Beauty of Conflict, a podcast about how to deal with conflict at work, at home and everywhere else in your life. I am Susan.


CrisMarie: And I'm CrisMarie.


Susan: We run a company called Thrive Inc, and we specialize in conflict resolution, stress management coaching and building strong, thriving teams and relationships both in person and virtually.


CrisMarie: On this podcast we’ll be sharing tips, tools about how to make your team, your relationship and even you work more effectively. You can find us at thriveinc.com, that’s www.t.h.r.i.v.e.i.n.c.com or follow us on LinkedIn at Thrive Inc. We hope you enjoy this episode.


CrisMarie: Hello. I’m CrisMarie.


Susan: And I’m Susan.


CrisMarie: And we have completed our Beauty of Conflict for Teams season. But if you want to check out the book you can go to Amazon and buy the Beauty of Conflict for Teams: Harnessing your Team’s Competitive Advantage. But today we’re going to move into the topic of belonging.


Susan: It’s a big topic.


CrisMarie: Say more because I think all of us yearn for that sense of belonging to something, something bigger than ourselves so that we know we matter.


Susan: And we seek it in a lot of different ways, family or our job, our organization, a sports team, can even be a country, a church, a particular religion. There’s all sorts of ways in which I belong here shows up.


CrisMarie: I think we want that because it creates a sense of identity, inclusion, I matter. And I guess we have we’re herd mentality with more people I’m safer.


Susan: So can I venture into the horses?


CrisMarie: Absolutely.


Susan: Okay, because…


CrisMarie: The herd comes in.


Susan: Well, yes, because I have a love of the equasport that I’m doing.


CrisMarie: Equasport means horse just so you know folks.


Susan: Yes. And horses are, well, are herd animals. They rely on being a part of the herd to be safe. And they are probably maybe even more vulnerable than we are. I don’t know. Very vulnerable animals, they don’t have any other way to protect themselves in the wild.


CrisMarie: They don’t have claws.


Susan: Yeah, they don’t have claws. They can chew grass but that’s about it and if you’ve been bitten by one it kind of hurts. But it’s not really kind of, you know, and so they rely completely on this idea of herd and their connection to each other to be able to pick up signs and signals that there’s danger and move accordingly.


CrisMarie: I think connection to themselves and then to the herd, so there’s inner connection to their body and their rhythms. And also noticing the herd and staying connected there.


Susan: Yes. And then if they take off because they have to they also know how to then drop back in and relax. And if you watch a herd of wild horses you’ll see that movement between the hyper arousal state that they need to do to protect themselves, to move, to get away. And then that place where a lot of times all you see horses do and they’re standing there looking pretty damn relaxed, slow in their bodies trying to have a little grass.


CrisMarie: It’s so true. And you bring up this point that I really want listeners for you to recognize is this hyper arousal and relaxed. And there’s fancier words for it, you may have heard us talk about the sympathetic nervous system which is really you’re fight, flight or freeze response. It’s more like oh my gosh, something’s happening. I’ve got to take care of myself. And the parasympathetic which is the rest and digest, that’s the horse eating grass.


And what is different about horses and probably most animals is they have a situation where you see even in a herd a horse will raise its head like, oh, oh, what’s happening. Their tails will go, they’ll start moving and they’ll move into that hyper arousal, that sympathetic fight, flight. The threat goes away, they settle. So they respond and recover.

But for humans we kind of get stuck in a hyper arousal or that we get caught in chronic stress, our system thinks oh my gosh, that report being due tomorrow is a high threat situation. But it’s not a saber toothed tiger that’s going to eat us. But our system doesn’t know that so it’s still responding that same way which is burning out our ability to recover.


Susan: Yes. And these days in particular, CrisMarie, it’s even more difficult because we’ve had this kind of outside the Covid threat. This virus that you can contract but you don’t know how you’re going to contract it, if you’re going to contract it. It’s spread everywhere, now it’s a variant, it’s something else. It spreads even faster. And there’s this high level, whether you’re afraid of Covid or whether you’re afraid of the economic collapse that might be happening, or the business stress you’re under.


There’s all sorts of things that this has created where we are even more so in that hyper arousal state.


CrisMarie: And how does this relate to belonging, Susan? Because you brought up the horses and we went down this track.


Susan: We did and I – well, we kind of diverted from the idea of belonging. But I think underneath it all one of the things that’s come out of the whole Covid thing is this emphasis on equality and where there is injustice; where there is clearly there has been systemic racism. And I think on some level, even there is the issue of belonging that’s at the root of all of this.


And frankly I think in some respects what has gone on, even call it white supremacy, colonization, all of that came as a result of getting power which sometimes can be confused with belonging and they are not the same thing.


CrisMarie: Yeah, I think that’s a good point, Susan because I think a lot of times the sense of belonging, we talked about this not on this episode. But the sense of belonging really I feel that sense of belonging probably more when I’m in a vulnerable sense and I’m willing to open and connect. And how we as a society have dealt with our sense of belonging is I am going to accumulate as much as I can money, status, power, whatever. And that’s going to make sure I belong. And it’s kind of like feeling from the outside in.


Susan: Power and safety are equated to belonging, neither of which has much to do with belonging.


CrisMarie: Well, let’s talk about that and define belonging and what we think belonging really means. Because I think it is a sense of – well, we said in the beginning, this connection to something larger than ourselves. So how come it’s not about this larger pile of money that’s mine, or power, or company, this company that’s mine?


Susan: Well, that was a very transitory, maybe you’ll collect a lot of power and maybe you have it for long periods of time. But the reality is you could lose that at any point in time. But I think people who really have a felt sense of belonging it’s not going to go away.


CrisMarie: We talked about dysfunctional families and how when there’s a lot of chaos going on growing up, whether that’s because of alcoholism, or abuse, or whatever it is, kids learn to go, oh, oh, not safe to be me, I need to make sure I perform the way that these people are going to respond positively so they still take care of me. And I will sacrifice myself in order to create some form of safety and security because it’s so chaotic otherwise.


Susan: Exactly. I think that happens a lot. And what can happen is even if you do belong or people really have a felt sense of connection to you, you won’t experience it because you’re not in that state of vulnerability where you can actually feel the connections. You’re in a state. You realize you have sort of okay, I’ve been guarding and protecting.


CrisMarie: So this is definitely how I grew up. I was afraid of the colonel and learned I’ve got to be a performer, and please, and approval seeker. And really became afraid of authority figures and even had guilt feelings if I said anything about myself. So I made sure I avoided conflict. And what happened is I brought that same fear and self-doubt even to all my interactions. And so because I was so afraid of my family I kind of like, can I get away from my family? I kind of pushed them at arm’s distance when I grew up. How can I get away?


And I kept repeating that pattern with my rowing team. They thought I was there but I wasn’t because I kept pushing them away. Or when we worked at Haven, this professional center, I don’t think of myself as a part of Haven, other people would. Or even the theater people locally, there’s this core theater and I’m kind of – I’ve always been on the fringes of groups, not feeling like I belong.


Susan: And yet I imagine there’s probably been a few times where you’ve felt like you belong.


CrisMarie: Absolutely, for sure, Yeah.


Susan: Because this is – I bring it up because I think it’s important, listeners are sure listening to this, is the way you actually begin to cultivate your own sense of belonging is not so much to anchor it in the situation you’re in. Because if you thought you belonged on your high school football team you’re not going to be able to ever go back to that. There are many older people who try to go back to things they should not.


I have a friend who played hockey all his life. And he was always trying to belong because he was a great hockey player at one point. But he could never get back to that and it’s like okay.


CrisMarie: So he’s trying to actually recreate the environment rather than locate that sense of belonging from within.


Susan: Yes. And the questions to ask yourself is what was it like? What did I feel? And notice how you track that in your body, where is the sensation? How does it feel? Also you could pay attention to what was I doing during that time that maybe I didn’t do other times? And a lot of times it’s not that I was great. It was like I think of myself as a basketball player and a tennis player. I was a really good tennis player. I was not the very best basketball player.


CrisMarie: But you are kind of short.


Susan: I was and I couldn’t shoot.


CrisMarie: So you’re slow.


Susan: Absolutely. But I felt like I belonged on that basketball and it came out of a heck of a lot of hardship. No one wanted me on that basketball team because I was the only white person who was trying out for the basketball team. And they did not want me on that team. But at one point time…


CrisMarie: Is this in high school?


Susan: In high school when they were going to beat me up. I just remember this – I’ll just use first name, Sonia. She’d just like every time I’d come down the court she’d knock me down and nobody was going to call any fouls or anything, over and over. And we were still just trying out. And finally one time, she’s pounded me down to the ground again. And I’m like I get up and I’m like, “Okay, do you want to fight? You want to fight, alright I’ll fight you.”


And she just sort of looked at me and said, “It is about time, really? I just can’t believe that it’s taken you this long to finally stand up for yourself.” And who would have guessed. I had no idea that that was what was going on. And that was the moment where I realized to belong wasn’t about what I thought it was.


CrisMarie: Fitting in or performing.


Susan: Yeah. It was like showing up. And so many times I’ve seen that.


CrisMarie: Well, this, it kind of reminds me, you bring up a good point because even theater we did a play in the midst of Covid. And I would come home and I was like, “I don’t know, Susan, if I should do it. We’re not wearing masks and this will be my bubble.” And you were like, “You need to have those conversations with those people, not me.” And I’m like, “But they’ll get mad at me, maybe they won’t like me. And I’ll be the problem person.” But I did, I went down and I had those conversations and it was hard. I was in tears at one point.


But it was real and raw, I showed up vulnerably and we did connect. And I felt a sense of belonging with that cast and it was a very positive powerful experience. But if I had kept myself away and only tried to, oh gosh, here I am in this scene and we don’t have masks on without talking about what was really going on, I wouldn’t have had that sense of belonging. I would have been trying to conform, trying to pass, please and none of that brings that sense of belonging.


Susan: Conforming is not belonging.


CrisMarie: Get that listeners, conforming is not belonging.


Susan: And even if you’re on the, you know, because I think a lot of cultures have tried to get, you know, you can become part of our culture if you just adapt it, if we…


CrisMarie: If you do follow our rules.


Susan: What is it that the board did? We were assimilating. Now, there had been some bad examples of assimilation efforts to get. And those have nothing to do with helping someone belong. They have to do with taking away one’s sense of self. And sort of imposing it into okay, well, now you’re this, if you just become this. I did work up in the native communities for years up in Canada. And that was a huge piece of that process where they had been…


CrisMarie: Assimilated.


Susan: Basically. And horrific and really the thing that struck me when I was there though, is like and the last thing they wanted me to do was come and try to buy their culture from them, or be their culture either. They wanted me to show up as I was and be like they could exist too. But that is, you know, that’s equal. It’s like no one culture is better than the other. And it’s like no, we have our different things that we can do well if we see each other as equal and we really believe we belong. Then I don’t have to make somebody else wrong or less than because we each belong for who we are.


CrisMarie: There’s so many different ways I can go, one with the company level. But I just have to mention because somebody who early in my life made me belong was my Aunt Bernadette. Bernadette Bartels Murphy who just passed away this month and so it’s very fresh for me. When I was a little kid we were part of the military, we moved around. So often we were living in a place where I didn’t feel like I belonged, plus in my family I didn’t feel like I belonged. And Bernadette was my mom’s sister and so she would visit us no matter where we were on the globe.


And she came and she would always say, “Oh my beautiful darling girl.” Wrap me in a hug and give me lots of kisses. And that just lit me up. But then she would also – I was a klutz and so I often spilled my milk. And the colonel, dad would get all in a tirade about that because it was a mess. But she would take me away from the table, put her arm around me and say, “You know I’m klutzy too and you are okay.”


And that sense of hey I’m okay the way I am, not conforming, that created such an anchor and a touchstone for me throughout my life for her to keep reinforcing, “No, who you are is okay.” And yeah, I just think that’s so powerful.


Susan: Well, and you bring up Aunt Bernadette so I’ll just carry on a little bit more because she was that – it wasn’t just you. I mean I was there on your family call when person after person talked about how she was the person who held a space for them when they didn’t think they had anywhere else to go. That was pretty powerful. She helped that person feel like they could belong in the crisis they were in.


CrisMarie: Yeah, we had cousins who were gay when it was not okay to be gay. And they showed up on her doorstep and she took them in. And she didn’t have kids but she made sure we all 13 cousins knew about each other. And she created this connection. And I think she almost created her own belonging by helping us belong.


Susan: Exactly, I think that’s true. And not only did she do it with your family but she was a woman on Wall Street. Now, this was a place where she did not belong.


CrisMarie: She did not. It was early in the 50s and 60s and yeah.


Susan: And even the things she was really good at people thought was just ridiculous.


CrisMarie: Technical analysis, you’re right.


Susan: She kept making it, she kept sticking to it. And there are stories about her when she was on – go ahead.


CrisMarie: Well, she was on Wall Street. We can review for any of you old timers. There was a very famous show. And she was on it for 14 years. And my cousin Brian got a chance to go back with her on one of the filmings and go back into the green room. And he saw, she was a regular panelist and they would have guests.


And he saw how she connected to the guests, not just as their profession but also as them as a human being. And he had this one woman pulled my cousin aside, Brian and said, “Hey, I want you to know the only reason I’m at this level in my career is because your aunt early on sought me out and made sure I knew what to do and how to progress. And that I was supported. And she is a huge part of my success to this day.” So she did it to other women in the industry.


Susan: Yeah. So there is someone who really had an internal sense of belonging. And maybe she got it by creating that connection of belonging kind of wherever she went.


CrisMarie: Yeah. I just wanted to say, if you want to read about her I have a link. The New York Times wrote a piece about her and it’s on my LinkedIn, CrisMarie Campbell, so it’s quite beautiful. So that’s why it’s up for me in this whole [crosstalk].


Susan: Yeah. One of the reasons why we decided to do this podcast right now was because of Aunt Bernadette. And again belonging is so fundamental and yet it’s not an external thing. It’s an internal state.


CrisMarie: Well, and it’s a felt sense. And I think so much of what can happen that interrupts that internal sense of belonging is childhood trauma like I was talking about. And this sense of getting caught in the sympathetic nervous system response which sympathetic is just fight, flight or freeze. It’s where we feel revved up and we’ve got to do something to create our sense of safety. And the parasympathetic is the rest, and digest, and relax state.


Susan: It’s more where resiliency lies. And we think of resiliency sometimes as a byproduct of how hard we fight, flight, how well we survive. And actually resiliency is underneath that, it’s like, yeah, we wrote about the gardening. And we had Robin on and talked about the incredible ecosystem that exists in plants, in the world, in nature, it’s all interconnected. And at the root of us we have that same type of connecting process.


CrisMarie: And if you want to know about that gardening article you can find that on LinkedIn at Thrive Inc.


Susan: As well.


CrisMarie: Yes. And so this idea, I think what happens is animals, you were talking about the herd. They go into sympathetic and then they recover in parasympathetic. But we get caught in chronic stress. Our body doesn’t know how to handle that. And so we get stuck turned on and in that we’re focused on what is the threat outside of me and what do I need to do to solve it? And that’s what disconnects us from that internal sense of I’m okay.


Susan: It disconnects us from our internal sense of being okay and it actually disconnects us from everything else because without that internal sense of being okay we actually think of ourselves as an object and we are separated. And if we can get back to a state of our natural inner connection, our actual connection to not just other people but the world around us, we have an incredible amount of resilience.


CrisMarie: I mean this comes up a lot in – I’ve gone through this process. I’ve been a part of Adult Children of Alcoholics which has helped me reclaim my sense of safety inside my own skin and did other work around that. But when I coach people it is about developing that internal locus of control and recognizing how often we’re focused on the outside. And in that sympathetic, it’s like we’re just looking for danger. It’s like our brain only sees danger, danger Will Robinson.


And so how to actually in the midst of a business meeting that is an important meeting for you, slowing down, settling and feeling your feet and seat because you’re going to feel connected to you. You’re going to have better ideas. You’re going to feel safer speaking up. It’s all going to be different if you can change your internal sense of belonging really.


Susan: Yes. And we have talked about a number of tools that you can do to do that. And again it makes all the difference in the world when – people think they need to fix someone else, help someone else, do something else. And nine times out of ten if you can just come back to your own space, and be present, and hold the space in your own okay-ness, that other person, it is like a little bit of a tuning fork. They pick up on their own internal resources and they get back into balance, into that resilience.


It’s not because they got it from you, they actually, they just connected to their own inner sense of belonging.


CrisMarie: And this is true if you’re a boss, if you’re a friend, if you’re a parent. And it’s so easy to get seduced of I’ve got to fix it, I’ve got to make them better versus settling into yourself and helping them feel their okay-ness. Which by the way that sense of okay-ness, that sense of belonging actually I believe connects us to our source, our soul, our spirit and our intuition. That’s where we have great ideas.


And some of the podcasts we talk about how to handle stressful moments, breathe. There’s many episodes that if you go back in the – during Covid we gave a lot of tools to help people settle themselves.


Susan: And I think now that we are in a place of coming out of – not fully out of this, we’re still in this place of unknown and various waves. But there is a little more sense of hey, we’re moving in the direction to be coming back out in the world, to be aware of what does that mean in terms of am I coming out, am I in touch with my own sense of resource, of belonging, acceptance? How do I know that?


Because so many things are going on in the workplace now around diversity and inclusion, around remote or this, or that, it’s going to become important to keep tracking where do I belong? How do I know belong? And how can I take responsibility for that?


CrisMarie: And I guess I would say for you listeners out there is cultivate that internal sense of belonging so that you can settle yourself in the midst of any environment and bring your voice forward. And even if you get a bad response at least you’re going to have belong to yourself because you have your back. And I think what’s tricky is like in Adult Children of Alcoholics, what that means is you’re not acting like a child. But you’re bringing fear and self-doubt that you learned in childhood to your adult interactions. That’s why it’s called Adult Children of Alcoholics.


And the idea is learning to shift that in the moment and coming back to yourself like Susan was saying with that breathing. It’s like you grow yourself up in that moment and you have more location inside yourself and you have more choice.


Susan: It’s interesting because a lot of the references you have to ACA adult children is very similar to family systems, or internal family systems. Family systems is the external representation of it but it also is you internalize your family systems and you have choices about that. And there’s lots of bodies of work about these very things because they are core to us being able to tap into our resilience and our ability to connect. And also do great things from that place. So it’s not like we won’t accomplish things.


CrisMarie: Yeah. It’s so interesting because I think because of how I grew up I kept achieving and climbing the ladder thinking that’s what was going to fill me up and it never did. And it doesn’t until I stop and fill me up. And I think that can happen, we then take that family system and when we go to work it’s like oh my gosh, you become, the boss becomes dad and whatever, manager becomes mom. And we start playing – we keep hitting these same dynamics because they’re in our nervous system.


Susan: But we don’t like to admit that.


CrisMarie: No, none of us do.


Susan: Because there’s an incredible vulnerability that would come up if we actually started to acknowledge that in the workplace what was going on.


CrisMarie: Actually I think some people don’t even realize it. I was just coaching a gentleman and I said, “You see how when you’re talking about your boss it’s very similar to your relationship with your dad.” And he was like, “Oh, I had never thought of that.” And when you start to see those patterns then you have more choice to shift that.


And I think that’s important with this whole diversity and inclusion conversation because I think so many of us feel like oh no, I can’t speak up because of all the positional power. It’s like dad; I can’t speak up to that person because I’m going to get whatever. Fired is what we usually go to the worst case scenario. And those sorts of systems, that’s what needs to shift in order for us to have those conversations about, “Hey, I’m uncomfortable with what just happened.”


Susan: Yeah. I mean we have now a culture I think, the younger millennials and I think we even have a new one.


CrisMarie: Yeah, I think we have two or three.


Susan: Yeah, I guess so, I’m behind the time.


CrisMarie: Gen X, Gen Y.


Susan: Yeah. Are much more willing and showing up with that I am going to speak up. And so then the question is, okay, how do we then hold the space for great? And then how do we hold the space so that the conversation can then happen?


CrisMarie: Versus that person still has it, we’ve got to shut that down. And they’ve got to learn all these tacit rules about who you can say things to, and when you can, and when you can’t, which is just reinforcing that same negative culture, which is what you get in any family. When you bring in a new date to the family system which is true for you Susan, you came home and with my family and oh my gosh you were willing to say stuff to the colonel that none of us did. And we were all just like, “Oh my God, what’s happening?”


Susan: Yeah. I remember that.


CrisMarie: Yeah, it was a big event.


Susan: Yes. And that’s actually the beauty sometimes of having someone different come into the situation because they’re…


CrisMarie: The company, the family.


Susan: Family, wherever it is because they’re kind of like, “What just happened? That doesn’t make any sense.” And they will say something. And then everyone else in that ripple of time because that’s throwing that [inaudible] element into the system, it does send it into chaos, and there’s the opportunity for it to get reestablished.


CrisMarie: And I think that’s what our work, what we do with companies, when those moments come up, when we’re facilitating a team discussion we don’t let them just go by. If somebody is brave enough to say something we’re like, “Okay.” Or we might be the person that says something like, “What? What are you talking about? Was it your intention?” And have that conversation so that people don’t just keep reinforcing those old behaviors but actually start having real conversations.


And I do think change happens when I realize oh my gosh, I can actually – that was the effect over there on you, I had no idea. And I left that in. So I see you as another human being that I’m impacting negatively and I don’t want to be that person and so I want to shift. I think that’s when real change happens from the inside out. No amount of policies or trainings, hopefully that’ll increase my awareness and structurally change things. But it’s really this inside piece that has to start happening.


Susan: And I think the people who speak to that the best are the people who step in knowing they already belong inside themselves because then they usually have the courage to risk and say something that no one else would say. And hopefully if you’re that person there’ll be somebody else in that room who’s willing to recognize wow, I don’t know what you just did. But I think what you just said was really important, I’m with you. And then that’s how the little nuggets of things will happen.


CrisMarie: And I fully believe in training and structural change for DNI. And it’s really mining those moments and not letting them slip by and really making more of them. And I do agree Susan that having that internal sense of belonging is so crucial.


Susan: And if you have that conversation in your family, with your team, in your workplace, how do I know? How do you know you belong? How does this work? Because it’s not the same, we don’t all get there in the same way. But it is a powerful conversation to have and be curious about and be interested in. And pay attention to what happens in your body as that conversation’s going on. Don’t just listen between your ears.


CrisMarie: Yeah, be like a horse.


Susan: Yes, be like a horse.


CrisMarie: Settle into your body. So if you want to work on your internal sense of belonging and you’ve had a family situation like mine, you can certainly check out ACA Adult Children of Alcoholics and dysfunctional families. You can also do coaching, therapy, any of those and we’re happy to help. And if you want to have these really mine these moments and have these conversations Susan and I are happy to help you and your team really change the culture so that new conversations start to emerge.

And there is an internal sense of safety that starts to develop both inside the people and in the team.


Susan: Thank you. Yeah.


CrisMarie: Increase your sense of belonging. Take care.


Susan: Thank you for listening to the Beauty of Conflict podcast. We know conflict, stress and uncertainty can be hard to navigate.


CrisMarie: We want to support you becoming more resilient, able to speak up and have healthy relationships and business teams that thrive. Connect to us on LinkedIn at Thrive Inc. Learn how we can work with you, your team or your company at thriveinc.com. That’s www.t.h.r.i.v.e.i.n.c.com


Susan: We hope you have peaceful, productive and beautiful day.


CrisMarie: Take care.


_________________________________________________________________________


CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke


Coaches, Business Consultants, Speakers and Authors of The Beauty of Conflict

CrisMarie and Susan work leaders and teams, couples in business, and professional women.

They help turnaround dysfunctional teams into high performing, cohesive teams who trust each other, deal with differences directly, and have clarity and alignment on their business strategy so they create great results.


Download the eBook, How to Talk About Difficult Topics, today!


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