Conflict Decoded Podcast

Double Binds & Competing Needs

Have you ever felt trapped as a white person, trying to figure out how to respond to a racist remark when people of color are in the room? On one hand, silence is violence. You have a responsibility to speak up. On the other hand, white people have a responsibility to amplify the leadership of people of color. You might worry about being condescending, seeming performative, stepping on toes, or saying something that hurts someone more. If you're silent, you mess up. If you speak up, you risk screwing up, too. Meanwhile, if you're a person of color and someone makes a racist remark, you might feel trapped in a similar — yet even more costly — double bind. If you speak up, you risk paying a price: emotional labor, lost status, strained relationships, or worse, professional consequences. If you don't speak up, you risk letting yourself or others down and not naming the truth that needs naming. That's a double bind. And it's not the only one. Maybe you're facing an entirely different set of competing needs in your work for change right now. The nonprofit leader feels pulled between honoring donor expectations and community needs. The newly promoted manager wants credibility with senior leaders and a sense of belonging with her team. The city councilor wants to reach across the aisle without alienating their progressive base. Many double binds are painfully real. Right now, so many immigrants face the double bind of either losing their status if they don't attend a court appointment — or risking detention by ICE if they do. Nothing I share here will make those terrifying choices easier. And yet, many of the double binds and either-ors that I see my clients grapple with are actually mental traps. Stories we've inherited and never questioned. Those are the ones we'll focus on here. So why does dominant culture train us to think in false binaries? Largely, trauma. Millennia of imperialism, patriarchy, war, and violent separation from the land gave rise to the dominant culture we live in today. One of the primary symptoms of personal and collective trauma is rigidity — a strict adherence to behaving in certain ways in an attempt to protect ourselves from future harm. One flavor of this rigidity is left/right, good/bad, win/lose, black/white thinking. Of course those of us who fear for our well-being — and that of our neighbors — feel pulled to identify with one side or the other. We're trying to keep ourselves safe. But this attempt to keep us safe often makes it harder for us to come together and find creative ways to meet our needs. The coalition fractures over tactics. The leader lashes out from an us-versus-them frame. Family members stop talking to each other. The first step toward healing the trauma of polarization is to honor why we got here in the first place. When we do this, we can begin to notice what polarities are at play. Polarities are not merely opposites. They're apparent opposites that need each other to form a whole. Pain and pleasure. Grief and joy. Rest and action. Giving and receiving. Stability and change. Individual and collective. Unity and division. When we zoom out, we begin to see that life expresses itself in polarities. And simply naming them can help us see how we need both. The tension between polarities is uncomfortable. But the tension isn't the problem. The problem emerges when we treat the poles as enemies — when we cling to one side and demonize the other. The higher the stakes, the more fear we feel. The more fear, the more we cling. And the more we cling, the more the conflict escalates. Polarities are not problems to solve. They're forces to be navigated. A coaching client of mine was recently oscillating between longing for one job they could devote all their attention to and the ability to pursue many creative projects. They initially saw this as an either-or they needed to choose between. But as they soon discovered, navigating polarities is like juggling balls. It's a never-ending dance. To help them, we named the poles "concentration" and "divergence" and mapped out the upsides and downsides of each. Reflecting on both sides — and their own journey through them — my client breathed a sigh of relief. They stopped trying to choose. And started learning to honor both. The practice I guided my client through is called Polarity Squares, which I originally learned from Barry Johnson's book Polarity Management and Leslie Temple-Thurston's book The Marriage of Spirit. Applying this to Your Own Life In this week's episode of Conflict Decoded, I walk you through the full practice — including how to map your own polarity square and work with what you find there. I also share a personal story about my son that taught me something I didn't expect: What we try to exclude doesn't disappear. It boomerangs back around. The more we try to push one side of a polarity away, the more insistently it returns, in our relationships, in our teams, in ourselves. And I close with a polarity I know intimately — the tension between solidarity and spaciousness. Between showing up for the collective and taking care of yourself. It can feel impossible to honor both. And yet, like all polarities, they need each other. Solidarity without spaciousness leads to burnout. Spaciousness without solidarity can feel empty and purposeless. The next time you catch yourself asking "Do I honor this need or that need?" — Pause. Ask instead: How might I honor both, not in this single moment, but over the arc of my week, my month, my life? Embracing the both-and won't bring all the answers we long for. There will still be painful tradeoffs and choices. But when we stop demanding a perfect answer, we gain more freedom to surf the tensions in ways that make us proud. May you discover the ease and grace of dancing in the both-and. Navigating double binds, competing needs, or other challenging dynamics? Learn more and stay connected! Subscribe to Conflict Decoded Receive Love Letters to Changemakers Get my free online course – Preparing for Difficult Conversations at Work Submit your conflict story Share a reflection Episodes Related to Double Binds & Competing Needs On Holding Conflicting Values & Realities The Discernment Pause: How to Find Your Next Step When Things Get Tense Awareness is Power: How to Stop Reacting in Ways You Later Regret

Strategic Sacrifice: How to Manage Competing Priorities in Your Organization & in Your Life

Impact. Culture. Money. These are the three corners of what my guest this week, Isabelle Moses, calls the Triangle of Tension. If you are grappling with whether to prioritize purpose, wellbeing, or financial stability — whether in your personal life or your organization — you're probably familiar with this tension, even if you've never named it this way. Impact is what you do and why you do it. Mission. Purpose. Calling. Culture is how you do what you do. Personal and collective wellbeing. Relationships. Money is about the flow of income and expenses. Sustainability. Stewarding resources. Perhaps different parts of yourself have different opinions about prioritizing different things. Or perhaps different people or teams within your organization or group are advocating for different things — some people want to prioritize employee wellbeing, for example, while others are stressed about money. Given current social realities, it can be really hard to prioritize more than two of these at a time. We usually have to sacrifice one. And choosing can be painful. But delaying difficult choices is usually, ultimately, much harder. If you feel stuck right now — discerning your personal next steps or navigating a conflict with other people about where your work is headed together — shining light on the Triangle of Tension can help. So can all of the many practices that Isabelle shared in this episode of the Conflict Decoded podcast: Strategic Sacrifice: How to Manage Competing Priorities in Your Organization & Life. About Isabelle Moses Isabelle Moses is Partner and Head of Consulting with Brava Leaders. She specializes in supporting leaders, teams, and organizations to create the conditions for joy and thriving — both internally and in their externally facing work. Her experience as a nonprofit executive leader, executive coach, and organizational consultant has equipped her with deep, tangible knowledge of leading and supporting dozens of multiracial and multicultural nonprofits and philanthropies. Over the last two decades, Isabelle has worked across the nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors with a particular love for organizations committed to positive social change. Guest Links: Bravaleaders.com The Brava Leadership Institute The Juicy, Joyful Blog Related Episodes: Ep. 21: Power Literacy 101: The Key to Building Multiracial Multicultural Organizations with Karla Monterroso What We Talked About One: Values vs. Beliefs — and Why the Difference Matters One of the most clarifying distinctions Isabelle makes is between values and beliefs. Values statements, she explains, tend to be universal — the kind of aspirations most people readily endorse. Beliefs, in contrast, are at least somewhat contested. Take abolition as an example. Many people can name abolition as a value. But beliefs about what abolition actually means vary enormously. Do we believe in a police-free state? The end of prisons? Or just the elimination of ICE? When we are clear about our specific beliefs — not just our values — we become far more effective at attracting the right people to our particular collective and avoiding the kind of conflict that comes from misaligned assumptions. For organizations navigating how to manage competing priorities, getting explicit about beliefs is essential groundwork. Two: The Problem With Implicit Beliefs About Money One of the most important — and often overlooked — sources of organizational conflict is the gap between explicit values and implicit beliefs about money. Social justice organizations, Isabelle points out, are often very explicit about their values around equity, inclusion, and justice. But their beliefs about money tend to remain unspoken. And when beliefs about money stay implicit, a default orientation — one rooted in capitalist and white supremacist frameworks — ends up prevailing. Not because anyone chose it, but because nothing more explicit was put in its place. This is part of why learning how to manage competing priorities requires organizations to get specific and honest about what they believe about resources: where money comes from, how it flows, who decides how it gets spent, and what that says about their values in practice. Three: The Emotional Cup: How to Prepare for Difficult Conversations Before you can navigate conflict well, Isabelle says, you need to check your emotional cup. Imagine a beaker that starts empty. When it's empty, it has room to hold more. But as you add more over time — stress, unprocessed grief, unresolved tension — it fills up, until one small thing sends it bubbling over. The most important thing you can do to prepare for a difficult conversation is to make sure you're not already overflowing. This isn't just personal advice — it's organizational wisdom. Teams and groups that don't tend to their collective emotional capacity will find that strategic decisions get hijacked by unprocessed feeling. Four: Embracing Friction as an Opportunity for Strategy What should you do when you find yourself in a disagreement at work? Isabelle's answer: embrace friction as an opportunity for strategy. When we can stay in a disagreement long enough, in a kind and compassionate way, we often find a solution that neither side could have reached alone. The goal isn't to eliminate tension — it's to stay present with it long enough for a third way to emerge. That third way is often more aligned with the needs of the whole than either of the original positions. This reframe — from friction as problem to friction as opportunity — is one of the most practical tools Isabelle offers for anyone learning how to manage competing priorities in groups and organizations. Five: Rituals for Honoring the Grief That Comes With Sacrifice Strategic sacrifice isn't just a cognitive exercise. It involves real loss — of resources, relationships, directions not taken, versions of yourself or your organization that won't come to be. Isabelle shares practices for honoring that grief rather than bypassing it. When we move too quickly past loss — when we treat difficult choices as purely strategic rather than also deeply human — we leave unprocessed emotion in the body and in the organization. That emotion doesn't disappear. It shows up later, in conflict, in burnout, in resentment. Making space to grieve what we're letting go of isn't weakness. It's what makes sustainable sacrifice possible. Six: How Multiracial, Multicultural Institutions Can Become Microcosms of Liberation One of the most expansive ideas in this conversation is Isabelle's vision for what multiracial, multicultural organizations can actually be: not just spaces that talk about liberation, but microcosms of it — places where the values of equity and justice are practiced in the day-to-day, in how decisions get made, how resources flow, how people are treated. This requires, among other things, being honest about the ways that white supremacist and capitalist beliefs still operate inside organizations that are explicitly committed to justice. In an economy rooted in slavery, Isabelle reminds us, the most acceptable sacrifice is often whoever is most marginalized. We don't always act in the ways we think we believe. Naming that honestly is the beginning of doing something different. Seven: When Letting Something Die Creates Space for Something New Sometimes the most strategic sacrifice is the hardest to name: letting go of a collective, a role, a way of working, or a vision that no longer serves. I know this personally. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, five of us started a racial justice collective in my small town in rural Western Massachusetts. We believed the change we could make was around racial justice in the schools. But we eventually concluded we weren't set up to organize there — and that the collective itself didn't make sense anymore. It was scary to disband. But we decided to stay friends and support each other's individual work. Now, several years later, two of us are on city council, one chairs the school committee, and the other two are still very active. We're still working for racial justice — just in different ways. Sometimes, letting something die creates space for something new to emerge. Eight: The Tradeoffs of Belonging Being part of a collective requires giving something up. Often, time and comfort. But it can be much harder to make those sacrifices consciously if we're not clear about what we're agreeing to. Unexamined tradeoffs buzz quietly in our ears like mosquitoes — low-grade, persistent, draining. When we get clear about what we are and are not willing to give, we stop being drained by implicit resentment and start making choices that actually reflect our values. This is one of the most practical frameworks in this episode: before joining or continuing in a collective, get honest about the tradeoffs you're willing to make — and the ones you're not. How to Manage Competing Priorities: Key Takeaways Learning how to manage competing priorities in your organization and life isn’t a one-time decision. It’s an ongoing practice of clarity, grief, and strategic choice. Here are the core ideas from this episode to carry with you: Name your Triangle of Tension. Which of the three corners — impact, culture, or money — is being sacrificed right now? Is that a conscious choice? Get explicit about beliefs, not just values. Especially around money. What does your organization actually believe about how resources should flow? Check your emotional cup before difficult conversations. Are you already overflowing? Embrace friction. Stay in disagreement long enough to find the third way. Honor the grief. Strategic sacrifice is also human loss. Make space for both. Be honest about tradeoffs. Know what you’re willing to give up to be part of a collective

The Negative Peace of White Moderation & How to Uproot it in Your Organization

Have you ever stayed silent to protect your funding? Have you ever watched your organization soften its language, avoid a difficult conversation, or stand down from a fight it knew it should take on — because the cost of speaking up felt too high? If so, you're not alone. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. named this dynamic, which many now call white moderation. He wrote: "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will." To bring forth the loving justice and collective liberation that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought so hard for, we must be willing to step into the fray and experience the tension that has always been part of the fight for justice. To transform the conflicts we face in our society, our organizations, our communities, and our homes, we must muster the courage to speak the unspeakable and name what needs naming. Too often, however, people avoid saying the thing, preferring to remain in an absence of tension — that negative peace that Dr. King wrote about. In today's episode, my guest Vu Le and I discuss white moderation in depth — how it keeps us silent, how to be more aware of when it’s showing up at work, and how to move beyond it so that we can fight fascism far more effectively, both in our organizations and in the rest of our lives. You don’t have to work in a nonprofit to love this conversation — I certainly did. And I’m especially grateful for all the inspiring stories that Vu shares. I think you will too. In this episode of the Conflict Decoded podcast, I sat down with Vu Le for an honest, challenging, and ultimately hopeful conversation about the state of the nonprofit sector. We talked about what it means to do this work right now — in a political moment that can feel overwhelming, disorienting, and terrifying. Vu brought Antonio Gramsci's haunting observation into our conversation: "The old world is dying, and a new world struggles to be born. Now is a time of monsters." We talked about what it means to live inside that tension — to watch old systems crumble while new, more just ones struggle to take their place, and to see what rises in the space between. We talked about fascism. About the playbook authoritarians have always followed — and why understanding that playbook is essential for anyone committed to building a better world. History is clear: When Hitler came to power, the first people he attacked were trans people. Trump and other authoritarians are not doing anything new. They are following an old strategy. And those of us committed to liberation have to understand that, so we can counter it. We talked about despair — the kind that creeps in when you've been fighting for a long time and the ground keeps shifting beneath you. Vu shared five things worth holding onto when you feel yourself sliding into fatalism: the validity of your feelings, our collective history of resistance, the courage of those who came before us, the resources we have access to, and — perhaps most unexpectedly — why fascist leaders are acting the way they are in the first place. His answer was more hopeful than I anticipated. We talked about the backlash against DEI — the broken promises, the whitewashed websites, the colleagues who lost their jobs. And Vu reframed it in a way that stayed with me: The backlash means DEI is working. And we talked about white moderation itself — the conflict aversion, the focus on "doing things right" instead of doing the right thing, the tendency to go around rather than directly to the person you're in tension with. Vu shared what awareness looks like in practice, and why building that muscle is foundational to doing any of the deeper work. There is a difference between the strategy of those working to break us apart and the strategy of those working to build something better. Their strategy is to divide. Ours must be to come together — across our organizations, across our movements, across our differences. If you work in the nonprofit sector, care about justice, or are trying to figure out how to stay grounded and effective in a time of monsters, this episode is for you. Listen to the full podcast   Guest Bio Vu Le writes the blog nonprofitAF.com, which details the humor and frustration of nonprofit work. He has over two decades of experience in the sector, including 13 years as an executive director across two nonprofits. Vu has written a new book called “Reimagining Nonprofits and Philanthropy: Unlocking the Full Potential of a Vital and Complex Sector,” which his 9-year-old said, “Is not as boring as I thought it would be.” Guest Links: www.nonprofitaf.com www.nonprofitaf.com/book Are you navigating conflict, tension, or challenging dynamics? Learn more and stay connected! 1. Want to go deeper? Check out my free online class, Preparing for Difficult Conversations (at Work) where we practice applying many of these ideas in real-life situations. 2. Are you grappling with a conflict or tension in your work? I’d love to hear about it and potentially create an episode helping you decode your conflict. Submit your story here. Just a few sentences is enough. 3. Did something in this episode resonate, challenge you, or leave you wondering? I’d love to hear your feedback. Share a reflection about the podcast here. Thank you for taking the time. I read every submission with care. And if this episode helped you make sense of conflict in your work, a short review helps others find it, too. Please click your preferred channel below to share a review or like/heart the podcast. Thank you in advance! 4. Want to find out about the latest episodes? To receive the latest episodes and other morsels of support and care for your work for change, I invite you to join my Love Letters to Changemakers. You can also stay connected by subscribing to Conflict Decoded below. That way, you don’t miss future conversations on getting unstuck from conflict and challenging people dynamics.           5. Finally, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it. If this conversation named a tension you’ve seen play out in your work or community, you’re not alone — and you don’t have to navigate it by yourself. Sharing doesn’t have to be public. Forwarding this episode to one person who might be living inside a similar conflict is more than enough. Thank you. Until next time, may you find the clarity and confidence you need to show up in ways that make you proud. Related Articles: Letter from a Birmingham Jail www.nonprofitaf.com/have-nonprofit-and-philanthropy-become-the-white-moderate-that-dr-king-warned-us-about https://www.nonprofitaf.com/21-signs-you-or-your-organization-may-be-the-white-moderate-dr-king-warned-about/ https://www.nonprofitaf.com/the-white-moderation-genome-project/ Related Episodes: Ep. 28 Practical Steps to Undermine Authoritarianism & Grow Democracy in Your Community with Jiva Manske Ep. 15 How to Build Collective Power: Good Organizing with Sulma Arias Ep. 4 The Social Change Ecosystem Map with Deepa Iyer Key Moments: 00:00 Why Nonprofits Must Act 03:25 Funding Fears and White Moderation 14:08 Fighting Fascism Through Community 20:31 Outlasting Monsters 21:26 White Moderation at Work 34:38 DEI Backlash and Real Equity FULL TRANSCRIPT The Negative Peace of White Moderation & How to Uproot it in Your Organization Katherine: Thank you, Vu, for taking this time to talk. I know that your schedule is really busy with your new book, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to connect. I’d love to start by asking you what has called you to be so passionate right now about supporting nonprofits in the fight against fascism? Vu: Well, right now everything is on fire. Nonprofits have always been really crucial for many of the civil rights wins that we’ve had in the past. And right now, I think it’s very important for us to focus on saving democracy and pushing back fascism, because it affects every single mission that every single nonprofit cares about right now. Katherine: Can you share a bit about your personal background and what brought you to this moment? Vu: I was born in Vietnam. I came over when I was eight. I got a master’s degree in social work and have been in the sector for a couple of decades now. I have run two nonprofits over a span of 13 years, so I’ve been in the sector a while. I love our sector and I think it does some amazing things. And at the same time, there are some challenges that we really do need to discuss. Katherine: Can you share more about what those challenges look like, especially right now? Can you paint a picture of organizations you’re talking to who are grappling with how to respond to this moment? Vu: Before everything that’s been happening over the past decade or so — all the crises, the poly-crises that we’ve been dealing with — nonprofits have always had a bunch of challenges. There’s a lack of appreciation for overhead. There’s this idea that we want all the money to go directly to programs, not on staff salaries or rent or other things that are vital....

How to Break Free From the Blame Trap

In his book Remapping Your Mind, Dr. Mehl-Madrona writes that the closest word to the English word self in the Lakota language is nagi, meaning the swarm of all the stories that make us who we are. Our interpretation of reality shapes our experience of reality. We become the stories that we tell ourselves. We, humans, need stories like we need food. But some stories nourish us more than others. If we think we have the capacity to figure things out together, we’re likely to engage in a way that helps us find win-win solutions. If we view things as right or wrong, we’re likely to take a judgmental or defensive stance. In my episode this week, I share how we can move beyond these stories that keep us stuck in challenging dynamics. If you ever feel frustrated in your interactions with others or wonder if there’s a more helpful lens to see your situation through, this is for you. Learn More from Katherine: To receive new episodes along with other nourishment for your heart, mind, and body, subscribe to Love Letters for Changemakers Katherine’s LinkedIn page Center for Callings & Courage

Resonant Language 101: How to Heal Trauma, Strengthen Connection, & Create Change

Resonance is what happens when Person A brings their caring, curious attention to Person B in an attempt to truly understand them, and Person B responds with—Yes, that's it! You get me! In this week’s episode, I explore how resonance changes the brain and contributes to better communication and decision-making, and how to listen to people so they really feel heard. If you’re longing for a deeper connection with yourself and the people in your life, this one is for you. Learn More from Katherine: To receive new episodes along with other nourishment for your heart, mind, and body, subscribe to Love Letters for Changemakers Preparing for Difficult Conversations (at Work) Free Online Course Katherine’s LinkedIn page Center for Callings & Courage