Conflict Decoded Podcast
On Conflict Decoded, we explore why it’s so common for those of us dedicated to social change to get mired in conflict within our teams and organizations and how to break free. Join host Katherine Golub (callingsandcourage.com) and guests as we explore the hidden, painful dynamics that undermine our good work and discover proven practices that can help you show up more effectively and experience more ease and joy in your work. Let’s move beyond frustration and disappointment and get on with our important work!
Episodes
November 19, 2025 • 59 mins
If you ever feel overwhelmed by everything you read online, torn between wanting to keep up with what’s happening and wanting to protect your peace, or struggling in your relationship with online information in another way, my conversation with Danielle Reiff is for you.
Danielle and I talk about:
How to interact with online information in ways that diffuse rather than inflame conflict.
How we can stay informed in these times ...
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October 30, 2025 • 42 mins
If we are to have any chance of bringing forth a world in which all people have the power necessary to meet their needs, we must develop the governance structures necessary to wield our power effectively.
In this episode, I speak with Ted Rau, co-founder of Sociocracy for All, about ways to govern our groups and organizations that empower people to work together well. We talk about:
Why majority rules systems inevitably lead to ...
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October 14, 2025 • 10 mins
In this weeks episode of Conflict Decoded, I share:
One reason we often get stuck focusing on what doesn’t work,
How focusing on what’s good increases effectiveness,
Step-by-step instructions for facilitating Appreciative Interviews, and
2 quick questions to start team meetings with immediate connection.
If you long for your team to experience greater cohesion, joy, and resilience in these times, then 'Appreciative Interv...
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September 30, 2025 • 50 mins
Do you have family or friends in the religious right or with vastly different political views than you?
Knowing how to disagree with people you love is crucial in these situations.
If so, this one is for you.
About Sara:
For the first four decades of her life, Sara was a devout Mormon. Then, a series of realizations called her to change course. Since then, Sara has helped thousands of high-achieving women as a master certified life...
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September 17, 2025 • 49 mins
Research shows that the highest-performing teams give each other about five positive comments for every one negative comment. And yet, when things are uncertain, the stakes are high, and we feel frustrated by others' actions, it can be challenging to focus on what’s good.
This week, Lana Jelenjev and I discuss how to restore this balance. We explore:
Why focusing on appreciation is so challenging,
How to build a habit of celeb...
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September 2, 2025 • 60 mins
We often blame ourselves for the tensions of modernity.
But we can become much more effective—and feel better—when we focus on the root causes of our problems.
In this week’s episode of Conflict Decoded, I talk with @Donnie Maclurcan, Co-Founder and Director of Strategy at the Post-Growth Institute. We explore:
The difference between capitalist and post-capitalist economies (which will likely surprise many listeners)
How capit...
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If we are to reclaim collective power, redistribute it equitably, and cultivate the multiracial multicultural democracies we long for. We must develop the ability to read power in our institutions and our lives.
We must become power literate.
In this week’s episode of Conflict Decoded, I talk with the brilliant Karla Monterroso about what power actually is. How the internet and demographic shift are changing it, our relationship to...
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August 5, 2025 • 57 mins
We are currently in a collective battle of the imagination.
While the power of the 99% may be limited. We grow our power when we reclaim our ability to imagine from dominant narratives.
As Desiree Adaway shares in this episode, imagining the world we long for is one of the most powerful and radical acts there is. Even if we do not live to see the fruits of our imagination, the billionaire class does not get to tell us what is possi...
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July 21, 2025 • 60 mins
The daughter of Vanessa Andreotti (author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and The Implications for Social Activism).
Giovanna de Oliveira Andreotti grew up facing the ongoing predicament of collapse.
In this episode, Giovanna shares how facing the reality of collapse no longer destabilizes her. Instead, the wisdom she’s gleaned—and her commitment to inquiry—are helping her to acknowledge reality. Notice the ways it...
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July 8, 2025 • 39 mins
Heather Plett—facilitator, trainer, and author known globally for her work in holding space—and Katherine explore how activists often get sucked into the victim - rescuer - perpetrator vortex. They also discuss how to break free from it.
This model supported Katherine, Heather, and many others to shift from white saviorism to a posture of more true solidarity.
Bio:
Heather Plett, is the author of the award-winning book The Art of H...
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June 25, 2025 • 42 mins
Shiree Teng—community organizer, storyteller, and healer. She believes that love and courage will lead the way towards our collective liberation.
Shiree speaks with Katherine about how to center radical love in our work for change.
With a mixture of grace and conviction, Shiree offers guidance for how to align your life with your truth and a fierce love for yourself and others.
Without cultivating love for ourselves and each other...
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June 10, 2025 • 63 mins
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 challenged by.
About Carmen Spagnola:
Carme...
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May 26, 2025 • 38 mins
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 power to create change at home. And wh...
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April 9, 2025 • 47 mins
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 family systems constellations and it...
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April 9, 2025 • 47 mins
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 can make our work so challenging. And...
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March 12, 2025 • 60 mins
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 Facilitation can help us widen the aperture...
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February 18, 2025 • 78 mins
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 @RoxanneManning.
Nonviolent Communication (...
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February 4, 2025 • 54 mins
Earlier this year, I experienced a conflict in my role as a city councilor that was very hard for me to understand.
It was one of those moments that felt very confusing. Like what was going on had way more to do with dynamics below the surface, in the group’s unconscious, than it had to do with the actual content we were discussing.
In an effort to make sense of things, I discovered the field of systems psychodynamics or group rela...
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January 21, 2025 • 59 mins
Somatics practitioner and anti-racist trainer, Dara Silverman, reminds us this week that to build strong movements, those of us who are committed to bringing forth a world in which all peoples’ needs are met, will need to offer ourselves and each other softness in these times.
When we write people off, point fingers in blame, and narrow our tent, our movements grow smaller and lose.
To build movements with the capacity to win, we ...
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January 7, 2025 • 54 mins
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 needed to hear—
When we invest att...
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