Hosts: Shelley Johnson and Kathy Tuccaro
Guest: Anna Lecat
Shelley Johnson: Welcome. We’re an award-winning show dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights. No topic is off limits on our show. We power women on the road to success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need. I’m Shelley.
Kathy Tuccaro: And I’m Kathy.
Shelley Johnson: Conflict is a part of life and something we all like to avoid. But what if you could learn to love conflict? Now that’s a concept.
Anna Lecat teaches that conflict is not a problem to solve. It is an opportunity to connect, collaborate, and build something new. That’s a perspective we can all embrace. Anna reframes conflict as a kind of tango that combines tension and connection, which equals creation.
Anna is an intimacy and conflict consultant, speaker, and author of Loving Conflict: Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division. She brings over 25 years of leadership experience to help individuals, couples, and organizations stay connected when it matters most. Kathy and I were impressed with her take on life and wanted to learn more, so we asked her on the show.
Welcome, Anna. Thank you for being with us.
Anna Lecat: Thank you. It’s great meeting you both.
Shelley Johnson: Vice versa. You built your powerful perspectives at an early age growing up in Ukraine. I am just amazed at your whole thought process. Your story is super compelling too. You refused to accept groupthink and gained acceptance even when you experienced conflict, division, and prejudice. Could you give us the cliff notes of your story and how you got started with all these revelations?
Anna Lecat: Yes, with pleasure. Thank you for asking.
I was born in Soviet Ukraine, and I left home at 17. I moved to China. It was not obvious because around the time I was 16, the Soviet Union fell apart. It was very hard to leave because the borders were closed, and it was hard to get a visa to go anywhere outside the Soviet Union.
So I applied to all kinds of scholarships everywhere in the world. I wanted to leave and discover the world. Then I found out that China had a program where if a Ukrainian person studied Chinese and learned it well enough to get into a Chinese university, they would give us a visa and a scholarship to go.
I came home to my parents and said, “Okay, where is China? I am going to learn Chinese and get into a Chinese university.” And I did.
Kathy Tuccaro: Oh my God. Sorry, but that alone is a huge accomplishment. I cannot even fathom learning Chinese. I am sorry to interrupt, but oh my God, I am impressed.
Anna Lecat: There is nothing to be impressed about. It was my ticket out. I think both of you understand that, right? When we are desperate and hungry and we need something, we can do hard things.
Shelley Johnson: True.
Anna Lecat: I would have learned anything at that point to get out and see the world. So I did. I got into a Chinese university, stayed in China, and started my first business when I was 19.
I started working in the manufacturing industry, where there were no women. No women, no young women, no white women. I met a Chinese business partner who was older than me. He saw me struggling, trying to figure out how to do business in China. I called him George because it was easier for me to remember.
He looked at me and said, “You have big dreams, but you have no idea how to do business or how to do business in China.”
I did not go to business school. I did not really know. I just knew I had big dreams, and I needed to survive and feed myself. I decided doing business was the best idea. He helped me. He invested in me and in my business, helped me establish a company, and taught me how to do business.
By the time I was 20, I already had a business in China, and we were traveling from factory to factory. The idea was to represent Chinese sustainable manufacturers who built high-quality products in front of U.S. manufacturers and brands.
At that point, it was the time when the “made in China” stigma was born, where everybody thought Chinese products were bad-quality products. But really, what was happening was that the U.S. brands asked Chinese factories to produce things that had planned obsolescence in them. The ask was, “Build us something that is going to break in a year.”
Shelley Johnson: Oh.
Anna Lecat: Because the idea was that if you buy something in the U.S. and it breaks in a year, you go and buy it again.
Shelley Johnson: Right. And that is not the best perspective because that does not inspire confidence.
Anna Lecat: It does not. So I thought, “Okay, let’s change that. Let’s only build high-quality products.”
The two of us decided we could persuade Chinese factories to build well and to build long-term. We promised them business. That was already strange because that was not what other people were doing.
We built that business, and it was challenging. We would go from factory to factory, and they would see this young non-Chinese woman telling them stories about how she was going to bring them business. Very few people believed me, but I spoke fluent Chinese, I was hustling, and I was trying to persuade people.
Finally, we built a database of suppliers. Then I went to the States and found them business. That was my beginning in the business world.
That was my first immigration. I lived in China for 15 years. Then I moved to San Francisco and lived there for 12 years. I met a French man in San Francisco. We fell in love, decided we would get married and have kids, and four years ago we moved to France.
So I am on my third immigration now, which is actually my hardest immigration yet. I think as we get older, changes are more difficult.
Shelley Johnson: Definitely, they can be. Oh my goodness. You have had quite the life and such tenacity. As a teenager, like you said, it was necessity. That will motivate you.
Your childhood in the Soviet Union was not easy. You experienced both antisemitism and cultural erasure. You had to wait in long bread lines with your mom, and you really had to be very careful. So you were experiencing conflict at a very young age. And certainly, going to China and introducing the concepts that you did, I am sure you got pushback.
So you really learned to take conflict head-on, right?
Anna Lecat: That is right. Early on, I understood that it was not about the conflict. It was about what was behind the conflict. It was the connection that conflict can bring.
Sometimes going through conflict means only I will learn something. The other person does not necessarily learn something. We do not always find agreement through conflict. But as long as we stay present and listen carefully, at least the least we can do is learn something new about ourselves.
Shelley Johnson: Listen carefully. That is not something people do well or easily when they are experiencing conflict. I think their brains shut down.
Anna Lecat: Right. That is why I talk about loving conflict as a practice. The more we do something, the more comfortable we become with it. Then we grow more skills, and we get better at it. When we get good at something, we start loving it.
Now I know the signs of a hard conversation. When I talk about conflict, I mean conflict in hard conversations and tensions. I do not mean aggression, war, or violence. I mean the kind of conflict where we feel so uncomfortable that we want to change the subject.
That is my sign. Whenever I want to change the subject, I know I need to stay. Whenever I get a tight chest, or I cannot breathe calmly, or I feel anxious, I know I need to stay because there is something there.
Now when it happens, I verbalize it. I say, “Okay, this is what I am feeling. I feel very uncomfortable right now, and I would like to stay together. Can we do this together as a team?”
Shelley Johnson: Let’s talk about something most of us would rather avoid at all costs: conflict. We dodge it, soften it, suppress it, or pretend it does not exist. But what if conflict is not the enemy? What if it is actually the doorway to deeper connection and collaboration?
That is the powerful reframe our guest Anna Lecat brings to the table. Anna teaches that conflict is not a problem to fix. It is an opportunity to engage, understand, and create something new together. She even describes conflict as a tango, where tension and connection move together to create something meaningful.
Anna, you talk about conflict as a path to trust and collaboration, and that most of us avoid hard conversations. I think none of us find it comfortable. Avoidance disconnects us. So how do we get through a hard conversation? Is there a way to address that or proceed? Because I am not sure people know how.
Anna Lecat: To me, the first thing we do is stay. The first thing we do is stay. We need to slow down and not run away, not change the subject.
Most people do not get to this stage. The subject is changed. The holidays can present a challenge if not all family members get along. We know that many people are anxious to go home and be with their families. There may be a crazy uncle who starts saying something you hate, and people say, “Let’s just not talk about that.” That becomes the agreement at the family table: “Let’s not talk about politics,” or “Let’s not talk about religion.”
To me, these are the most important conversations in the family because behind those conversations are our values, our love, and our fears. As long as we can get deeper and not stay on the surface, there is something to discover.
If somebody is very passionate about a topic, the thing to do is listen carefully. What are they passionate about? What is behind the passion? What is their fear? What are they afraid of? What are they standing for? What are they trying to get through this passion?
Talk about that instead. Instead of talking only about the issue at hand, always go deeper.
Shelley Johnson: Basically get inside their head. Do people always know why they are passionate about something? Because I think sometimes people just shoot off. In the heat of the moment, they say things they regret.
Anna Lecat: There is a loss of control in those situations. When there is a loss of control on the other side – let’s say you are having a hard conversation with someone and they are losing control – I learned something in China early on.
We had a negotiation between an American company and a Chinese company. An American executive got so angry that he hit the table with his fist. I looked at the Chinese side, and they were all smiling. The angrier the American executive got, the calmer and more smiley the Chinese people became.
I was so confused. They were not matching him. They were not getting defensive. They were not getting upset about the expression of anger. So I matched how they were behaving to see what was going on. I listened very carefully.
Slowly, the American executive calmed down. Afterward, I asked the Chinese executives, “What was going on? Why didn’t you match him? Why didn’t you get angry too? Why didn’t you hit the table?”
They said, “Whenever somebody shows their anger, listen. This is the time to listen because they will show you.”
First of all, if they are angry, it means they care. The worst-case scenario in a conflict is when people dismiss you, when people do not care anymore, when they shut down. Then connection is the hardest. But if they are yelling, if they are angry, they care. They care about the conversation, your opinion, the negotiation, or something.
When we know what people care about, it is gold. It is like the key to their heart. When somebody is expressing emotion, we need to try not to match it. Instead, calm down and listen carefully to what they say.
Shelley Johnson: By being calm like they were, they were diffusing the situation too.
Anna Lecat: Exactly.
Shelley Johnson: And the person who was angry and pounding his fist on the table was trying to get them to react. Maybe that was one of his strategies, so they would be pulled off their square.
Anna Lecat: Exactly. He kept doing it, and it was not getting the results he was looking for. So he had to calm down. Then the conversation became calm, rational, and logical. He could not overpower them with his emotions.
That was such a learning experience for me. I was 19 or 20.
I had another moment with the same group of Chinese executives, actually the first time I met them. We came in, and I was the only woman at the table. There were about 10 of us: me and nine older Chinese men. We sat down, they poured tea for everyone, and nobody spoke.
I was so anxious to start speaking, start the negotiation, and introduce my project. My Chinese business partner looked at me and gave me a sign that I should also be quiet. So we sat for a long time in silence, just looking at each other, sipping tea, and looking at each other.
It felt like the longest time. It felt like an hour. It was so awkward.
Kathy Tuccaro: I probably would have burst out laughing. That’s me.
Anna Lecat: We all react differently when we are out of comfort, right? Some of us get angry. Some check out. Some do not feel their body anymore. Some start laughing. We need to release this.
I was so curious. I was staring at them, and I trusted my business partner, so I knew I needed to be quiet.
Finally, they spoke first. They said, “Okay, now tell us. What is it about? What is it that you propose?”
We got the deal we were looking for. When we left the meeting, I ran to my business partner and said, “Okay, tell me. What was that about?”
He said, “In our culture, whoever speaks first has less leverage.”
Shelley Johnson: That is actually a sales technique. Once you have done the close, whoever speaks first loses.
Anna Lecat: Really? I am learning something new. Wow, thank you.
Shelley Johnson: It makes sense. It really does. I think I talk too much. I am going to start listening more.
Anna Lecat: At that moment, when he said it to me, I realized I needed to learn how to stay quiet. The ability to stay quiet in a highly emotional situation is a power.
It is powerful in negotiation, but it is also powerful during conflict. If I am uncomfortable, scared, or angry, staying quiet allows me to focus on my breathing, my emotions, and the sensations in my body. I am not speaking, so I am collecting my energy. I feel my feet on the ground. I exhale slowly. I can find myself again. Then I can be deliberate about what I say next.
For that, I needed to become comfortable with silence.
When you ask, “What do we do? How do we get comfortable with conflict?” first we need to get comfortable with our silence.
Shelley Johnson: That is a tough one. I think people would have to practice.
Anna Lecat: Right. Like everything else, like all the hard things, we practice.
Kathy Tuccaro: Speaking of hard things, I come from a very violent background, even as a small child. My baseline was violence and fear. Anytime I would speak, I would be told to shut up, that I wasted the air, that I polluted the air, that my words were useless, and so on.
In adulthood, anytime conflict would arise, I would shut down. When I finally went to therapy, I spent two years in a women’s center relearning how to live and unlearning all the trauma.
Now, 13 years later, in relationships, I still struggle when conflict arises. Is there something you could tell me that would assist me in getting past that initial blockage? Is there something that would help us cross that barrier?
Anna Lecat: I will share with you what I do. We are not comparing traumas, of course, but it was very tough to grow up where I grew up in Soviet Ukraine.
As Shelley already mentioned, I am Jewish, and there was a lot of antisemitism growing up. I was in many situations where it was dangerous and violent.
Now when I get triggered and emotionally flooded, and I am not able to be deliberate, what helps me is this: if somebody’s volume gets too loud for me and I cannot hear them anymore because all I see is violence or the possibility of violence, and I feel unsafe, I will say, “I want to stay in this conversation, but not at this volume. Can we please change the volume?” Or, “Not at this tone. I cannot be here with this tone.”
Kathy Tuccaro: So you set boundaries.
Anna Lecat: Yes. But you hear my voice, right?
Kathy Tuccaro: Yes.
Anna Lecat: This calm, grounded, low voice is where I want to be at all times. Whenever I feel I cannot stay in this voice, I need to change the situation. I need to redesign the situation.
My number one priority in life is staying in this voice at all times. I am a mother of three children. I run a business. I am a wife. I have elderly parents who live with me. I have many responsibilities. But I believe my number one responsibility is to myself and to my mental health.
The expression of that mental health is my ability to stay calm and speak this way no matter what. I know this means I am not triggered or flooded.
When somebody else gets angry or scared, which is often the same thing because anger can cover fear, as long as I stay in this voice and in this calm, I can help co-regulate them. But the moment I get out of this and become dysregulated, I need to get out completely. I need to get out of the room or out of the conversation. I need to go to the woods, walk, calm down, find this calm again, and then go back into the conflict.
Shelley Johnson: Anna, you talk a lot about self-regulation.
Anna Lecat: Right. Somebody needs to be regulated, and it is usually me. I spend a lot of time in nature and taking care of myself so I can bring this calm to the rest of the world.
Shelley Johnson: So if you cannot get out into nature, can you do almost the same thing through meditation? Maybe you can stop, go inside, and calm yourself that way. Would that be a tool?
Anna Lecat: I am a meditator. I meditate every day. But even though I know how to meditate, for me personally it is not the easiest way to calm down. I need to go hug a tree.
Even in big cities, there are birds, bushes, flowers, or something that is outside what humans built. When we look at nature, there is something magical that happens. It reminds us of our humanity.
Another thing that helps me is this. We have all had hard things happen to us. Some worse than others, but everybody had hard things growing up. When I am feeling uncomfortable and unsafe, I try to see the other person when they were five years old.
Shelley Johnson: So you try to see them as a five-year-old, essentially.
Anna Lecat: Exactly. Whenever somebody is angry, upset, or dysregulated, they have gone back to when they were five years old, or four, or three. They are also triggered.
It helps me to imagine, “Is he now talking out of his five-year-old self? Is he even talking to me right now? Or is he talking to his ex-wife, his mother, his grandmother, or somebody who did something to him?”
Thinking this way brings compassion out of me. Then I calm down, and the person feels it.
Shelley Johnson: That makes total sense. You are bringing the humanity into it again and trying to understand the person. Our emotions develop when we are children, and we go back to how we related then. It may manifest differently, but people could be deeply mad at somebody else, not even the person they are yelling at in the room. That is a powerful perspective.
Anna Lecat: I want to mention one more thing that helps me.
When I am having a conflict with my husband, for example, we are both very powerful. We both run our own businesses. We are usually out in the world making decisions. So when we are having an argument, there is often some kind of competition happening. We forgot we are a team. We forgot we are on the same team, and we are going one against the other.
We have been together now for 15 years, and we know that when this is happening, we need to switch and remember that we are on the same team. We sit next to each other. We never have difficult conversations sitting across from each other.
If we are in a restaurant and we know something tough needs to be discussed, we ask to be seated next to each other. The problem is in front of both of us. We are never each other’s problem. The problem is in front of us, and we are on the same team.
That reminder really shifts the perspective. We do not need to defend ourselves from the other person. We are together, looking at something in our life that dysregulated us. It is not each other.
Another thing we often forget is how important touch is for us as human beings. Sometimes when somebody is really angry, I will just gently touch them on the shoulder with the intention of calming them down.
I think about how I am with my kids. If they are upset, I am not going to yell at them because they are already upset. I need to regulate them and calm them down, so I will hold them. In a corporate environment, I cannot hold an executive.
Shelley Johnson: Could you imagine?
Anna Lecat: I could, but it is not always appropriate. Still, to the extent that it is allowed, I may initiate some kind of touch. People do not always notice what is happening, but they feel calmer.
It is about remembering that we are human beings. We are not machines.
Shelley Johnson: Yes. Bringing back the humanity. Maybe it also brings somebody back to when they were a child and their mother did that, so it is a natural reaction for them to calm down. That is powerful.
Anna, your perspectives are really revolutionary. I do not think a lot of people talk about this. You reframe conflict as a kind of tango: tension plus connection equals creation. Could you give a summary of that? How does it work exactly? How is it a tango?
Anna Lecat: First of all, I am obsessed with tango. I am a tango dancer. I have been dancing for many years.
Tango is a fully improvised dance. Have you ever seen tango?
Shelley Johnson: Yes.
Anna Lecat: It is hard to believe that two people can improvise every step to that level. I actually dance both roles, so I know how to lead and follow in tango.
I learned how to lead because I was so frustrated that women always had to sit and wait to be invited to dance. Women were not allowed to go and invite men to dance. They had to wait to be invited. So I decided I would not wait to be chosen.
As I learned both sides, I understood that it is extremely difficult to lead. Every step of tango is negotiated and questioned. Since we do not know what is going to happen, we do not know what the other person is going to do. We need to negotiate and adjust. We hesitate, pause, hold, look, and listen carefully to the other person.
All kinds of misunderstandings happen along the way. We need to adjust, renegotiate, and continue. The better we do it and the longer we do it, the deeper our connection becomes. Then we create something bigger than both of us could create alone, which is art.
The more I practice, the more I realize that all the skills we need to stay connected through conflict are skills we already practice in improvised partner dance. We negotiate conflicts and hard conversations every second, every step, and connect deeper and deeper to each other.
We say, “It takes two to tango.” But I think that is misunderstood. We usually think it means two people. Actually, it means two connections: one with yourself and one with the other person.
First, you need to be fully connected with yourself. Where are you? Are you stable on the ground? Do you feel your breathing? Do you hear the music? Do you know where your balance is?
Only then can you start noticing the other person. Where are they? How are they feeling? What do they need?
If we cannot stay connected with ourselves, we cannot connect with the other person. It is the same in a hard conversation or any conflict. We need to first ask: Where am I? Am I okay? Am I safe? How am I contributing to the conflict? What are my biases? What are my beliefs? Am I triggered? Am I imagining this person is reminding me of something that happened to me a long time ago, or am I actually interacting with the person in front of me? What is real?
Then we can look at the person in front of us and ask: What is going on with them? What do they believe? What information do they have? How are they feeling? What are they scared of? What are their values? How will I now interact with them?
Shelley Johnson: That is a lot of thinking going on as you are interacting with someone. You really have to develop self-awareness. You have to be intuitive and develop empathy in order to read the other person and understand where they are coming from.
How do we develop all of that? Because I think people shut down and just react.
Anna Lecat: I will tell you what helps me.
When something is really important, all of a sudden I have the skills. For example, when I went on a first date with my now husband, I had all the skills. I had compassion. I could feel myself. It was so important to me that all of a sudden I could almost read his mind because I really liked him, and I really wanted it to work.
When we really need something, we have the skills.
Shelley Johnson: In our last segment, you were saying that when we really need something, if there is a conflict or something we want to accomplish, we have the skills to do it. We are more in tune.
Anna Lecat: Right. That means we know how to do it.
Now, when I am in front of someone and it is difficult for me to connect, I take myself back to the moments when it mattered and I had the skills. Then I bring that compassion, attunement, and presence into the conversation.
For example, we all have different triggers. For me, one trigger is arrogance. When I am with someone who is arrogant, I get triggered. It is very difficult for me to connect with somebody who thinks they are better than everybody else.
Shelley Johnson: Oh yes. I cannot stand people like that.
Anna Lecat: Good. We have the same trigger.
The other day, I was having lunch with an acquaintance in Paris. As she was paying, she handed her credit card to the waiter without looking at him. For me, that is such a trigger.
I think waiters, or anybody who helps me, are extremely important. I will stop everything to honor them because they are bringing me food. It does not matter what I am doing. I will thank them. I will talk to them. I will ask their name. I want to honor everybody who is helping me.
When she handed him the credit card without looking at him and kept talking to me, everything got dark for me. I could not listen to her anymore. I forgot she was a human being because I got so upset. I needed to apologize to the waiter.
But I wanted to stay connected with her. I do not want to be the person who acts out of the darkness. So it really was like walking out of the darkness into the light. I reminded myself, “Okay, she is still someone I just had lunch with. How do I talk to somebody I care about?”
I changed my state first. I behaved as if I was calm, and then calm came back. I found my voice, this calm voice, and from that voice I addressed it.
I said, “Here is what just happened. I want to be clear. I got very triggered. I think it comes from my childhood, when Russians in the Soviet Union thought they were better than other people. Anytime I see anybody who thinks they are better than other people, I want to protect all the marginalized people. Going forward, can you please not do that?”
I explained why it is so important to look people in the eye when you pay them.
Later, she apologized. She had tears in her eyes. She did not realize it was happening. Now I can have lunch with her and not worry that it will happen because I know she changed.
Shelley Johnson: You gave her a valuable message, and you were able to handle it in a diplomatic way that she could accept.
Is that where the whole concept of loving conflict comes in? Because I see from your book that it does not mean simply engaging, handling, tolerating, or managing conflict. It also does not mean picking fights, being aggressive, seeking drama, or abandoning your own needs.
You are being proactive and assertive rather than aggressive. It is positive because you are in control of yourself, and then you are able to get cooperation from someone else, or at least create the possibility of cooperation.
Anna Lecat: Exactly. Collaboration is what I am looking for at all times.
I think my obsession with collaboration comes from the fact that I am now in the middle of several major conflicts in the world. I am Ukrainian, and Russia is at war with Ukraine. I have built businesses between China and the U.S. for many years, and now they are in a trade war. I am Jewish. I have family in Israel, and I have friends in the Palestinian community, and there is a conflict in the Middle East.
I am constantly in situations where I know that if we do not collaborate, we have war.
We can look at this in private examples, in our families. We know that if we do not have hard conversations for a long time, it leads to breakups, divorce, and disconnection. On a community or company level, it leads to worse situations. On a country level, we see what is happening with wars.
I think collaboration is something we all need to learn right now, and we cannot collaborate without moving through conflicts and difficult conversations.
Shelley, you said before that it is so much work. Yes, it is a lot of work. But without this work, we do not get the deep love and deep relationships we all yearn for.
Shelley Johnson: You have some powerful messages here. You should be a world diplomat. I really think world leaders could learn from your principles.
I am looking at some of the points of your book: engage with presence, assume nothing, listen to understand, the art of questioning, and the rule of us, which is moving from “me versus you” to “we” to build a shared identity even in disagreement. We could use that today.
There is so much divisiveness. We are shattered. We are fragmented. We do not have a shared identity.
Anna Lecat: Absolutely. I think this is definitely a time for us to change that.
I am working a lot with groups that are very fractured. I am hired by organizations and companies when they have a major conflict or a hard conversation to have, and they are not managing it well.
I also work with families and couples who are pre-divorce, or when something very hard is happening. I come in and teach them. I walk them through the steps you just mentioned, and we work on the skills so they are able to do it.
I work a lot in Asia, for example. I am fluent in Mandarin, and I work with family businesses where multiple generations are working together. There is often a lot of conflict, with an older founder bringing in the younger children, and they do not really speak the same language.
In the States, with what is going on in politics, it affects corporations. It affects boards and teams. Anytime something major happens politically, people stop talking. So I come in and facilitate those conversations. We all sit together and hold hands.
Shelley Johnson: I love it. Where do people reach out to you? I imagine you work with individuals as well as corporations. Where is the best place to reach you and find your book, Loving Conflict: Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division?
Anna Lecat: Thank you. My website is annalecat.com. My book is coming out at the end of March. It is finished, and the publishing is happening at the end of March.
Right now, I am working a lot with couples. My focus is couples because I believe that if everything is good at home and in our intimate life, we carry that security, safety, and anchor into our public life.
When we have enough intimacy to feed our body, soul, and what we want from love, we are then kinder and more compassionate when we go out and interact with the world.
I am putting a lot of attention on that now and working with many couples, especially in the States, where intimacy is missing because something happened and trust was broken. We are walking back into trust together.
Shelley Johnson: I love your perspectives, Anna. People can reach out to you at annalecat.com.
You are exactly what the world needs. This is powerful. Thank you so much for being on the show with us.
Kathy Tuccaro: Oh my gosh, it has been such a great conversation. Honestly, it has been fabulous. Thank you very much.
Anna Lecat: Thank you for having me.
Shelley Johnson: Thank you, Anna.
You can sign up for Anna’s book, Loving Conflict: Creating Collaboration Where Others See Division, on her website. The book is coming out in March. It is a powerful compilation of the information we just covered: why conflict is not a failure but a form of connection, how to shift from reactive patterns to courageous dialogue, how cultural, relational, and personal history shape conflict, and practical exercises to support collaboration under pressure.
You can find out more on Anna’s website at annalecat.com.