Today I share my conversation with Suzanne Vickberg, aka Dr. Suz. She is a social-personality psychologist and a Research Lead at Deloitte Greenhouse. Along with her Deloitte Greenhouse colleague Kim Christfort, Suzanne co-authored the best-selling book Business Chemistry.
But there’s another type of Chemistry - or Alchemistry - that I sat down to talk to Dr. Suz about - shifting the default track of a conversation from protection and opposition to collaboration,
Some years ago I interviewed Dr. Elizabeth Stokoe, a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, who speaks in her book “Talk” about conversations as having a landscape or a “track” that participants asses and orient to rather quickly…and that we glide down that track, while we monitor the texture of that landscape, and navigate the bumps in the road…so that we can keep things on safely on track. Check out our podcast conversation here and her TEDx talk here. In the opening quote to this podcast, you can hear Dr. Suz describing this process of “landscape orienting” happening very rapidly in a divorce context.
Knowing the default path is very helpful when navigating a “hello, how are you?” kind of “small talk” conversation in a non-wierdo-way. Knowing the default track can help make things smooth and easy…when you’re visiting the store, or a bowling alley. And when you don’t know the basics of the track, things can be hard - Doing simple things in a different culture can be surprisingly slippery to navigate when you don’t know the basics of the track.
But sometimes the default path can be extremely detrimental - especially when the default is ineffectual or becomes unconscious and habitual - we keep doing things out of rote, not intent.
In business, a common default/habitual conversational path is looking at an underperformer and putting them on a Performance Improvement Plan in order to be able to fire them more easily,
A non-default, more conscious conversation is taking the time to learn *why* they are underperforming and helping them actually transform themselves, their work performance and their lives….and in the process deeply benefiting the company and even the community.
Seems impossible, right? Or grandiose? Carol Sandford, in her book about Regenerative Business talks about an organization that did just this… a manager discovered that a chronically underperforming and late employee was just functionally illiterate. That employee, once they felt safe to share more, helped that manager learn that many of their employees were facing similar issues. Instead of a PIP, this employee got literacy training, and became an advisor to a new literacy program developed inside the organization, which spread out to the larger community, in ripples of growth and transformation.
That is a *non* default conversation - turning a PIP conversation into a community-transformation conversation.
On a micro-scale, Dr. Suz’s book tells the story of rethinking or re-designing the “default track” for a very, very common conversation - Divorce. When that word gets said out loud, people find lawyers, put up a shield, and start digging trenches.
There is a better way! It takes effort to deeply empathize with your “opponent” in a difficult conversation. It takes patience and imagination to collaborate with your “opponent” to design a win-win scenario.
But the default design for divorce doesn’t usually create ideal outcomes…just conventional ones. It’s possible to create something better than you can imagine if you create the space for a transformational conversation.
Dr. Suz helps break down how “design” in these situations just means really understanding the REAL problem we’re solving and what our IDEAL outcome really could look like… BEFORE we jump to solutions.
Also check out my podcast conversation with Adam Kahane, author of, among many other amazing books, the book Collaborating with the Enemy - which is what I know a divorce can feel like. Some of his perspectives take this “divorce by design” mindset into the broader business and strategy arena.
Enjoy this conversation as much as I did…and think about how you might transform the most challenging conversations in your life and work. With more conscious creativity and intention, with empathy and collaboration…with more design you can create more of what you really want, just like Dr. Suz did for her own divorce and for her own life.
Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources
https://www.divorcexdesign.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannevickberg/
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/svickberg.html
https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/facilitating-breakthrough-with-adam-kahane
AI Summary and Key Moments
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg shares her experience of redesigning her own divorce process with empathy and finding a solution that met both her and her husband's needs. She emphasizes the importance of focusing on the problem being solved and encourages others to consider different ways of approaching divorce. Daniel Stillman and Dr. Suzanne Vickberg discuss negotiation and the concept of growing the pie versus splitting the pie.
Key Moments
• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg defines design as intentionally creating something that leads to a desired outcome (1:18)
• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg talks about redesigning their own divorce and reverse engineering the process to help others do the same, including the conversational work involved in negotiating a new way of being (4:19)
• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg explains how she rejected the idea of protecting herself and instead focused on empathy and finding a solution that met both her and her husband's needs (12:46)
• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg emphasizes the importance of focusing on the problem being solved and envisioning the ideal outcome, rather than just trying to end the pain in the present moment (23:16)
• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg shares her unique solution of co-parenting with her ex-husband and encourages others to consider different ways of approaching divorce (25:37)
• Dr. Suzanne Vickberg talks about her values of not enjoying winning when someone else loses and loyalty, and how she applied them to her divorce process (35:34)
• Daniel Stillman and Dr. Suzanne Vickberg discuss negotiation and the concept of growing the pie versus splitting the pie (37:16)
• Daniel Stillman asks what people should say when someone tells them they're getting divorced, and Dr. Suzanne Vickberg suggests asking "how are you feeling about that?" instead of saying "I'm sorry" (48:13)
More about Suzanne Vickberg (aka Dr. Suz)
Dr. Suz is a social-personality psychologist and a leading practitioner of Deloitte’s Business Chemistry, which Deloitte uses to guide clients as they explore how their work is shaped by the mix of individuals who make up a team. Previously serving in Deloitte’s Talent organization, since 2014 she’s been coaching leaders and teams in creating cultures that enable each member to thrive and make their best contribution.
Along with her Deloitte Greenhouse colleague Kim Christfort, Suzanne co-authored the book Business Chemistry: Practical Magic for Crafting Powerful Work Relationships as well as a Harvard Business Review cover feature on the same topic. She also leads the Deloitte Greenhouse research program focused on Business Chemistry and is the primary author of the Business Chemistry blog. An “unapologetic introvert” and Business Chemistry Guardian-Dreamer, you will never-the-less often find her in front of a room, a camera, or a podcast microphone speaking about Business Chemistry or Suzanne and Kim’s second book, The Breakthrough Manifesto: Ten Principles to Spark Transformative Innovation, which digs deep into methodologies and mindsets to help obliterate barriers to change and ignite a whole new level of creative problem-solving.
Suzanne is a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate with an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a doctorate in Social-Personality Psychology from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. She is also a professional coach, certified by the International Coaching Federation. She has lectured at Rutgers Business School and several colleges in the CUNY system, and before joining Deloitte in 2009, she gained experience in the health care and consulting fields. A mom of two teenagers, she maintains her native Minnesota roots and currently resides in New Jersey, where she volunteers for several local organizations with a focus on hunger relief.
Full AI-Generated Transcript
Daniel Stillman 00:00
Allow me to officially welcome you to the conversation factory. Suzanne, I'm so glad we made the time for this conversation. I appreciate you being here today.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 00:10
Me too. Thank you for inviting.
Daniel Stillman 00:12
So let's. We have so much to talk about. Oh, my God. When did you first start to value.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 00:23
Know? I'm not sure I really thought all that much about design per se until sometime probably in the last ten years. I work for Deloitte in part of the organization called the Greenhouse. That is about designing experiences. And that's when the word design and the idea of design really started to be something I was conscious. Yeah. But of course, that doesn't mean that I wasn't designing things before.
Daniel Stillman 00:58
That sounds like, what are the boundaries of design as you see them now? Because it's clearly in your work and in your writing, what is designable and what design is for is not the sort of maybe more conventional definition of some people who might be listening.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 01:18
Yeah, I don't think I've ever been asked that question. So for me, design is really about intentionally thinking about how you want something to be, how you want it to be used, how you want to see it, how you want to feel about it, how you want to experience it, or you want other people to experience it, and then creating something that will lead to that outcome that you're looking for.
Daniel Stillman 01:46
Right. I think one of the things that's so powerful and such an interesting proposition about your book divorce by design is this idea. When we look at the world, everything is designed. I think years ago, I saw a talk with John Maida where he know showed a street, and he's like, look, this street was designed. These buildings were designed. The lamppost, the clothing, everything. And there's also that famous Steve Jobs quote about design being how something really works. Everything is designed. Who designed divorce?
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 02:30
Yeah. Who did design divorce? I mean, it was probably not usually the people who are getting divorced. And even now, while you can design your own divorce, if you are legally married, there will be other people who have something to say about how you do it. Yeah. Right. The end of the day, a judge somewhere is going to approve your divorce and how you're doing it depending on.
Daniel Stillman 03:02
What state you live in. And this is the thing of, like, there are ways that things are already designed that may not be working. Well. I feel like there's this meme of like, am I depressed? Or is it capitalism? Am I sad? Or is it the fact that cities were not designed to be walkable? Right. So there are designs that are not designed for how we are built and what our psychology is.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 03:29
Yeah, I feel that really strongly. I'm an introvert, and I recognize that the world, in a lot of ways, is not designed for me, and that's why things feel hard. But I can design my life around having a little less of the things that don't work for me and a little more of the things that do. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 03:49
So you took your design mindset and redesigned your own divorce, which is the seed of this book. It is a very powerful reimagining of the traditional ways that don't necessarily serve us. I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about your journey in deciding to take a creative, problem solving approach to your divorce and also to help others do it.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 04:19
Yeah. Well, I think that I was like many people who are struggling in their marriage, I struggled for a long time. I mean, we both did. Just really pretty unsatisfied and unhappy, but not really seeing an alternative that felt at all acceptable. We had two small children, like, two year old and a four year old. It didn't seem like something that I could even imagine doing was breaking up our family at that point. And it was this feeling of being really stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's sort of like, I can stay in this and be unhappy, or I can leave and sort of make everyone else also unhappy. And so, like a lot of people, what I essentially did for quite a while was nothing.
Daniel Stillman 05:17
You can just ignore the problem and just kind of certainly try.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 05:22
Yeah, that's one solution, yes. But I just kind of kept working it. I tend to ruminate on things. Usually not a great thing, but every once in a while, it's to my benefit. I just kept thinking, this can't be, like, the only possibility, these two options. And so I really tried to focus in on what is the part of this that's not working for me? And it was the marriage. It wasn't our living situation. It wasn't the family. It was really the marriage. And the way I felt in it. And I won't even say that the problem was my ex husband. The marriage, the romantic part of our relationship, the sort of lifetime partnership as a romantic couple, was the part that wasn't working. And once I sort of really started to think about it that way, I thought, well, can't we just end that part and keep the stuff that works? And I started talking to him about it, and I said, let's just call that over. But no one has to leave. We can stay in our home. We can raise our kids together. Why not we do that? Well, let's just call the marriage over, sort of remove that part from the picture and continue on with the things that do work for us and don't change anything else. I mean, that's really how it came to be. And the book and sort of the process that I help people through to think about their own marriage and their own divorce and how to get creative in their own way was something I sort of reverse engineered after the fact, when I realized what we ultimately were doing. I think it would have been easier to do if I had had this mind frame from the beginning, but it was more a realization. Like, we designed this to be very different from the traditional.
Daniel Stillman 07:52
I mean, well, what you did was, there's this great diagram I don't know if you've ever read collaborating with the enemy by Adam Cahane. He's an amazing facilitator, and he basically has this flowchart diagram of, like, well, if you can't force your way to a new wave with someone, and if you don't want to leave and you can't accept things the way they are, and you don't want to just give in, like, there is this last approach, which is engaging with someone in rethinking or reimagining or redesigning the way things are. It seems simple on the face, but we're subsuming years and years and years of rumination and avoidance, and you finally being able to broach the conversation. And this is really what we were talking about before we started recording. At the conversational level, you had a whole series of conversations with yourself that led you to decide to have a conversation with your then husband, and an almost infinity number of conversations afterwards that had to happen to continue to negotiate a new way of being, to explain it to others, to defend it to society. Can you just talk? Because it seems, on the face, so obvious that divorce needs to be redesigned, because the normal design would be, go get another house, not see your kids as much, spend a whole bunch of money, and we're not optimizing for what we really want. That seems simple, but I know that on a conversational level, it was work. And I'm wondering what you can share about the conversational work that went into getting to that new state and then sustaining that new state.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 09:49
Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that most people do either before or after they've started talking to their spouse about divorce is they talk to other people about it. Right. And those people might be their loved ones, or they might be their therapist or there might be an attorney, they will go and just, I just want to get the lay of the land. I just want to understand what my rights are or how this would work. And there's nothing wrong with doing that, of course. And for a lot of people, it's a really important step. But if you start talking almost to anyone else about divorce, what's going to come back at you is sort of all the traditional stuff. It's how people view divorce. And the first thing that most people will start encouraging you to do is to protect yourself.
Daniel Stillman 10:44
Yeah.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 10:46
And again, I'm not saying some people don't need to do that, but you're immediately, when you start thinking about this in terms of protecting yourself, you are immediately setting up a dynamic, at least in your mind, if not actually with your partner, that we're not in this together, we are against each other in this. And so the conversations you start having sort of usually send you down in a certain direction, which is going to be some kind of combative situation, even if you're reasonably cordial. Let's set everything up. Let's make sure we have all these agreements, because we probably will not be able to get along in the future. We will not be able to manage things together. So those conversations that I had early on with people and that most people do, I mostly found not very helpful, frankly, loved ones who did the same. First of all, the first reaction, at least of my family and friends, was like, really, your marriage is not that bad. You should stay. The assumption always that you should stay. If you can in any way find a way to stay, you stay. Yes, that's what you do. And then once people start to accept that, in fact, I'm not going to stay, or at least not stay married, then they start pushing you down this path of. Because I started telling people right away, well, we're going to get divorced, but no one's going to move out. We're going to live together and we're going to raise our kids together.
Daniel Stillman 12:42
Everyone's hair, I'm assuming, moved back a few inches.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 12:46
Everyone says, you can't do that. That's a terrible idea. Why is that?
Daniel Stillman 12:53
There's no good or bad ideas in a brainstorm, guys. We're brainstorming here exactly why is that a terrible idea?
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 13:02
And because people just couldn't wrap their brain. Like, they just couldn't see it. It seemed weird.
Daniel Stillman 13:10
And your experience has proved that it is, at least for you in your situation, in terms of what you were trying to optimize. For a great solution.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 13:21
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 13:22
Right. You got more time with your kids than you would have had if you were splitting time between two houses. I was just telling my wife about this, giving her the thumbnail of like. And you don't have to buy another house, and you don't have to see them only half the amount of time. And because there's three adults in the house, you got to have more flexibility and more consistent care for the kids. Like, all these things that everybody in these conversations were like, that's a terrible idea. So the conversation you had with yourself after those conversations, somehow you kept feeling like, this is still the right approach.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 14:02
Yeah, I think I'm not a very good advice taker.
Daniel Stillman 14:08
That's good.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 14:11
Most people really aren't, frankly. I mean, any of us who's ever given advice and watched the people we're giving advice to never ever do the thing that we told them to do. But I'm stubborn. I'm not easily convinced of things. I can be convinced, but it takes a while, and usually I have to sort of hear something multiple times. And I didn't buy it, I didn't see it, and I was the one living in it. And so I think I had a clearer picture than anyone else of what our relationship was like, what I could imagine it could be in the future. And, I mean, honestly, at the time, what we agreed was, we'll just do this as long as it works for both of us. And it's been 13 years. Did I know that we would be doing this for 1315 years? No, I didn't know that we wouldn't have. It was open ended. Yes, but I don't know. I just felt like I don't want to do what everyone else is telling me to do.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 15:27
I don't believe them when they say it can't work. And the other thing people told us was like, okay, fine, maybe you can make it work for a little while, but one of you is going to meet someone, and then what? That could never work.
Daniel Stillman 15:39
Right. And then you have to have those conversations.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 15:41
Yeah. And in fact, he met the woman who's now his wife, Anna, almost right away. Within two months of us calling our marriage over, he had met her. And again, he didn't know he was going to marry her. They waited ten years before they got married, but she was sort of like, within a year was in the picture. And I continued to think, I'm glad. I still don't see why this can't work. And she moved in with us. Once we added onto the house so that we had a little bit more space.
Daniel Stillman 16:20
So I think this is what we would call varsity level conversation design and innovative thinking. There's some layers that I think are worth peeling back on this, because in my way of thinking around design, we're optimizing for something. There's some heuristic we're using to judge whether or not this is a good design. And so when people were saying to you, you've got to protect yourself, you looked at that. What I'm hearing is that heuristic optimizing for protection. There's costs to optimizing for protection. There's pluses to being aware of protection. But there's another set of design principles that you wanted to design your conversation with your husband and your family for. And I think curiosity, bringing an options mindset versus. There's got to be one way or a goal setting mindset of, like, what am I really trying to create here? Mindset. What do you feel like you were trying to design for in those conversations? You weren't necessarily designed to protect yourself. You were really trying to optimize for something else.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 17:44
Yeah, no, I definitely rejected the protect yourself heuristic. And again, I'm not saying that that's not important for some people. I know every marriage is different, and people are sometimes in a marriage that is
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 18:02
much more challenging in certain ways than mine. But for me here, I'm looking at this person that I've been with for ten years, and while we're not working as a married couple, I just didn't feel like there was a reason he would be out to get me.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 18:25
So I sort of just outright rejected it. We didn't even have any kind of financial agreement or anything for the first few years. And we did put one in place eventually because it was sort of like, oh, he had a business, I had a retirement account. We wanted to sort of figure out, well, how is that all going to work? So we did get an agreement in place eventually, but I think what I was really focused on, number one, is empathy. I was looking to have my needs met, but I didn't want to do it at the expense of him getting his needs met. And not all the needs were compatible in the moment because he wanted to stay married and I wanted to get divorced. That was an incompatibility. But digging underneath that and trying to understand why did he want to stay married was the important thing. And it really wasn't about me. It wasn't about staying married. To me, yes, it was about the family. It was about the home. It was about being in the community as a married person.
Daniel Stillman 19:43
Yes.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 19:45
There were things about being married that he really valued that. And I'm not saying he didn't value me as a person, but to me it didn't feel like, oh, this is about, you must be with me.
Daniel Stillman 19:58
Right. It was about the Perry marriage. It was the marriage trapping all the pieces around it in the people that you advise and coach. It is very hard to tap into these resources when we are in a state of scarcity and survival, to get into empathy, to get out of protection and into curiosity and empathy and being generative. I would say nontrivial. They say in the mathematics world, the solution is nontrivial.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 20:41
Right.
Daniel Stillman 20:41
Which means we don't know if a solution exists and we don't know how long it will take to find the right solution. So how do you get people into these really important design mindsets of a willingness to prototype, an openness to empathy and being generative? I mean, I suppose if I was going to do it in the design thinking order, it'd be empathy, a generative mindset, and a willingness to prototype, because you and your husband at the time said, like, well, let's try this for now and let's inspect the results as we go. How do you coach people to get out of that protection and panic survival mindset into this design thinking mindset to really reevaluate their approach? Because it does not come for free.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 21:36
No. Well, it's not easy, as you said. Although I will say that I think that people, anyone who would approach me for coaching around this would already be a step ahead because they're already thinking, yeah, that sounds good. I think your solution may not be the exact right solution for me, but I would like to do this differently. So that is one thing. It's sort of like some people are starting out with a little bit more of an optimistic and open mindset that, well, maybe I don't just have to do whatever someone else told me to do. Another thing is that it's not something that happens in a linear way. It's like there are days when even the most open minded person is feeling really hurt and they're angry and they're just not right now. They're not able to be empathetic because they feel their partner is not empathetic and they're mad and heartbroken. But you could see the same person a week later being in a totally different place as things progress.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 23:04
That's another piece of it. And then what I really try to do with people is get them to focus in on what problem are you actually solving for? And then how would you want it to be if you could? This vision of what's the perfect divorce, which is not the same for everybody, but is a new way for a lot of people in terms of thinking about it and thinking just, like, let's just forget all the realities of the situation for a minute, like we do with almost any kind of creative problem solving. Let's put aside some of the constraints and let's focus on blue sky thinking, like, if I could have anything, what would it be? And then start thinking about, like, okay, well, I may or may not be able to get all of that, but how can I get closer to that than to the traditional path? Yes.
Daniel Stillman 24:04
This is such a powerful idea. It's what my coaching coach would call creating from the future. Right. And very often, we're in this present moment, which is just filled with pain, and we're trying to optimize for the cessation of pain. And the way you tried to do that and the way many of us try to do that is to avoid it, to numb it out, and to just ignore it for as long as possible, because that's actually one of the most efficacious solutions in the present moment, is just try not to feel it. Try not to feel anything. Numb it down. And what you're talking about is not the first step of, like, well, how do I end this pain? Sometimes the most efficacious way to do that is just to go to a divorce lawyer and serve them papers and say, I want a divorce. But you're talking about a much, much harder thing, a much more challenging thing, which will produce greater results for somebody, which is to think about, what do I really want? Not just a month from now, when I'm feeling less pain, but a year from now, two years from now, do I want to still be able to see my cat, our cat? Do I want to see our kids? Do I want to be able to go on vacations together? Like, whatever that optimal dream is. You want people to dream a little bit and then work backwards. And that is so powerful.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 25:37
That's really the point of sharing my story, because, let's be honest, a lot of people don't want to live with their ex for a decade and a half after they.
Daniel Stillman 25:48
It's not for the faint of heart.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 25:50
Not for everyone, but that's not what we're talking about here. That is my solution, our solution for our family, which has worked great for us, but it's so unique. We're not the only ones who do it, by the way. There are other people who have maybe slightly different flavors, but it's still pretty unique. And so the reason that it's so important to me for people to hear about it is because it helps them see, like, oh, okay, well, there are different ways, and maybe I can come up with my own different way.
Daniel Stillman 26:27
Yes. That there are many, many ways of being, and that really changes. I mean, we're talking. My favorite axe to grind is the conversation. Right. Changing the conversation in the culture around divorce. It's a profound shift that can happen, especially if somebody like you did goes and tells some people, I want to make a change. Maybe they won't get the response of, like, you can't do that. So I feel like, will there be a sequel called marriage by design? Has somebody written that book? I should have checked on this, because, in a way, I mean, I actually wrote this in my book. Some people think divorce is an end to the conversation of marriage, but it's actually an agreement to continue. And it either means. I had an ex who she and her boyfriend at the time divided up the bars in Philadelphia. You know what? These are your bars. These are mine. We will never see each other again. That is our agreement. And then she saw him in one of her bars, and it was like, you're violating the agreement very clearly. I got all the bars south of Market street. So it's an agreement to continue the terms of the conversation, and you had a very different set of terms. Like, we're going to co parent. That's a very different set of terms. To be together in a different way. Do you think there was a time, if you'd thought about redesigning your marriage, that it could have been redesigned? I also know that you talk about, like, you tried many things, and so I think there's a danger to that approach of thinking.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 28:19
Yeah, I think that he and I are fundamentally just like, a mismatch. So could we have redesigned it? Sure, we had some conversations about that along the way, but I have the privilege that very few people on earth have of watching my ex husband succeed in a relationship with someone else up close and personal. I am there every day.
Daniel Stillman 28:55
And you celebrate it.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 28:57
And I do celebrate it. I'm happy for both of them. I'm so happy for my children. But I watched their relationship, and she and I were very good friends. We get along really well and are very compatible in a lot of ways and similar in a lot of ways. And we're different in a lot of ways. And her relationship with him is very different than the relationship I had with him. Not that I'm saying that's the only thing that could have worked for him, but watching that and how that works for him and frankly, just watching my own life and what works for me now, I'm like, yeah, those two things, they just weren't compatible. We want different lifestyles.
Daniel Stillman 29:43
Yes.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 29:44
And they're compatible for raising kids together and for living here, but not for sort of, like, going through life as a couple. Yes. But for other people, sure. Redesigning marriage. I mean, you will hear this once you start talking to divorce people. A lot of people will say, if I had had every other weekend off to myself to do the things that I care about, I could have stayed married a lot longer.
Daniel Stillman 30:12
Yes.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 30:13
We have this idea that, oh, we have to be with the family all the time or with the partner all the time, or taking care of the kids all the time. We don't get time alone to live our own life once we're married.
Daniel Stillman 30:26
Most of us.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 30:28
And then you get divorced, and many people are forced into it, like they didn't want every other weekend without their kids. But now they have it, and they figure out how to make the most of it, and they can learn to really appreciate it. And a lot of people will say, if I could have had that, the marriage might have worked.
Daniel Stillman 30:47
Yeah. I feel like I interviewed one of my high school friends who happened to write a bestseller called Fair Play. I had her on some time ago, and she designed a card game for couples to literally put all the cards on the table around who's holding which cards in terms of managing the life. And women hold more of the cards in many relationships and don't have the time to live their whole lives, which is why she wrote a second book called Unicorn Space. Shout out to Eve, sorry, but it needs design. It needs a redesign. The process of being married certainly needs a redesign. And the process of getting divorced needs, as you said, it's a cyclical design process. So I think one of the other things I'm curious about is I imagine that in coaching someone to be creative about their process of getting divorced, they, too, will need to become a coach to the people in their lives, especially their spouse, to continuously. Because one of the things I heard you say in your conversation with your then husband is, oh, it sounds like this is using an appreciative inquiry lens, like, oh, this is the thing you really want. Yeah, this is what staying married means to you. And so I think what would it be like if you could have that and it was still compatible with the thing that I want? Because I think it is that conversation. How can people who want to have this conversation with someone that they are in an agreement with get into the process of coaching them through renegotiating that level of clarity, of detail?
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 32:43
And I think one of the things that can help is honestly reading about negotiation. And there are different, obviously, lots of different schools of negotiation. And so you want one that's going to be focused on maintaining a relationship long term with the person that you're negotiating with, not like a one time negotiation, and I don't care what happens to the person.
Daniel Stillman 33:08
Right.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 33:10
But we had more of a trivial situation when we first split up. I moved into the guest room because I wanted the space most, so I just moved. But then we had to kind of have this negotiation about who keeps the main bedroom because it was bigger and more closets, and we both wanted it.
Daniel Stillman 33:29
Yes.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 33:33
So we had to have this conversation. It's like, I want the room while I want the room. Well, we can't both room. So why do you want the room? And for me, it was like the closets. We just painted it this color that I loved. For him, it was like, because I feel like I should be able to get it because you're the one moving out. The tv is in here. There was no tv in the guest room. Tv is in here. The kids come looking for us in here. Like, I don't want to be in a different room when the kids come looking. But we wanted it for different reasons.
Daniel Stillman 34:13
Yes.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 34:14
And so once we talked about that, it's like, okay, fine, I don't care about the tv. I feel like the kids can find me, and I will move into the guest room. I will paint, have it painted color that I like. I will keep half the closet in the master room, and I'll get the closet in the guest room and part of the closet. So it's figuring out what is the disagreement actually about, again, what's underneath. Whatever it is I'm saying I want. And whatever you're saying you want. Yes. And if we can find out what's underneath it, then we might be able to both have what we want.
Daniel Stillman 34:56
Yes. Getting to that level of curiosity and empathy is a tremendous accomplishment.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 35:06
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 35:06
I think I just feel like it remains to be said, like, if we're talking about the conversational level of redesigning divorce as a broad idea,
Daniel Stillman 35:19
it seems good and valuable on the face, but each one of those conversations takes some juice.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 35:26
Yeah. And I think a lot of it's about getting very clear on about who you are and who you want to be. I have never been a person.
Daniel Stillman 35:38
Who.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 35:39
Can enjoy winning when someone else loses. I don't want to play a board game with you. I would rather you win because if I win and you care about it even in the least bit, and now you feel bad, then I'm going to feel bad. And I don't enjoy winning that way. Yes. When I watch a sports game on tv, even if I care about which team, I always feel for the other team. So that's part of who I am and who I want to be. Yes. And so in every little interaction we had, as we were figuring things out, I wasn't going to appreciate whatever I had won if it meant that he lost. That was important to me. I also write in the book about my really strong value of loyalty and how that for a long time is part of what kept me married. Well, I'm loyal to him. I cannot divorce him. But instead I took that loyalty and said, what does divorce look like when you're loyal? How can you apply loyalty in divorce? It's by continually thinking about how what you do is going to impact the other person. And it's not martyrdom. It's not that I just said, oh, well, whatever he wants is great, or that, oh, I'll just suffer and he can have everything his way. But it's just about the balance and really doing best to find.
Daniel Stillman 37:16
For you. We talked about negotiation, and I'm just thinking about getting to yes, which is the Harvard project and negotiation classic. I actually went to the Harvard Negotiation Institute for a week long negotiation intensive. I always tell people it's the best business vacation I ever went on, like going up against all these lawyers and losing and learning the process. I had my teacher, Bob Bordon, on the podcast years ago, and one of the things that I learned was this idea of growing the pie versus splitting the pie. And that's really what you're talking about here, is this protection mindset is coming from a scarcity mindset. And the idea that we can both have what we want and what we need and make something better than we thought was possible is a profound shift. And believing that it's true, believing that it's possible means that we can be willing to create it.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 38:18
And I actually talk about getting to yes. I included a little section about it in my book and growing the pie. And that's probably even where I told the story of that example. I just gave and it's funny because when I was, I went to business school many years ago, and I read getting to yes. And I thought, should I be updating this? I'm sure there's more current models of negotiation. Like, maybe I should be reading a new negotiation book. But I just decided, you know what? Okay, fine. Yeah, I can do that. But it works. The model makes sense still today. And so I decided ultimately, I was going to stick with it.
Daniel Stillman 39:00
So, speaking of books, this is not your only book. I know there's another book of yours that's hiding behind you in your virtual screen. How do you put those together in context? Do you see a connection between your two books? What's the yin and yang of them in your perspective?
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 39:17
And so, actually, I have a third book that come out in November.
Daniel Stillman 39:21
Oh, so embarrassing of me to not know that.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 39:23
Well, it's not really been out there yet because we've turned it in, but it's not going to come out till November. And the reason I'm raising it is not just to talk about all my books, but because I have had to think about the thread. Like, what is the thread in my career and my mission? So the new one is called the Breakthrough manifesto, and it's about creative problem solving in teams. And then my first one, which you can see there, is called business chemistry, which is about relationships at work and how each of us prefers to work and communicate and make decisions, and how understanding what someone else wants and needs is one of the most important ways that you can create a stronger relationship with. Know that first book, business chemistry, and the third one, Breakthrough Manifesto, are both books that I have written with my co author, Kim Christford, as part of my work at Deloitte. Divorce by design is my personal book that sort of falls in the middle, but I really see them all three as like, the thread is really about relationships and creative problem solving.
Daniel Stillman 40:35
That's a good thread. I'm wondering, we had this little snippet before we started recording about whether or not we have a personality, what our self is, and the ways in which we like to be can rule our lives. This is what we've been talking about, in a way, is dialoguing with ourselves in order to find more useful and effective ways to collaborate to get what we really want. Which begs the question, like, do we? You know, if, let's say there's somebody who's like, I like to win, but they realize that it's not helping them get what they want. The question is, how do we be another way? And then begs the question, who are we? Who am I? Is there a way I am? Or how do I access other ways of being?
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 41:33
Yeah, well, I certainly don't have the answer.
Daniel Stillman 41:38
I don't either. That's why I'm asking the question.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 41:40
I am on the journey of exploring that. But I've been thinking of, I mean, I've been reading a lot of books lately about this question, essentially, and what is the self? And also, what are all these thoughts that just constant in our brains and how they're often so not helpful. But I am a person. I am very self reflective, and I analyze myself all the time. And I have just been starting to be open to the question that is that good for me? Does it do more harm than good to insist that I am this type of person or that type of person? Does it close me off to a whole nother range of new possibilities? So I've started thinking, like, well, then how would you express something about yourself? And I've started thinking, well, maybe the language is more like instead of, I like to win. I have often enjoyed winning.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 43:01
I have been a person who likes to win. I don't know. Somehow, instead of saying I am, is there other language we can use that leaves us more open to evolution? Yes.
Daniel Stillman 43:18
And it seems like in my own experience, and certainly in your experience and in what we are and you are advising to your clients, is we have to be able to access other ways of being from time to time in ways that are authentic. And I think the thing that I've struggled with is this idea of, like, well, I want to be as I am, but sometimes I have to be more than I feel like I can be. Or that terrible phrase, tone myself down. Right. But this is the use of self and coaching ourselves to bring the right amount of blank into the conversation.
Daniel Stillman 44:05
It's a pickle.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 44:06
Yeah. It's similar to the same question of how do I use empathy in my relationships at work or with my ex and understand what he wants? And then I understand what I want. And then we're trying to figure out how we can both get what we want. And I sort of feel like it's similar in what of myself if I have a self? Do I bring to the world? If I'm an introvert, as I often think of myself, I'd really rather not be in the front of the room a lot of the time, or maybe ever. But my role at work requires that sometimes. And so do I double down and say, no, this is me, and I don't enjoy that. And therefore we'll never do it. That would be legitimate. I probably wouldn't be able to keep the same job. Or do I say, well, I'm going to figure out a way that I can do that only once a month and not every other day, and that will be like a good balance between what's comfortable for me and how I like to do things versus what's needed of me in my job. So I think it's all understanding, ultimately, what do I want? And if I want this job, for whatever reason, then I have to find the right balance between how much of my preferences can I bring to it?
Daniel Stillman 45:41
Yes.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 45:42
And how much do I need to flex?
Daniel Stillman 45:44
Yes. It's a negotiation with yourself and the world, a conversation. So, man, oh, man, I've really enjoyed this conversation. The time's flown. What have I not asked you? What have we not talked about? What is important to say that has not had a chance to be said?
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 46:04
Yeah. I think one of the things is, even though I have said that having conversations with other people around, for example, trying to get creative around divorce is often not helpful because everybody tells you how you have to do it. Yes. And it's really important to be able to listen to your own voice. At the same time, I have found it very valuable to me for me to talk about it because I'm not embarrassed or ashamed or sad or lonely or heartbroken or any of those things. I for a long time, felt like divorce would ruin my life and my family's life.
Daniel Stillman 46:58
Yes.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 46:59
And it didn't because we found a way to do it so that it didn't. And I'm proud of it. And we are all proud of it.
Daniel Stillman 47:08
Yes.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 47:09
My son is going to college in the fall. He wrote his college essay about our family and our household and our divorce.
Daniel Stillman 47:17
That's wonderful.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 47:17
And how it has helped him be more creative and seeing more options. So for me, instead of sort of hiding something that other people might think is weird or that's their problem, there are people who are like, oh, often I think they sort of maybe misunderstand the situation or whatever. But I do think talking about what you're doing or what you're trying to do is that sort of like bring it out into the light. Yes. Can make you feel differently about it than if you're trying to keep it close because you don't want other people to know that this is happening. Yes.
Daniel Stillman 48:08
So this begs one final question and one of my own personal axe to grind. What would you like people to say when someone tells them that they're getting divorced. If you could wish, if you could give everyone the card that says exactly, like, just read off the cue card and say blank, what would you want people to say? Because what they say now is, I'm so sorry. And I think there's probably a better response in that conversation.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 48:37
Yeah, I do have a response, but I do think this is important, and I would like to keep perfecting it. So I think it's something along the lines of, oh, how are you feeling about that?
Daniel Stillman 48:50
Damn, that's good. That's really great.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 48:54
You also don't want to say, oh, great, you're getting divorced, because I usually.
Daniel Stillman 48:59
Say, I'm sorry and congratulations.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 49:02
Right.
Daniel Stillman 49:03
But you're threading that needle in a much more even way that opens up the opportunity for them to express what they're. Thanks for sharing that with me. How are you feeling about that?
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 49:15
Yeah, there's no judgment there.
Daniel Stillman 49:19
That is, it's almost like you wrote a whole book about this and have thought deeply about these conversations. So that's a wonderful redesign moment for everyone. The next time somebody offers this piece of information to them, to us to welcome it and to be curious not to judge it. Suzanne, where should people go on the Internet if they want to learn more about all things Suzanne Vickberg?
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 49:51
Well, they can. I have a website, suzannevickberg.com. I'm on Instagram at Suzanne Vickberg, so they can find me in those two places. The book divorced by design is available on Amazon and Barnes. And, and, you know, it may not be in your local bookstore, but you could request it. And there's a way to contact me on my website or know through Instagram.
Daniel Stillman 50:18
I can attest to. I, that's how we started this conversation.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 50:23
And also LinkedIn. I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. And on LinkedIn. It's sort of like the multiple parts of my interests in life. More of the divorce stuff is on Instagram. More of the other creative problem solving stuff is on LinkedIn. I do cross it over a little bit, but I'm happy to connect with anyone on LinkedIn, too.
Daniel Stillman 50:45
Wonderful. Suzanne, thank you so much for your generosity in this conversation. Thanks for writing the book. And I think we can call scene. That was wonderful.
Dr. Suzanne Vickberg 50:56
Thank you for designing a great conversation.
Daniel Stillman 51:00
That's great.