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Five with Fry
Think of this podcast as your go-to for tackling the hard stuff with clarity and confidence. On Five with Fry, Dr. Jen Fry breaks down the rules, challenges the norms, and dives deep into the tough conversations that shape our lives—conflict, culture, family, sports, tech, and everything in between. This is where you learn to rely on yourself, embrace the messy, and come out stronger on the other side.
Five with Fry
28: Conflict Isn't Solo Work. It's Group Work.
Ever wish you could handle tough conversations without feeling like you’re losing your cool or your integrity? In this episode of Five with Fry, Dr. Jen Fry dives into the real reason conflict feels so messy, and why most of us have never been taught how to do it well. Jen shares insights and stories from her new book, I Said No: How to Have a Backbone and Boundaries Without Being a Jerk, revealing that conflict skills aren’t something you master alone. They’re built in the heat of real-life conversations, with real people.
Jen gets honest about the guilt, shame, and second-guessing that often come with setting boundaries and advocating for yourself. She explains why avoiding conflict actually holds us back, and why those uncomfortable moments—when emotions run high and your defenses pop up—are actually powerful data points for growth. The episode breaks down practical tools and reflection questions from the book, showing how they can help teams, book clubs, and organizations strengthen their conflict muscles together.
Whether you’re leading a group or just looking for healthier relationships, Jen makes the case that “your relationships are only as deep as your conflict skills.” Ready to ditch the dread and build real confidence around difficult conversations? Tune in for your first step toward navigating conflict with more backbone, more boundaries, and a lot less stress.
Pre-order Jen's book here: https://jenfrytalks.com/book/
Friends, welcome to Five with Fry, where five is the magic number, whether it's five minutes, five questions or anything that fits in five. I dive into the big topics that matter, sometimes alone and other times with a friend, from navigating sports conflict to family dynamics, travel, tech, hard-hitting issues and even politics Nothing and I mean nothing's off the table. This is where curiosity meets conversation, and we always sit at an intersection. I'm your host. Dr Jen Fry of Jen Fry Talks. Let's get into it. Hey friends, welcome to Five with Fry. I am your hostess with the mostest Dr Jen Fry. So many of you know, but the ones who don't know.
Dr. Jen Fry:I have written a book and it's called I said no how to have a backbone and boundaries without being a jerk, and the premise of it is to help people understand how to navigate the hard parts about conflict that make you feel guilt or shame when in reality, those are the things that you need to do like having boundaries, like saying no, like self-advocating for yourself. Do like having boundaries, like saying no, like self-advocating for yourself, and this is an amazing book that you should be doing with your book club, with your team, with your staff development, with your leadership retreat any of those things. You should be doing it why? Because you can't figure out how to navigate conflict in a silo by yourself. You cannot do that. And many people have this idea of I want to get good at something by myself and then I can do it with other people, and that is inherently wrong. You have to put in the reps with other people, and what I mean by other people is having conversations with other people, getting that verbal exercise of talking about your thoughts, talking about your experiences, talking about your experiences, talking about how you navigate them. You have to do those things with other people to see where your emotions rise, on what topics, on what feelings, and to start checking in with yourself and saying okay, why is it that talking about this topic with someone started to make me feel really defensive? Why is it that when I started talking about my relationship with my mom I started to feel really defensive? And that's when you can start checking yourself.
Dr. Jen Fry:And I think the biggest thing is is that we don't want sometimes to navigate those feelings. Emotions live and in person and in color in front of people. We want to kind of hold that to ourselves and like fix it, tinker it with it and then let it go. And you can't do that, friends. You can't, and that's why important that this book is being managed with other people.
Dr. Jen Fry:Also, I just want to let you know we have a guest appearance from Pickle my Cat, and if you can hear him, you know that he loves talking about conflict. He was just giving you his two cents of saying, yes, you need to buy this book and you need to do it with other people, and so I want you to really think about this book as helping you build a foundation of how to start thinking about conflict in a different way, not in the way where it's scary, disheartening or uncomfortable, but in a way of. This is a skill set I need to add to my tool belt and I need to get better at it, because it will be something that helps me with my mental health, it helps me with my relationships, it helps me advocate for myself, it helps me do all these things that maybe I haven't learned how to do, and so doing this with groups is going to be just another level of helping you build up those skill sets. At the back of it, we have different reflection questions, and those reflection questions are great for you to be able to have jumping off points for your conversation, because some people are like I don't even know what to ask. Well, baby, we solved that problem for you. You have reflection questions to talk about with someone and then process and think about your answers in a more nuanced way. And that is the whole goal of this book and why you should book order it for your team, your staff, your leadership retreat. Because leaders need amazing conflict skills and why not all learn together to build more levels of trust? Because there's this great quote I heard and it said your relationships are only as deep as your conflict skills. And if, in these days, you want to have deeper relationships with your coworkers, the people you supervise, you all have to have a deeper way of managing conflict.
Dr. Jen Fry:Well, friends, that's it for this episode of Five with Fry your dose of five insights, ideas and inspiration. If you love what you heard, don't forget to head over to where podcasts are played, to subscribe, share and leave a review. Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop us a message. We love to hear from you. You can come follow me on IG, twitter, the TikTok at Jen Fry Talks, or join me on LinkedIn. Look for me at Dr Jen Fry. Until next time, stay curious, stay bold and keep the conversation going. See you on the next Five with Fry.