Five with Fry
Five with Fry is your go-to podcast for understanding conflict—where it comes from, why it shows up, and how to handle it with clarity and intention. On each episode, Dr. Jen Fry breaks down the moments we avoid, the reactions we default to, and the skills it takes to move through conflict without blowing things up or shutting down.
Five with Fry
S2 Ep2: When Meetings Get Spicy, Don’t Rake The Zen Garden
Most leadership problems show up in moments of tension. Not the dramatic blowups, but the everyday heat in meetings, feedback conversations, or decisions that carry weight. This episode is about what you do with yourself in those moments. The habits you built early around conflict still show up now, whether you learned to get loud, go quiet, or stay busy to avoid the feeling. You can’t lead past patterns you don’t notice, and you don’t need a new framework to start noticing.
I walk through self-awareness as a practical leadership skill. Catching the small tells like pen clicking, screen checking, tightening your jaw. Naming what’s happening internally without handing it to everyone else in the room. Using simple resets to slow the moment down so you can choose clarity over reflex. When leaders do this, teams feel it. Conversations get cleaner. Accountability lands with less friction. Trust grows because people know how you show up when things get uncomfortable.
If you’re ready to lead past old patterns, this is a path to steadier decisions and healthier cultures under pressure. Follow the show, share it with a manager who needs it, and leave a rating so more leaders can build a better relationship with conflict. And as you listen, notice this: what’s the first signal that tells you you’re uncomfortable, and what reset will you try next?
Welcome to Five with Fry. I'm Dr. Jen Fry. This podcast is about conflict and what it teaches us when we stop trying to avoid it. This season focuses on leadership starting with self. In five minute episodes, we look at the internal work of leadership, self-awareness, emotional regulation, accountability, and the patterns that show up when things get tense. You don't get to lead past what you won't look at. In some episodes, I'll ask a guest one central question: What is a moment of conflict that changed you for the better? Different formats, same goal. To help you lead with more clarity by owning your own stuff and using conflict as a tool, not something to run from. Hey friends, I'm Dr. Jen Fry. Welcome to this news episode on self-awareness as a competitive advantage. Our previous episode was on your conflict roots. I would really invite you to go back and listen to it because it's a nice foundation to scaffold to this next episode. And so self-awareness is a competitive advantage because you not only understand who you are, you got to understand how you became who you are. You understand how you learned how to navigate conflict. Was it really loud and volatile? Was it quiet and aggressive where you could hear a pin drop but you knew not what to say? You learned those things and they helped you better understand yourself when you get into those types of conflict situations. It's so critical as a leader that you are self-aware. When you are self-aware, you are also teaching your employees and those that you supervise how to become more self-aware. You're self-aware of who you are in conversations. You're self-aware when things start to get spicy, how you're going to learn to navigate them. You're going to be self-aware with your emotions and understanding the very importance of emotional regulation as a leader. All of these things added onto each other can help create a team, a business, an organization, whatever it is that has a higher level of emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, and self-awareness. Why wouldn't you want that in your organizations? Also, we have to acknowledge that it's really, really difficult to become self-aware. You have to be willing to pull back layers of yourself that you didn't even know were there. You have to start understanding your patterns better. You have to start understanding who you are when you get really uncomfortable and how you act. And that's a question I'll pose to you. How do you act when you're uncomfortable? Just take a few seconds and think about the last time you were in an uncomfortable situation. Do you start to click your pen? Do you cross and uncross your legs? Do you fidget? Do you maybe think I have to go play on my phone? Do you go and have to get up? Do you maybe, I don't know, play with your hair, your mustache, your glasses, your hat, whatever it is. Start thinking about what you do when you're uncomfortable. I used to have a boss that had like a mini zen garden, and whenever she'd get uncomfortable, she literally would take the rake out and start raking the dirt and making sure it was nice, nice and smooth and the lines were perfect. And I don't think she really understood what she did and how that looked to me. And I totally understood, okay, she's uncomfortable. She's starting to rake her zen garden. But those are patterns that you start to pay attention to. And so when hard things start to come up, you can pause and realize, okay, I've been clicking my pen, let me just put it down. Or I'm starting to get really fidgety. Let me just put my feet on the ground and take a deep breath. All of those self-reflective measures create a wonderful self-awareness in you. That then allows people to have the space to learn about themselves. And it absolutely creates a competitive advantage to other organizations that don't have leaders that are self-aware and regulate their emotions. Because that's what we need in these years people that are self-aware and regulate their emotions. And this is something that you can also do if you're willing to do the hard work and start peeling back those gaps. It hurts, but you can do it, friends. If this episode resonated with you, take a second to follow, rate, and share it wherever you listen. And if this conversation hits closer to home in your work, I also do keynotes, workshops, and facilitation. My goal is to help one million people have a better relationship with conflict. And it starts with you. Well, that's this episode of Five with Fry. Y'all, take what you heard, sit with it, and use it. Remember, growth lives on the other side of that conversation. Don't waste the conflict, and thanks for listening.