“CrisMarie and Susan were instrumental in helping a ‘smart’ but ‘unhealthy’ team of mine work through some very serious, yet largely unspoken, conflicts. It wasn’t a fast or easy process, but we’re now the team that I knew we could be. The powerful techniques in The Beauty of Conflict had a huge impact on our teamwork and engagement—and we’re having more fun and delivering even better results.”
--Mike Keller Nationwide CIO
"I was introduced to CrisMarie and Susan when they came in to work with our leadership team at Microsoft. I really value their perspective on teams, conflict and building trust through vulnerability, curiosity and real-team work on business issues. I have reused their materials over and over to great success with leaders and teams. I'm thrilled that this book is now out for other leaders. Their style is real, personal and practical. It’s a must-read for a leader wanting to build strong relationships and get great business results.”
--Kim Hardgraves Microsoft Director, Business Operations & Compliance
"In an industry that has its roots in command and control, the concepts in this book provide a clear path for creating high-performing teams and a humane company culture. After having been first introduced to the Thrive! team seven years ago, I'm still getting great value from our work with Thrive! This is a must-read for any leader wanting to influence change on their team and in their organization overall.”
-- Catharine Farrow TMAC Resources CEO
“We partnered with Thrive! during a crucial time in our growth. We applied the Thrive! Team and communication tools to help us enhance the performance of our leadership team and improve our company culture, which contributed significantly to our success going public as one of the top five performing IPOs of 2016!”
--Evan Fein Impinj CFO
"I worked with Thrive! on two different teams: one I was a member of and one I lead. Each time Thrive!’s work was game-changing for our business. Our ability to work productively with conflict real-time, changed conflict into not a problem but a resource for creative and innovative problem solving. Our work with Thrive! helped transform not only my team but my entire organization. This book is a must read for anyone wanting to create organizational change.”
--Andrew Walker, Nationwide Bank President
“We have been married nearly 25 years and in business together for even longer so clearly we’ve learned to “manage” conflict. If not, we’d be either dead, divorced, or the business would have dissolved by now. We felt we had a good handle on this but after working with Susan and CrisMarie, we learned how to go beyond just managing conflict to actually harnessing the power (and the beauty!) of conflict to make our partnership — both personal and professional — even more powerful. Why settle for resolving conflict when you can turn it into a competitive advantage?”
--Greg & Jenifer Lambert TERRA Staffing Group, CEO and VP
“Conflict is never my favorite thing, and truth-telling can lead to conflict. But I've found that when we face this fact with integrity, an alchemical change turns coworkers into true creators. CrisMarie and Susan describe this process in Beauty of Conflict, and I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve team performance at work or anywhere else.”
--Martha Beck, Martha Beck Inc. CEO and Author
“Who knew that growing up in a big Italian family full of conflict would provide me with the perfect training for business...an MBA at the dinner table! Susan and CrisMarie give us tools on how to embrace, bring out, use, and channel conflict to help teams get more out of each other and make better business decisions. This book is a must read for teams who want to be better together."
--Pete Ungaro, Cray CEO
“CrisMarie and Susan were critically important in the early formation of the leadership team at Theravance. The culture they helped create has transcended any particular employee at this point, and the company is thriving. I am thankful to them both. They’ve written an important book designed to help leaders break through the barriers of those inevitable personality clashes and leverage them for your team’s competitive advantage.”
--Mathai Mammen, Global Head of Research and Development, Janssen Inc. Johnson & Johnson Company
"Many leaders see conflict as a sign of an unhealthy team, but as The Beauty of Conflict pointedly shows, this is a huge mistake. Leaders who learn to leverage healthy conflict for the good of their team will forge a culture that Thrives in the face of uncertainty. The Beauty of Conflict gives you the awareness and tools to help your team fight fair."
-- Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative
"The Beauty of Conflict provides the practical model for becoming and influential leader, creating high-performing teams and transforming conflict into innovative results- no small undertaking! CrisMarie and Susan partnered with us to develop our leadership team, senior leaders, and managers. Their approach outlined in The Beauty of Conflict is practical, sound and effective."
-- Amy Whaley, VP of People Services, Marchex
"I partnered with thrive! in the midst of a transition. They’re now my trusted team advisors. Not only do CrisMarie and Susan clearly reflect back how they see me so I become a better leader, they work with my leadership team and entire organization, resulting in us increasing Wolfe’s profit each year.”
-- Terri Wolfe, Wolfe Mining, President
“Best leadership development program, ever! CrisMarie and Susan created and delivered our leadership development program at Clearwire over a decade ago. I’ve been to several other leadership development programs since and nothing’s compared. I had to bring them in to Twitch when we wanted to develop the EQ of our leaders here. This book is a must read if you’re a leader who wants to increase your influence.”
--Margi Lee-Johnson, Twitch, Director, Global People Operations
CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke are the founders of Thrive!—a coaching and consulting firm that specializes in helping individuals, leaders, teams and entire companies learn how to deal with differences to ignite creativity and innovation. They have a proven, step-by-step process for making teams great—a process they’ve honed working with hundreds of leaders and their teams for over 25 years.
CrisMarie’s immersion in team dynamics started early. As an Olympic and World Champion rower, she learned first-hand what makes a championship team versus simply a team of champions. She launched her career as an engineer at Boeing, where she helped initiate a groundbreaking, cross-functional team approach for how the company designs and builds airplanes. Next, CrisMarie earned her MBA and a position as a Manager at Arthur Andersen, where she coached executive business leaders around the country on the secrets to making big changes stick in their organizations. Then, as a member of Five Dysfunctions of a Team author Patrick Lencioni’s elite consulting team The Table Group, she honed her ability to turn a team around in two days flat.
Susan Clarke was also part of the Team at The Table Group. She stepped into the leadership role of her life at the age of 24, when doctors gave her just six months to live. Determined to prove them wrong, she built her own “Dream Team,” identifying a diverse group of smart health-care professionals and rallying them to work together to save her life. She then spent the next 20 years building on that success, earning her BS and then MA in education and honing her skills as a facilitator, educator and coach. Susan went on to lead transformational programs at the Haven, the prestigious professional development center in BC, Canada; facilitate in native communities, and coach “stalled” corporate executives and teams around the globe.
15 years ago, Susan and CrisMarie joined forces in both business and life. They launched Thrive! with a mission—to help individuals and teams develop their leadership skills, increasing their influence, vitality [aka mojo] and momentum for creating the changes they want to see and experience in their work and lives. They have brought their unique blend of skills and experience to Fortune 100 Companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, AT&T and Nationwide, as well as organizations including the Gates Foundation, University of Washington Medical Center, Cray and Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Manufacturing, Small, food…)
CrisMarie and Susan live and work in Northwest Montana.
