Renowned negotiation expert William Ury draws from his extensive experience of working in the world’s toughest conflicts to help transform conflict into opportunity.
You’ll Learn:
- Why we need more conflict, not less
- The true enemy to confront
- How writing the other side’s victory speech can help you win
About William
William Ury is one of the world’s best-known experts on negotiation, and co-author of Getting to Yes, the world’s all-time bestselling book on negotiation with more than 15 million copies sold. A co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, Ury has devoted his life to helping people, organizations, and nations transform conflicts around the world, having served as a negotiator in many of the toughest disputes of our times, taught negotiation to tens of thousands, and consulted for the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and dozens of Fortune 500 companies. He has served as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts ranging from Kentucky wildcat coal mine strikes to family feuds, from US partisan battles to wars in the Middle East, Colombia, Korea, and Ukraine.
Ury is an internationally sought-after speaker and has two popular TEDx talks with millions of viewers. He lives in Colorado where he loves to hike in the mountains.
- Book: Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict
- Book: The Power of a Positive No: Save The Deal Save The Relationship and Still Say No
- Website: WilliamUry.com
Resources Mentioned
- Book: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching translated by Chao-Hsiu Chen
William Ury Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Bill, welcome.
William Ury
Well, it’s a real pleasure to speak with you, Pete.
Pete Mockaitis
I’d love to kick us off, if you could, with a super-riveting tale about a high-stakes negotiation you participated in, and how a key breakthrough emerged.
William Ury
Okay. Picture it, it’s about 20 years ago, I’m face-to-face with the president of Venezuela, he’s furious at me and yelling, getting very close to my face, and yelling at me. I’m in front of his entire cabinet. It’s past midnight. I’m surprised. I’m thinking, “Oh, a years’ worth of work down the drain.” I’m feeling embarrassed and I’m about to react and defend myself, he’s saying, “You know, you’re a fool, you third-siders, you mediators, you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t see the traitors on the other side,” because I had said, “I thought there was some progress,” and he really got ticked off at that. And I was thinking of how to defend myself.
And then I caught myself for a moment, and I went to, what I call, the proverbial balcony, which is that place of calm and perspective, just for a tiny second, bit my tongue, and I asked myself, “Is it really going to advance things here if I get into an argument with the president of Venezuela? What am I here for? I’m here to calm things down.” So, I bit my tongue and I listened, and he proceeded to shout, and rant, and rave right close to my face for about half an hour, but since I wasn’t feeding him anything, slowly his energy began to wind down. And then I watched his shoulders sink, and he said to me in a very weary tone of voice, “So, Ury, what should I do?”
That, my friends, is the moment that a mind begins to open up. That’s the very faint sound of it. So, I said, “You know, Mr. President, it’s almost December. Plans for Christmas have been canceled. Why don’t you give everyone a break?” what’s in Spanish called a tregua, a truce, “Just give it a break for this conflict,” because there were a million people on the streets calling for his resignation, a million of his supporters calling for him, there is fear of even civil war. It was a really tense situation in the country. And he looked to me for a moment, he said, “That’s a good idea. I’m going to propose that in my next speech.” His mood had entirely shifted.
And what I realized then in that moment was that maybe the single greatest opportunity we have in negotiation, the greatest power that we have is the power, not to react but, instead, to take a step back, go to the balcony as if the negotiation is unfolding on the stage in front of us, remember what we really want, and listen. And that’s the key, to me, to unlocking a lot of the difficult conflicts that we face, whether it’s in our personal lives, or at work, or in the larger society.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Bill, I love that. And so, your genius move there was to say nothing.
William Ury
Exactly, to say nothing. Exactly. And maybe the easiest thing to do. It’s hard in that moment but it’s not like you have to come up with something clever. It’s to say nothing, and then, if anything, listen to yourself. Watch your own emotions. Watch yourself. Listen to yourself. How can we possibly listen to others if we haven’t really listened to ourselves? Tune in for a moment, and say, “Wow, I’m agitated. I’m feeling embarrassed. I’m angry. I’m pissed off.” Whatever it is, as soon as you start to listen to yourself from that little bit of a distance, your nervous system starts to calm down, and you can bring your best to the situation instead of your worst.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like the balcony a lot as a visual because, and maybe this is deliberately why you chose it, I have the experience, when I am overlooking a large expanse, and, in particular, actually, a lot of empty seats. I don’t know, maybe it’s like all those moments before the keynote, before everyone arrives. There is a sense of calm and power that comes from being in that visual kind of a space. And I don’t think that’s just me. That might be humanity itself. What’s that about?
William Ury
I think so. Actually, right now, I’m in a place, a little getaway in the mountains, and I can see about a hundred miles from here. And what it does in the brain, is that spaciousness, you’re looking over seats, is it gives you perspective. It’s what psychologists call perspective-taking. You could see the larger picture because, so often, in these conflicts, in these negotiations, daily, or small, or large, the biggest casualty is we lose our perspective.
And so, the ability to step back for a moment and see that larger perspective, and you may be in a closed office or something like that, but look out the window, or close your eyes for a second, and remember a beautiful scene that you’ve been in, and all of that will help your brain just recalibrate and tap into your inner potential to deal with that situation, that difficult situation, as hard as it is, with your maximum potential.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Well, zooming out a little bit, I guess getting some perspective from the balcony, your book is called Possible, and you say that you’re neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but rather a possibilist. Can you tell us what that means? And I’d love to hear the inspiring basis upon which you found your hope.
William Ury
Well, Pete, so, yeah, after all these years, I’ve spent about a 40, 45 years wandering the world in some of the toughest conflicts here in this country and around the world, from labors strikes and coal mines, to board room battles, to political disputes, to civil wars, Middle East, Columbia, Ukraine, North Korea, and people ask me, “So, you’ve seen some of the worst of humanity, how do you feel?” And I used to say I’m an optimist, and I’m an optimist, but now I like to calibrate a little more, and I say, “Actually, I’m a possibilist. I believe in human beings. I believe in our potential to transform conflicts, to change those situations.”
And the reason I believe it is I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve seen it in small situations, I’ve seen it in large situations, and I saw it in South Africa back in the ‘90s when blacks and whites were in a war, a race war, I saw it in Northern Ireland where there was a sectarian war. I’ve even seen it in the Middle East. I’ve seen it here in this country, and it’s that spirit of possibilism, of being able to see opportunities where others only see obstacles, that I think is key.
And it’s that spirit of possibilism, I think, that we need more and more in our daily lives, in our work lives, in our personal lives because the world outside seems to be, like, going a little crazy, and we need that mindset, which is, it’s not Pollyannish, it’s not like, “Okay, the world is all rosy,” but we look at the negative possibilities, but then we look for where those positive possibilities, we bring our curiosity, our creativity, and our collaborative potential to bear on the situation.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And in your book, you mentioned you’ve been in a number of situations where most people said, “Yeah, this is going to end pretty poorly,” and yet there were surprisingly positive developments in how things unfolded with regard to potential global calamities.
William Ury
That’s right. I’ve learned so much from just watching how people do these things. Going back to, again, like to South Africa, like a guy like Nelson Mandela. Here he was in prison for 27 years, and what’s the first thing he does in prison is he studies the language of his enemies. He learns their history, he puts himself in their shoes, he learns how they think, how they feel, what their traumas are, and that enables him, actually, when he comes out of prison, to be able to persuade them to lay down their weapons and agree to a democratic situation.
And it’s those kinds of things I’ve seen over time that I think that’s what we’re going to need in today’s…We live in an age of conflict. Everywhere around us, conflicts seem to be increasing, polarizing us, even poisoning our relationships, and paralyzing us, and we need the spirit of possibility, of meeting animosity with curiosity.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, you can tweet that, Bill. That’s nice. And within that, I’m curious, you’ve been doing this for a long, long time. Tell us, what are some of the most recent, surprising, and fascinating discoveries you’ve made about this human communication conflict thing that you’re capturing in your book Possible?
William Ury
Well, one thing is, for a long time, I’ve noticed the importance of going to the balcony, and I noticed the importance of building a bridge, but, in today’s times, often we need more of that. And the thing that’s kind of the hidden resource that’s all around us that we don’t see is what I’ve come to call the third side. Because in every conflict, we tend to reduce it to me versus you, or us versus them, there’s always two sides. And what we don’t see is that there’s always actually a third side, which is the surrounding community, it’s the whole, and that’s a huge resource to us.
If we’re stuck in a conflict, it’s really hard sometimes to go to the balcony, it’s hard to build bridges with some people, or in some organizations, or in some situations, but we can get help from the people around us. It may be our friends, it may be our neighbors, it may be our colleagues, it may be our allies, and it’s not just people to be on our side. That, too, is important, but people who can take the side of the larger whole. Let’s look at it from that larger perspective, who can help us, who can sit us down with the other side, who can listen to us. It’s engaging, building that, I call it a winning coalition for agreement. Building a coalition where we’re not alone in the situation.
And that, to me, is one of the great hopes for humanity, and for us individually in any of our situations, is to look beyond the two sides that we’re always being asked to take one side or the other. But where is that third side?
Pete Mockaitis
I love that notion, the third side, the winning coalition, and we’ve started to introduce some of these concepts, the balcony and the bridge. Could you give us that intro within the frame of the camel story which I really enjoyed?
William Ury
Right. Yeah, this is one of my favorite stories, Pete. It’s an old story, a fable that comes from the Middle East about a man who dies, and he leaves to his three sons, as their inheritance, 17 camels. And to the first son, the oldest son, he leaves half the camels, and to the middle son, he leaves a third of the camels, and to the youngest son, he leaves a ninth of the camels. Well, three sons go about it, and it turns out 17 doesn’t divide by two, and it doesn’t divide by three, and it doesn’t divide by nine, and they start to get into an argument, each one wants more. And you know how brothers can get, almost comes to fisticuffs and violence.
And, finally, in desperation, they consult a wise old woman. And she listens to them, like a good manager listens or whatever, she says, “You know, I don’t have the answer to this. I don’t know if I can help you, but if you want, I actually have a camel, and I’d be happy to give you my camel.” So, the three sons say, “Okay.” Well, then they have 18 camels. Well, 18, as it turns out, does divide by two, so the first son takes his half, and that’s nine; the second son takes his third, and that’s six; and the youngest son takes his ninth, and that’s two. And if you add nine, and six, you get 15, plus two, 17. They have one camel left over and they gave it back to the wise old woman.
Now, if you think about it, a lot of our conflicts, a lot of our situations are a little bit like those 17 camels. You approach it, there’s no way to divide it up, there’s no way to solve the problem. Somehow, what we need to do is, like that wise old woman, we need to step back to the balcony, look at that larger perspective, see if we can come up with a creative idea, a creative reframe, which, in this case, is the 18th camel, that’s the golden bridge, as it were, and see if we can transform the situation, and it often takes the help of a third side, which, in this case, is the wise old woman.
So, to me, actually that story, which I’ve been telling for a long time, I hadn’t realized, it has all those three ingredients, to me, which are the magic ingredients, the magic potentials, the magic victories that we need, which is, one, is a victory with ourselves which is ability not to react but to go to the balcony; the second is a victory with the other side, mutually agreeable solution, a golden bridge as it were; and the third is a victory with the whole, which is to engage that third side, the surrounding community. And if you can put all three together, that’s my aha in this book, then what’s seemingly impossible, and we’re facing a lot of seemingly impossible situations these days, becomes possible.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And I want to dig into each of these three in a bit of depth in terms of hearing some best practices and practical ways to implement, particularly in workplace scenarios. But first, I just want to go meta, or broad scale for a moment, and here you say that we actually could benefit from more conflict instead of less. What do you mean by that? And why is that the case?
William Ury
Yeah, it seems strange to say, particularly for someone who’s spent his whole life trying to help people resolve conflicts, to say that we actually need more not less. In the sense, I’m trying to say it to provoke people, is to say conflict is natural. We often kind of like, a lot of us, and me included, we find conflict uncomfortable and we try to avoid it, or we accommodate, we give in, we appease, or sometimes we go on the attack, and none of those three A’s, what I call them – avoid, accommodate, or attack – actually help us, really, get what we really want.
And so, to me, we’re not going to be able to end conflict. It’s part of life. There are a lot of conflicts, you may not even be able to resolve them, but the opportunity that we have is to transform them, it’s to actually, instead of avoiding it, it’s to embrace the conflict, transform it. In other words, change the form of it from what’s so often a kind of destructive fight or a sullen silence into kind of an engaged conversation where you listen to them, they listen to you, you come up with creative ideas. And if you think about it, conflict can be healthy. It can be productive. It can lead to better communication, more engagement.
They say that marriages, for example, benefit from some conflict, which get the issues that are, otherwise, under the carpet, engaged but in a constructive way. That’s the real opportunity, it’s to transform the conflict. And whenever you need change, whenever there’s something wrong, oftentimes you need conflict to be able to engage it. So, in that sense, when there are things wrong with the world around us, we actually need more conflict not less. Conflict can sometimes lead to innovation. It can lead to better ideas. The essence of what is a healthy democracy is conflict.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, now let’s dig into these three unique human superpowers. We’ve got the balcony. We’ve got the bridge. Can you start with the balcony?
William Ury
What I’ve discovered over the years is that the single biggest obstacle to me or to any of us getting what we want is not what we think of it. It’s not that difficult person on the other side of the table in the office or wherever it is. The biggest obstacle to us getting what we want is right here, it’s me, it’s the person I look at in the mirror every morning. It’s my own, our own, very natural, very human tendency to react, in other words, to act without thinking.
As the old saying goes, “When you’re angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret,” and that often happens. And so, the ability to not react, and that’s a choice that we have in that little moment, like I did with the president of Venezuela there, that little moment, we can choose not to react but to think about what’s going to really advance our objectives here, and we can respond creatively.
And, to me, that’s the key.
The ability to step back for a moment, before we react, I mean, we live in a very reactive culture and reactive times on social media. That ability not to react but to go to the balcony, and everyone has their favorite way of doing it. Some people, it might just be as simple as breathing, taking a walk, a workout, meeting a friend. Everyone’s got their favorite way. What’s your favorite way, Pete, to go to the balcony?
Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, I was reminded back in the day when I was interviewing for jobs as a candidate, and when I felt nervous, I don’t know why, but I guess there’s some science behind it. When I put both of my feet firmly, squarely on the floor, and just became aware of the presence of my feet there, I just felt more solid, grounded, firm, rooted, and that helped.
William Ury
That’s great. That’s exactly it. Essentially, in that moment, you’re pausing, you’re probably breathing, which brings a little more oxygen into your brain. When you put your feet on the ground, you started to relax, and that’s one of the wisest things, pieces of advice I’ve ever heard. When you’ve got something hard to do, start by relaxing. And you were relaxing in that moment, feeling your feet on the ground, and that visual imagery helped some of your nervous system, and then you can bring your best to a difficult situation, like giving a keynote or dealing with a difficult issue.
Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Okay. So, that’s the balcony, it’s sort of the internal game, we take a breath, we focus, we don’t react, we don’t get defensive, don’t scream in anger. That sounds kind of easy, Bill. Any pro tips, do’s and don’ts about executing this well?
William Ury
Well, it sounds easy but when we’re triggered, when we’re reactive, when our emotions are taking us away, when we’re angry, when we’re fearful, when we’re anxious, it’s not so easy, it turns out, and that’s how often we feel when we’re in a tough situation, a difficult conflict, or an office spat, or whatever the situation might be. And so, that’s why we have to kind of cultivate it.
So, I’d say one thing is if you know you’re going to be in a difficult situation, you know you’re going to be in a difficult conversation with a colleague, or whatever the situation might be, with your partner, with your child, resource yourself. Everyone has their favorite way to resource themselves. I like to go for walks, ideally, in nature. Somehow nature fills me with a sense of awe and wonder. I relax. I can then bring my best. So, before any important negotiation, I go for a walk.
But everyone will have their favorite way of resourcing themselves so that you can actually have some natural resilience, so that when you go in, you’re going to be a lot less reactive when the other side starts saying things that press your buttons.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, now let’s talk about how do we build that bridge?
William Ury
Just the same as with the balcony, you have to do the opposite of what you might naturally feel like doing, you might naturally feel like reacting. Do the opposite and take a step back, go to the balcony. The same is true with the bridge. What happens in difficult conflicts is we tend to dig into our positions, the things we say we want, the things we demand. The other side digs into their positions, they push us, we push back, it goes nowhere, or it escalates even.
And the opposite of that, actually, what you find successful negotiators doing is the exact opposite of pushing. Because when you push, for example, right now, if I were just pushing you, Pete, if I put up my hands, you pull up your hands, and I was just pushing you, what would you naturally do?
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I would push back, step aside.
William Ury
Right. Exactly.
Pete Mockaitis
I’d probably be more shocked, like, “What is going on right now?”
William Ury
That’s it. Exactly. But people tend, when they’re pushed, to push back. It’s just instinct, and then we’re in a standoff. And what you find works is to use the power of surprise, which is to do the exact opposite of pushing, which is to attract. Because it’s almost like in a conflict, your mind is here, the other person’s mind is way over there, and you’re saying to them, “Hey, come on over to my idea,” whatever it is, “Come over to my position.” It’s not easy for them. It’s like there’s a big chasm, and that chasm is filled with, “Wait a minute, that doesn’t satisfy my needs, that’s not what I want. Other people will think I’d given in, or I look like a failure, or a wimp.” There’s a whole bunch of stuff in that chasm.
Our job is to build them a bridge over that chasm. It’s to start where they are for a moment, leave where your mind is, and this is not always easy, but leave where your mind is, and start the conversation where their mind is, where they are. You’re asking the boss for a raise, for example, “And I deserve that raise,” and you’re all there. Put yourself in the boss’ shoes for a moment, and imagine, “Wait, there’s a tough budgetary situation.” Start with your boss’ situation. How is the boss going to justify your raise to other people in the organization, and so on?
Think about their problem. Help them solve their problem so that they can help you solve yours. That’s the art of building the other side a golden bridge over that chasm of dissatisfaction. In other words, making it as easy as possible for them to move in the direction you want them to move. Attracting rather than pushing is the exact opposite of what we might normally do in a difficult conflict.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. And when you speak to helping to solve their problem, and imagining it from their perspective and their stakeholders, you’ve got a really cool approach called writing your other party’s victory speech. Can you unpack that a little bit?
William Ury
When I face a tough situation, it could be personal or it could be global, and it seems impossible, what I like to do is I like to start at the end, and work backwards. You might not be able to get from here to there, but you might just be able to get from there to here, and then work your way back to there. And the way I do that is I like to sit down and write the other side’s victory speech. In other words, I do a little thought experiment. I imagine, “What if the other side accepted my proposal? What if they said yes?” What if they said yes to your proposal? Imagine that for a moment.
Your boss says, “Yeah, I’ll give you the raise.” Your colleague says, “Yeah, I’ll help you on that project.” Whatever it is, you think about that, and then imagine that they, then, have to justify that to someone else, to their boss, or to their colleagues, or to themselves looking in the mirror, or to their board, or whatever the thing is. What’s their victory speech? They say, “Yeah, it was a good idea for me to agree with Pete, and this is why, because it’s going to do this, that, and this.” You write their victory speech, and you think about how they can see that as a victory.
Then you see your job as helping them deliver that victory speech. And by writing that victory speech, by imagining it, it becomes more possible. And then the job becomes, “Okay, what can I do right now to start to help them, put them in a position where they could deliver that victory speech?” It has to be a victory for you, too, of course. But their victory speech is why they decided to agree with your proposal.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. And then, in so doing, that naturally will spark some ideas for, “Oh, wait. You know what, this would be really easy for me to put in my proposal. It doesn’t make any difference to me, but might make all the difference to them in terms of what they’re able to share in their victory speech.”
William Ury
That’s right.
Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. Well, can you talk about the third step, or should I say, maybe third superpower?
William Ury
Balcony is one of our superpowers. We all have that ability within us to, as you mentioned, say nothing, not react. We all have the ability to build a bridge, and a core part of building the bridge, I should mention, is listening. We think of negotiation as talking, but, actually, if you observe the behavior of successful negotiators, they listen far more than they talk. There’s a reason we’re given two ears and one mouth, is to listen twice as much as we talk. And so, listening is key.
Now, it’s not always easy to do all this stuff. It’s not easy to go to the balcony in a difficult situation. It’s not easy to build those bridges. And this is where we need help, and that help, as I mentioned before, is around us. We may not see it but there’s a tendency in almost every conflict to kind of reduce it to two sides. It’s like two sides, it’s us versus them. It’s Arabs versus Israelis. It’s labor versus management. Whatever it is, it’s husband versus wife, we reduce it to two sides. But, in fact, there’s always a third side, which is the people around.
And I’d learned this, really struck me once, I’m an anthropologist by training, and then I got into negotiation but I was studying anthropology to understand and figure out human beings. And I was visiting an indigenous tribe, in Southern Africa, in the Kalahari Desert, the so-called Bushmen, and I was watching how they deal with conflicts. When two people get into a conflict, it can get serious because the men all have these arrows that they hunt with, which have poisoned tips, and you can kill someone, and then that person takes three to die, will kill someone else. And pretty soon, you have the equivalent of a small-scale nuclear war in a small group.
So, what they learned to do, what I saw, is when tempers start to get high, and you notice that, and people notice that, someone goes and hides the poisoned arrows out in the desert, and then the whole group gets together around the campfire – the women, the men, the children – and they talk it out. And it might go on for a day, or two days, or three days. They don’t rest until they talk it up because they know what the consequences are if they don’t. It’s not just a question of reaching an agreement. There has to be a kind of reconciliation.
And what I realized is that’s our ancestral birthright, it’s that use of the community, of the people around us to help create a container, a space, within which even the most difficult conflicts can gradually be transformed. That’s the third side, and that’s a power that we all have to evoke, or we often play the role of third siders. We don’t think of it necessarily but parents are always playing that role of third sides among their kids, peers among their colleagues, or the odd managers among their employees.
It’s that third-side role of helping listen to people, help them cool down, helping them get into communication with each other, helping explain what the other side thinks. All that knitting together turns out to be key if we’re trying to transform the impossibly difficult conflicts that we sometimes come across.
And the third side is the help of the whole, that’s what it is.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. That’s beautiful and a good reminder to seek that out, and to get that support. In the workplace, any pro tips on what might make for great third side collaborators to get in on the mix?
William Ury
It could be someone even outside your workplace, or just a friend and a colleague who can be a coach to you. You have a hard situation, sometimes we get blinded but the ability of using a friend or someone as a coach, to say, “How am I going to approach this difficult issue I’ve got with my colleague, or a coworker, or my boss?” That’s one. Another is there might be a colleague that you could involve. Sometimes, too, you’re not alone in these situations.
Imagine that you’re facing a difficult boss. If it’s just you, that’s one thing. But if it’s you with your colleagues, that’s the winning coalition, can approach the boss and sit down, and say, “Hey, let’s talk about this,” then you’ve got some more power. There’s real power in the third side, and sometimes you need that in situations because not everything in the workplace is fair.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And when you talked about the tribes, you mentioned it might take a day or two or three, and, in your book, you mentioned working through some negotiations, that could take months or years. How do you think about patience and how we can get more of it? Because I think, sometimes, we can have the frustration that, “We’ve had this conversation four times, and it’s going nowhere. I guess it’s just hopeless.” How do you think about those situations? It seems you think about things differently.
William Ury
I do. I just know that when you get into these real gnarls with each other, and we kind of know this in families and so on of how these kinds of disputes can go on for a long, long time. And this kind of negotiation, I’ll just say upfront, can be some of the hardest work that we humans can do, and it takes patience, it takes persistence because, when you’re looking for possibilities, you make little breakthroughs, and then you might make progress, and then you might have a setback, and then you got to go back.
And it’s that way that I see the little possibilities turning into large possibilities. So, it’s true, it takes some time. Human beings, we’re not like computers. We take time. We have our grievances, we have our wounds, we have our traumas. It takes time to work through those, and it does take some patience. On the other hand, I would say, if you do invest in those relationships, if you do build trust in those relationships, then you can operate very fast at the speed of trust.
I remember a long time ago, I had some funding from Warren Buffett to work on avoiding nuclear war, a long time ago, and he was telling me about a negotiation he got involved in with his partner about making a major investment. And it was hundreds of millions of dollars, and he said the negotiation took place in one minute over the phone, where the guy called him up, and said, “We’re about to make this deal. What are you thinking?” He said, “What do you think?” And they were able to make the deal quickly. Why? Because they had developed the trust beforehand. They knew that the other would not take advantage of them.
And so, to me, if you want to move fast, then invest in building trust and confidence because, then, you can operate at the speed of trust, which is very fast.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s lovely. A lot of this has come back to when you say trust, patience, persistence, humility, calm, just sort of good human virtue stuff. Do you have any pro tips on how we can develop that within ourselves and our colleagues before we have a conflict or a negotiation that we’re getting into? Are there practices? You like going for walks. Is it meditating? Or is it reading, or spiritual practice? Or, how do you recommend folks get better at these just human goodness kinds of things?
William Ury
Well, the first thing, Pete, to recognize is that this is not rocket science. These are things that are inside of us. These are human potentials that each of us has. This is our birthright. So, it’s developing things that are already inherent in us. And, yeah, everyone will have their favorite ways of doing it. It might be meditating. Meditating can calm us down. It might be going for walks. It might be getting a coach or having a friend be a coach, coaching each other, all these kinds of resources. And then investing in the relationships around us by building trust.
It might be those little things where you put deposits in the bank of goodwill. You acknowledge someone. You thank them. You go out of your way to help them so that, then, when it comes to a difficult situation, you can withdraw a little bit, you can count on that, and say, “Look, we’ve got a hard situation here to work through.” But then you’ve got something to work with. And so, it’s that relational work that’s key to building the resilience that will allow us individually within ourselves, and then relationally in our organizations and in our work lives to be able to navigate some pretty stormy weathers sometimes.
And trust can’t be underestimated. It takes a while to build up trust but it can be destroyed in a second. So, what’s interesting to me is, even though sometimes people associate negotiation with kind of slight shading of the truth, or manipulation, the best negotiators I know, the thing they value most is their reputation for honesty and fair-dealing because, then, the other side will trust them, they’ll share more information, and you’re more likely to end up with a creative solution that works for all sides.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Bill, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to share before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?
William Ury
One thing I just want to say is in a lot of these situations, there’s an element of power. We feel like there’s an asymmetry of power, we feel powerless. And so, one thing in negotiation, when you’re on the balcony, that you might want to think through is you’re trying to get the other side to do something, you’re looking for an agreement. Paradoxically, it’s helpful to think through what I call, what negotiation would call your BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
In other words, imagine that you’re not going to reach agreement with the other side, what’s your best course of action for satisfying your actions if you can’t? Imagine the difference it gives you. BATNA, knowing that, it seems like negative thinking, but it’s actually alternative positive thinking. It’s like, “I’ve got an option here. If I can’t reach agreement with a person now, maybe I can reach agreement with someone else. If I can’t get this job, maybe I’ve got another job.”
Just thinking through that gives you confidence that you’re going to be able to satisfy your interests. And that confidence, actually, increases the chances that you’re actually going to reach an agreement. So, paradoxically, when you’re on the balcony, think not just about what you want, but what’s your alternative for getting what you want if, for some reason, you are not able to reach agreement with the other side. Think through your BATNA. BATNA is power. BATNA is confidence.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?
William Ury
A quote from a great anthropologist, Margaret Mead, who said, “We are continually faced with great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.”
Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. And now a favorite study or experiment?
William Ury
My colleague, negotiation colleague at MIT, Jared Curhan, did some very interesting experiments where he was studying how people negotiate.
And what he found was there was a very interesting correlation between how cooperative people were, how likely they were to reach agreements that were good for both sides, and the amount of silence that he noted in the negotiation. In other words, those little pauses, where people paused, they were a little more reflective, which is, of course, time on the balcony, so that silence turns out to be one of the great powers not when you’re talking but when you’re not talking. When you just even take that moment of silence, there’s a correlation with creative outcomes.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?
William Ury
Favorite book that I’ve always liked is a book that was written 2500 years ago in China, the Tao Te Ching, which is kind of a book of paradoxical wisdom, but things like, I remember one quote from it, which is, and it goes back to your earlier question, “Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?” In other words, oftentimes, our minds are like these fizzy glasses, it’s full with fizz. Can we just take a moment, like when you planted your feet on the ground, to let the fizz settle so we can actually see more clearly, and, thus, act more effectively?
Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?
William Ury
Something that we all have, which is the ability to listen. But listen not just the way we normally listen, which is we normally listen within our shoes, like thinking, “Oh, I disagree with this, I agree with that,” or whatever it is. The kind of listening where it’s empathic listening, where you put yourself in the other person’s shoes. You try to imagine what it’s like to be in their shoes for a moment.
And if you can do that, if you understand where their mind is, you’re going to be much more effective at influencing them, of helping them move in the direction you want them to move. And it’s also, to me, it’s a sign of basic human respect. And I find that that’s maybe the cheapest concession you can make in any negotiation, is to listen and give them some respect. And it also helps you influence them more effectively.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget that you’re known for, people quote, Kindle book highlight, re-tweet, from you again and again?
William Ury
Well, I’ll give you a contrarian one. I’m known for “Yes,” for getting the “Yes,” but I also wrote a book about “No” and the importance of “No,” and what I call the positive no, which is a yes, followed by a no, followed by a yes, like a sandwich. It’s a no which starts a yes; a yes which is important to you, “I’ve got an important family commitment this weekend,” followed by a very calm and matter-of-fact no, so you say to your boss, “So, I can’t work through the weekend.”
And then on the other side of it is a yes on the other side, which is, “But I can work with John and Mary, and we can make sure the work can get done anyway.” Sometimes it’s important in negotiation to have that yes, but it’s very important also to have the no to stand up for what’s important for you.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more about you or get in touch, where would you point them?
William Ury
Just my website would be good, which is just my name, WilliamUry.com.
Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?
William Ury
I do, which is next time you find yourself in a little bit of a spat or a conflict with a colleague, or a coworker, or a boss, think about bringing that spirit of possibility; think about tapping into your innate human superpower of going to the balcony, of not reacting, but asking what you actually want; and the innate superpower of the bridge, of listening, of being creative, and the innate superpower of engaging the third side, the community around you. If you put all three together, you can transform your conflicts. And if you can transform your conflicts, you can transform your lives.
