Peace Is A Process with negotiation expert William Ury

0:00There seems to be no shortage of conflict today. There are multiple wars, political fighting, and let's not even start talking about the dumpster fire that is social media. The point is, if you're looking for an enemy to hate, there are plenty to choose from. So what about peace? Is it even possible for us to sit down and listen or feel heard with the people we disagree with or even hate? If there's one person on this planet who can answer that question, it's William Ury. William is considered the goat when it comes to negotiation. The author of multiple books on the subject, including Getting to Yes, which is an absolute masterpiece.

0:41William has spent decades as a peace negotiator, working to resolve the world's most intractable conflicts. And if there's one thing I've learned from William, it's that peace is a process and not an outcome. It's a process that begins by listening to those we oppose with the same human dignity we offer to anyone else. And if you think some of the people you disagree with or hate don't deserve to be treated with dignity, this episode is definitely for you. This is a bit of optimism. You're a world-famous peace negotiator. Do you have any competition? I hope so. So I hope I have plenty of competition.

1:25Right, I know, right. Seriously, I hope there's a whole industry just of peace negotiators. You came to fame by co-authoring the book, Getting to Yes, which is the Bible for anyone who studies negotiation and it's used in any number of universities and courses. In your years of understanding negotiation, is there any difference between a peace negotiation, a negotiation in a business context, trying to make a deal? are all negotiations basically the same thing regardless of the stakes or are they actually different? If I'm negotiating a contract or trying to negotiate a deal with my union versus a peace negotiation at the highest levels of Israelis, Palestinians, etc., is there actually a difference or is all negotiation basically the same thing?

2:08So is that book that you wrote not just a book on how to effectively negotiate but how to have relationships, how to have a better marriage, how to have peace? Is it all basically the same even though the words might be different? Well, there are obviously a lot of situational differences. There's no question about it. We can go into all that. But at the root of it is what you're asking, I think, fundamentally. It is, in my experience, I can just speak to my experience, it is the same. And I work in all, I've worked, you know, I started working in coal mine strikes and coal mines and, you know, in the Middle East and family disputes and a lot of business disputes and so on.

2:50And yeah, that's my experience. It's basically human beings dealing with other human beings and having conflicts, which we all have at every level. And the evidence of that is that book, because that book had examples from all of those realms. And it's used in prisons, with prisoners. It's used in divinity schools. It's used in diplomatic academies. It's used in the State Department. It's used in the Pentagon and the military, and obviously a lot in the business world. It's used by therapists, and that's because they find it helpful across the different domains, because we're talking about human beings trying to live with other human beings.

3:32And to me, this is the key thing right now is we're in trouble here. The country's topsy-turvy, the world's topsy-turvy, the social media, artificial intelligence, everything is going on, all the changes, climate change, all that stuff. There's more and more conflict because naturally, because there's more and more change in the world. And with more change comes more conflict. And conflict is not something necessarily bad. It's actually natural. It's human. And everybody has conflict. There's conflict all the time. The choice is not about getting rid of the conflict. It's about how do we deal with the conflict?

4:10Do we deal with the conflict by opposing each other and getting into this fight where we all lose in the end? Or do we, as you were saying, do we face the situation together and say, how do we resolve this? Or how do we transform it? Or how do we agree to disagree? How do we get along? And on that question, our personal happiness depends on it, but our collective survival as a species depends on how we answer that question. I think there's something very important here that when you and I talk about our desire for world peace, there's nothing Pollyanna, Pollyannish about that. We don't imagine a world without conflict.

4:47We imagine a world in which all conflict can be resolved peacefully. And that's what world peace looks like. Exactly. Peace is a process. It's not an outcome of like some fairy thing. It's a process. It's can we deal with our differences constructively? And I like to provoke people by sometimes saying, I personally believe the world needs more conflict, not less. And that's not to keep me in a job. But that's because wherever there's change that needs to be done in families and communities and businesses, or whether there's injustices, you need conflict. You need to engage. You need to stop avoiding.

5:25You need to engage it. But the way in which you engage is the critical, do you engage by listening? Do you engage by cooperation? Do you engage by using creativity? Do you engage by collaboration? Or do you engage by going to war? And we all know how wars turn out. Everybody loses. Can you tell a specific story from your piece negotiating where there were two sides that have historical hatred for each other? and how you were able to find a breakthrough, that they could see each other as actually more the same than different, or at least in common cause in some way, shape, or form. Okay. I'm going to tell a story I usually don't tell.

6:09A number of years ago, there was a terrible civil war raging in the country of Turkey between the Turks and the Kurds. There was a Kurdish separatist movement, and 3 ,000 villages were destroyed, tens of thousands of people were killed. It was going on over many, many years. In the midst of it, a group of Turkish leaders and Kurdish leaders who were former top military or former parliamentarians, congresspeople, and so on, a small group of them, we brought them out of Turkey because they couldn't meet in Turkey. In fact, when we brought them to a place in Switzerland, just a quiet place, and they couldn't be known to be even talking to each other because they would be considered traitors by their own side.

6:54That's how tense it was. There was one guy who was one of the Turkish guys. He, when he was young in the university, he'd been a member of the, I think it was called the White Wolves, which was a kind of a shadowy paramilitary kind of terrorist organization. And he was described to me as someone who'd rather shoot a Kurd than sit down and talk with a Kurd. So he was there. We're meeting the next morning, and I say to them, I want to hear from each side. What do you most want? What do you really care about? What's really important to you here? And one of the Kurdish leaders started talking about the right to self-determination, to choose your own fate, choose your own destiny.

7:44And as soon as that word self-determination came up, this Turkish guy got up and said, that's treason. That's criminal to even use that phrase, self-determination. I'm leaving here. What am I doing here? And he stormed out of the room and everyone was in kind of shock. And so I went after him with another colleague of his and said, look, you know, it's really important to your point of view be heard here. Come on back in. He was going to leave, packing his bags to leave. He came back in and explained what it meant to him. And then the Kurdish leader said, you know, I didn't get a chance to finish what I was going to say.

8:28I believe that all human beings have the right to self-determination. And I, as a Kurdish citizen of Turkey, believe that we Kurds ought to exercise our right of self-determination to remain part of Turkey. And I'll tell you something, if an external enemy attacked Turkey, I would sign up for the army and give my life for Turkey. It's just that chance to really listen to what they actually said. Then something really interesting happened, which was that night, that was that little breakthrough. I saw everyone's eyes when the Kurdish leader said that. It was like the emotional reading in the room, kind of like, oh, that's what you mean.

9:12You know, when you get a chance to really listen to what the other person says, rather, you know, that immediate trigger. Well, that night I saw that Kurdish guy, Turkish guy, having dinner, we were having dinner, you know, having, and they were sitting at their own table and with a couple others and they were talking heatedly and whatever it is, I noticed, wow, they're really deep into it. And then the next morning, when we were starting, the Turkish guy who'd been the member of the White Wolves and who'd been so triggered said, I just want to start by saying something. He said, last night at dinner, I heard for the first time what the Kurds have gone through in the course of this war, what they've suffered, the killings, the torches, just even for being able to speak their language.

9:56in this country. It was forbidden. It was against the law to speak the Kurdish language, their own language, or to have their own religious festivals. It was all against the law. And he said, I finally got that. And he said, and that last night I didn't sleep a week. And I want to tell you something. He said, if someone had told me a month ago that I'd be sitting here listening to Kurds talk about self-determination or Kurdistan, I would have thought I was living my worst nightmare. But now I understand. I think I'm living in a dream. I want to thank you for opening my eyes. And it wasn't that he abandoned his side.

10:38He just understood the other side story. And it was like, there was a real just like a shift in the whole room. And this is what I love about conflicts is you got to work with the ones who we're not just the moderates, work with the so-called extremists, because they're the ones when they shift, when they have that shift, it changes the whole room. I think people forget that you can't make peace with your friends. You can only make peace with an enemy. Right. And so if you desire peace in a nation, then you have no option but to engage with someone that you consider literally the enemy. Right.

11:20That's it. And so, I mean, this is why I do this work is, you know, because people say, wow, must be really tiring. You know, I've worked 40, 40, 50 years on the Middle East, Ukraine, just name the conflict. And, you know, it must be absolutely exhausting. But the thing is, those moments when human beings are actually touching into that thing, there's an energy that comes. There's a light that comes in the darkness. You can see courage. You can see little acts of courage and it's alive. There's an aliveness in the middle of those conflicts that often you don't find when people are just kind of off living their lives.

12:03Our country seems to be ripping itself to shreds. Now, I know that a lot of it has blown up in the media. I know that most Americans are moderates. I know that most Americans are curious about other people. But at the end of the day, the people doing the shouting, whether it's the politicians or the media, are dividing us. We shout at each other. We talk at each other. We don't listen, and we exercise zero curiosity. Thanksgiving is approaching. And when you have a family member with different political views than you, the rule of thumb is just don't talk about it. Avoid it. How do we change that, that we do talk about it, that we do talk?

12:40Where do we start, Bill? How do we get peace in America? That's a great question. I think you just gave the clue, which is you can talk about it, but just start by listening. Meet perceived animosity with curiosity. Turn to that favorite uncle or not so favorite uncle or whatever and just say, tell me more. Tell me why. I agree with you entirely in theory, right? But the problem is, is these things are triggering. Like I had a conversation with a friend recently who is, it's somebody you and I both know. He is, I would consider above average intelligence. He's a very smart, articulate, thoughtful, curious person.

13:31And yet the anger that he has when I said, we have to learn to listen to people with whom we have sometimes completely diametrically opposed political opinions, the anger, something triggered in it, but they're stupid or they're this. So if your crazy uncle says something that is triggering, that attacks the beliefs that you hold, whether they're intentional or unintentional, how do we not be triggered and stay in that space of curiosity when we want to fight? That's what triggering is. What I like to do is when I know I'm going to be in a situation that might be triggering. I look for whatever my favorite way, and everyone has their favorite way of what I call going to the balcony, which is just resourcing yourself.

14:18Like, take a walk around the block. Imagine that, wow, something's going to come up at Thanksgiving. Think about what self you want to bring to that conversation, because they're going to say something, you're going to be triggered. And if you can just for one moment, when you just name it, say, oh, I knew that was going to come up. Just naming it creates a little bit of psychological distance. It frees you. There's an old saying that when angry, you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret. Don't make the best speech you'll ever regret. Realize you have choice. You have agency. As you're talking about this, what's going through my mind is this is not dissimilar than having a functional relationship of any sorts.

15:03It's the exact same thing. And I'm thinking about my own sort of relationships. And I think the mistake that we make is that the reason we get triggered and the reason we lose control and the reason we attack or feel attacked is to prepare. And I know that in my relationships, when I have been in a time of peace, whether with my partner or by myself, to mentally prepare ourselves or to mentally prepare myself for the time, the inevitable time where there will be disagreement, tension, or a fight. That we establish the rules in peacetime so that we're prepared in war, as opposed to just trying to invent the rules each time.

15:54There you go. And I know one of the things that helped me was we agreed that if we fight or when we fight, that we would fight instead of me versus her. It would be us versus the problem. Or that we would fight to get to resolution. And I remember being in an argument in tension. And I would have to remind myself, I'm not fighting to get to resolution here. I'm fighting to be right. I would catch myself. but I did the work. I built the muscle memory before the tension arrived. And I'll just give you one example of how it worked. And I'm hoping that this helps for those political discourses. We were having a disagreement and it went something like this.

16:40Here's what I did right. And here's what you did wrong. And her response is, oh yeah, well, here's what I did right. And here's what you did wrong. And my response is, oh yeah, well, here's what I did right. And here's what you did. And you could see where this was going. And it was getting more heated. It was getting more personal. And I realized that we were breaking our own rules about how we're fighting. We weren't fighting to get to resolution. We were fighting against each other. And I literally interrupted the fight. I said, this is clearly not working. New rules. I said, from now on, I'm going to tell you what I did wrong and what you did right.

17:13And then it's going to be your turn and I'll go first. I said, here's what I did wrong and here's what you did right. And she goes, oh yeah, well here's what I did wrong and here's what you did right. We were good in five minutes or less because we realized the other person was actually trying as opposed to finding all the failures. And I think that's an interesting technique, whether that works with political discourse or not, which is here's something I think you have fundamentally right where my party has fundamentally wrong. To actually change the rules of the discourse. Engage in what can be called meta talk.

17:50Talk about the talk. Talk about the talk before you have the talk. Set the ground rules. And so much easier to do that when you're in peace with each other than when you're at war. And a little bit of preparation. I mean, think about it. Those conversations are some of the most important conversations we have in our relationship. They're make or break conversations, cumulatively, right? A relationship fails or succeeds depends on the way in which we deal with those conversations when we have conflict. I've seen surveys of psychologists say the single biggest success factor in a relationship is how people deal with conflict.

18:30So if that's so important to you, think about you're going to make a presentation at work. You don't just go on the fly and do it. You prepare, you rehearse, you think about it, you prepare yourself mentally and emotionally. The conversations that you're going to have with your most intimate ones or with people, your most intimate enemies, you know, or whatever, the ones at the Thanksgiving table, they're crucial for relationships that will go on for years. They matter to us. So prepare. Take a moment to prepare. As a rule of thumb, take as much time to prepare as you're going to have the conversation.

19:08one-to-one. But even if it's less, even if you're about to get on the phone, if you've got one minute, just take one minute of silence. Calm yourself. Breathe. And then remember what the rules are. Remember what your intention is. Remember what your why is. And it could be so helpful. And you just came up with it right there in your conversation with your partner. Everyone will come up with the things that work for them. them. But the most important thing, I think, is just to remember to pause. We're in a world where there's no pauses anymore. You know, we've got these phones. They deprive us of pauses.

19:49We used to have pauses. You know, now you go to a restaurant, everyone's looking at their phone. No one pauses from where are those little moments between conversations when you can pause, remember what it's about, think about it, give yourself those little micro pauses in the course of your day and you'll be much more successful. This is so interesting. And as you're saying these things, a lot of ideas and experiences are sort of coming back to my mind. Another one in relationship, which is I remember we were having a conversation and she was saying things to me that were triggering. Like she was hitting my insecurities.

20:29I was getting defensive. I wouldn't let her finish a sentence because I needed to defend myself. There was some preparation at another time for another reason that I was able to recall in the moment was this is her story. It doesn't have to be right and I don't have to agree with it. It is her story and my job is to listen to her story. It is the technique that you talk about going to the balcony, which is I was able to remove myself from myself in that moment. and I still got triggered, but I remembered I was able to not take it as personally. And I was just like, she's not attacking you. She's telling you her story.

21:08If you're feeling attacked, it's okay. Just listen to her story. Her story doesn't have to be right. It doesn't have to be accurate. You don't have to agree with it. It's just the story. Just listen to the story. And I was able to not disconnect myself from the conversation. I remained present and I remained curious, but it really helped me to not take the things that were being said to me personally. And this is what you're talking about, about going to the balcony. That's it. That's it. The thing is, it's so simple and it's something that any of us can do. This isn't like something you have to go to school for.

21:41This is something, you know, we have practice every single day. I'm learning this. I mean, I'm happy to practice this every day. You know, I've been doing this for a long time, but it's like, this is our daily practice as human beings who are going to be faced with tensions right now in the world, in this country. Obviously, they're amplified, so it's even more important. But just put yourself in their shoes and hear their story. It might be as simple as, you know, someone says something to you, it's really important. We're about to give a response. Let me tell you what it looks like from my point of view.

22:13Well, that's important, but what about just taking a moment and saying, let me make sure I heard what you're saying. And you just paraphrase back to them what you heard them say and say, I got it right. Where did I get it wrong? And you know what that does? First of all, we think we're communicating clearly, but we may not be actually hearing them. A, and B is you just do that. It kind of slows down the conversation so you can actually, the pace you can actually deal with something, but it also signals them that you're trying to listen to them, that you're trying to hear their story. And so it communicates basic human respect.

22:57Everyone, every human being wants to be seen. They want to be heard. They want to be listened to. I mean, this is our birthright. Listening is our birthright. We've got two ears of one mouth for a reason to listen twice as much as we talk. One of the uncomfortable truths about finding common ground or listening. And I learned this from Dia Khan. I think you know Dia. Dia is a BAFTA winning documentarian. I've told her story a few times on here. She made some comments about multicultural society on the BBC. And for some reason, her comments went viral in the white supremacist community. And the white supremacists started trolling her to the point where it got so dangerous that the police told her to stay away from windows.

23:43And the way that Dio reacted, she's a Muslim woman living in the UK. The way that she reacted is she moved to the United States to meet some of the white supremacists. And she was walking in Charlottesville, not marching in Charlottesville. She was walking with them in Charlottesville. She actually ended up making a documentary called White Right, Meeting the Enemy, about her experience of going to meet these white supremacists. And she gave them a safe space to feel heard. Because they don't usually get that, right? They either get attacked. And one of the leaders of the white supremacist movement says, when I go on TV, it's a win-win for me because it's a recruiting tool.

24:20He says, they either let me spew my stuff, in which case it's great for recruiting, or if they shut off my microphone, I'm the victim and it's great for recruiting. So it's a win-win for me, right? But he offered Dia a short period of time, and he offered her more and more and more. And when Dia said, why do you keep giving me more time? He said, because no one's actually been curious about my point of view. Now, she didn't agree with him, obviously, but she gave him a safe space to feel heard. And I talked to Dia after January 6th, and I've talked to Dia after George Floyd, and she's worked with jihadis and white supremacists and all these people.

24:56Oh, I should tell you before I go on that what you see in this documentary is these white supremacists who hate Dia because she's a Muslim, right? They, over the course of time, they start to trust her and consider her a friend. And then they struggle to reconcile their racist points of view with the fact that they consider this woman a friend. And slowly, one by one, they drop out of the white supremacist movement. so so her her technique of making the other feel heard and allowing them to come to the realization of the absurdity of their of their views actually was more helpful than her spitting on them at a rally which by the way she's done as well and she said i would go to these rallies and spit on the white supremacists when i was younger and we would go home and high five each other and feel like we were the best and all the self-righteousness but she came to the realization that she affected zero out.

25:50That's beautiful. And that's, I mean, that's such a powerful story. And I bring it back to the question, you asked the question earlier of like, we're so polarized, or we appear to be so polarized when actually there's an exhausted majority and the people on the extremes are amplified. What's the next step? What do we do? And I think she just points the way. Any one of us has the ability to reach out to one person whom we know, who's probably a family member, who was a friend, who was a colleague, who was something, who was a neighbor, who we happen to suspect or know has a very different opinion than ours and is on the other side of the divide.

26:34And do what she does, which is listen to them, respect them. You know, dignity is indivisible. My dignity is the same as your dignity. If your dignity is assaulted, my dignity is assaulted. It's not like a zero-sum game here. And so just reach out and prepare, like you were saying, you know, prepare, you know, think about it, and then listen to them. Prepare so you don't get triggered. You draw them out more. You meet animosity with curiosity. And guess what? But you're going to have a lot more influence in, oh, that person listened to me. Well, maybe they're not all. So, you know, just the same as the white supremacists began to drop out, you're going to have a lot more influence.

27:22It's a much more powerful thing to do. The uncomfortable truth, though, that Dia has discovered, and again, I talked after January 6th, I talked after George Floyd, I've talked a fair bit. She says the uncomfortable truth that people don't want to accept is, in her experience, almost always, it's the victim that has to go first. and the victim has to listen to the oppressor. And the standard reaction is, why should I have to? I've been enduring their shit my whole life, and now I have to listen to them. They should listen to me. But the problem is they won't. The problem is they won't. The white supremacist is not going to offer a safe space for Dia to feel heard.