669: Three Practices for Thriving in Negotiations, with William Ury

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
We often assume that conflict is bad, but today’s guest says we actually need more conflict, not less. In this episode, we explore 3 practices that will help you thrive in the toughest negotiations. And no surprise, the biggest obstacle in getting what we want is almost always ourselves. This is coaching for leaders episode 669.Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:30]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. A conversation that leaders are almost always having is a conversation about conflict and negotiation. How do we help 2 different sides or more sometimes to come to a resolution that is best for them, best for the people that they represent, and, of course, best for the organizations that we lead. Today, I’m so excited to welcome an expert on negotiation to help us to frame our own thinking so well so that we can do better of serving people effectively in conflict. I’m so pleased to introduce William Urie. He’s one of the world’s best known experts on negotiation and the coauthor of Getting to Yes, the all time best selling book on negotiation with more than 15,000,000 copies sold. As cofounder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, he has devoted his life to helping people, organizations, and nations transform conflicts around the world. He served as a negotiator in many of the toughest disputes of our times, taught negotiation to tens of thousands, and consulted for dozens of fortune 500 companies, the White House, the state department, and the Pentagon.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:01]:
William has served as a negotiation adviser and mentor in conflicts ranging from the Kentucky wildcat coal mine strikes to wars in the Middle East, Colombia, Korea, and Ukraine. He is an internationally sought after speaker and has 2 popular TEDx talks with millions of views. He’s also now the author of Possible: How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. William, what a pleasure to have you with me.

William Ury [00:02:28]:
Oh, it’s a huge pleasure, Dave. I’ve enjoyed your podcast, and I’m delighted to be on it.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:33]:
I love this book. It has already got me thinking so differently about the next conflict that I enter into, whenever that is. And you write a line in the book that on its face might strike someone as odd coming from a negotiation expert. And the line is this: “The world needs more conflict, not less.” Tell me about what led you to write that.

William Ury [00:03:00]:
Well, I’m an anthropologist by training, and one thing I’ve noticed is that, and I know it sounds odd, but the conflict is natural. It’s part of human life. It’s really everywhere. And on its face, there’s nothing wrong with it. I mean, it’s how we grow. It’s how we develop. It’s how we evolve. Some people would say, you know, conflict is the foundation of human growth.

William Ury [00:03:23]:
It’s whenever there’s a change that needs to be made, there’s a little bit of a conflict. There’s some tension. The question isn’t about sometimes we think we gotta get rid of conflict. No. The question is, how do we lean into the conflict, embrace it, lean in with curiosity, embrace it with creativity, and transform it? The choice we have is the form of conflict. Are we gonna handle it destructively, or are we gonna handle it constructively through a creative, you know, negotiation, for example, in which we both look for what works for both of us.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:55]:
You highlight a story in the book that is one of the most fascinating stories I’ve read in a long time. It goes back to the Cuban missile crisis. It’s a story I’ve never heard. October 1962, a story about a second captain on a Soviet submarine. I’m wondering if you could share his story because it illustrates, I think, such a key principle of what you teach.

William Ury [00:03:22]:
It does, Dave. The fellow is not well known. His name is Vasily Alexandrovich Arkhipov. And we ought to know his name because without him, we might not be having this conversation today. You know, we might have had a thermonuclear war back in October, 1962. And what happened was at the height of that crisis, of the Cuban missile crisis, was a standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. There was an American destroyer following tracking a Soviet sub in the North Atlantic. And because they were having trouble, they dropped some depth charges, some explosive mines on top of the submarine to kind of force it to the surface.

William Ury [00:05:00]:
What they didn’t know is that Soviet sub had a nuclear torpedo. And what they didn’t know was that Moscow had authorized the top three officers of the sub to launch that torpedo, if they could all agree. Well, the depth charge landed in the waters around the submarine. The submarine was swirling around. The Soviets said said it was a little bit like being in a washing machine. They thought they were under attack. And the the captain shouted, they’ll sink us, but we’ll sink them. Arm the torpedo.

William Ury [00:04:58]:
And the second captain the deputy captain said, yes. Let’s do it. We’ll save the honor of the Soviet Navy. Well, there was a 3rd deputy captain there who was the 3rd person needed to make that decision. His name was Vasili Arkhipov, as I mentioned, and he paused for a moment. And then he said, no. What do you mean no? You’re a wimp. They shouted at him.

William Ury [00:05:58]:
He said, no. The regulation said that unless the hull of the sub is materially breached, we can’t launch it. And so they got into an argument a little bit. He kept his cool. He kept his calm. Things quieted down. That torpedo was not launched. And the secretary of defense, the American secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, when he heard about this incident years later, he said, if that torpedo had been launched, that would have been the beginning of World War 3.

William Ury [00:05:57]:
That would have been it. It would have escalated from there. So, we owe our lives, 100 of millions of us, maybe all of us, all owe our lives to to the ability of 1 human being in a moment when everyone’s getting very reactive to control themselves, to pause, to take a pause, to breathe, and to say no. So I take that as the lesson for today’s times when we’re all so reactive, whether it’s on social media or whatever the thing is, the ability to pause is the foundation of successful negotiation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:03]:
You write in the book, “since I coauthored Getting to Yes more than 40 years ago, perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned is this. The biggest obstacle to getting what I want is not the difficult person on the other side of the table. It is the person on this side of the table. It is me. When I react without thinking, I become my own worst enemy. I am the one who keeps getting in my own way.” I think about the story you just shared and that quote and the importance of how this starts with us and one of the invitations that you make in the book is inviting us to build a balcony and to get up on the balcony and to use that as an opportunity to pause. Tell me a bit more about that balcony and what’s so key about it.

William Ury [00:07:54]:
Well, Dave, we’re human beings, were reaction machines. And it’s very understandable when you’re, you know, in a conflict, in a tense situation, there is fear, there is anger. And as the old saying goes, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. You will send the best email you will ever regret. And that happens more often than not. And so what I see successful negotiators do is they take a step back for a moment. You start by stopping. You engage by momentarily disengaging. There’s this moment, this kind of faint gap between a stimulus and a response where we have a choice to decide how we’re gonna respond to that situation. What’s in our interest? I call that going to the balcony.

William Ury [00:08:49]:
It’s the metaphor of imagining that you’re negotiating on a stage. Now, you, the other people, the people in the office, whoever is involved in this in this conflict, your mind goes to a mental and emotional balcony overlooking that stage, a place where you can keep your eyes on the prize. What is most important to you? And you can see the larger picture. That ability to go to the balcony, I find, is essential because somehow we think of negotiations as we are trying to get the other side to do what we want them to do, we are trying to influence them. But how can we possibly influence them if we don’t first influence ourselves? That’s what going to the balcony is about.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:33]:
And it really does require us to pause like that Russian captain did all those years ago and made such a big difference in the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis, like you said, and perhaps history and all our lives. And yet it starts with the pause. And one of the things I was really fascinated by reading about all the work you’ve done and all the different kinds of negotiations you’ve had with presidents and heads of state. And it’s really just fascinating. One of the things you do as a practice before going into one of those really high level conversations is to relax, is to go out for a walk, and to help you to, like, pause and take care of yourself first. And I’m kinda wondering, how do you do that? Because I think it sounds like a great idea. And yet so often when we are caught up in these moments with emotion and we’re going in these tough situations, our tendency is to be, like, so amped up and nervous and angry. How do you find that you’re able to step back and just relax?

William Ury [00:10:43]:
You know, that’s one of the wisest things I’ve ever heard, which is, when you’ve got something very hard to do, begin by relaxing. Why? Because you reduce the level of stress to the point where you can bring your best to the situation. Now, if you’re right there, you’re triggered. You’re obviously, you might not immediately go for a walk, but, you know, all of us have have our favorite ways of doing this, but you might take a deep breath. Take 3 deep breaths. You know, let the oxygen go in your brain. Just that momentary pause. You might, as someone once taught me, pinch the palm of your hand.

William Ury [00:11:18]:
I said, why would I do that? He said, well, because that’ll give you momentary pain. It’ll bring you make you alert in the moment. Everyone has their favorite way. What what’s your favorite way to pause when you’re getting reactive? Just out of curiosity, Dave.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:32]:
Oh, I’ll usually try to ask a question. Like, if I find that something has happened that’s triggered me for whatever reason, I don’t know if I learned to do this at some point or just sort of, like, figured this out over the years, but I found that the best way to pause was to ask for clarification on something someone’s said. Especially if someone says something to me that’s really surprising or I’m not expecting, I I often will ask a question, and that gives me the moment to, 1, further clarify whatever it is that’s just been said, but it also gives me a moment just to stop and think and not react.

William Ury [00:12:10]:
That’s it. That’s exactly it. And everyone has their favorite way of doing it. But I think, you know, asking question, just buying a little bit of time. You know, Thomas Jefferson, at the constitutional convention, whenever he was getting he used to say, when angry, count to 10. If very angry, a 100. Simply because, you know, physiologically, we now know this, your neuroscience, it takes about maybe it takes takes a few seconds, and some people would say that takes up to 90 seconds for whatever that reaction is to get out of our bloodstream, whatever that biochemical reaction is. But just a few seconds, and you can in the in the time that it takes to ask a question, receive the answer, in that moment, you can go to the balcony. You can just go to a balcony, and you suddenly can see things a little bit differently.

William Ury [00:13:00]:
You can ask yourself, where do I want this conversation to go? Is it really in my interest to get into an argument right now? Is that really gonna further my objective? And we can catch ourselves. And even if it just means, hey, can we take a quick break, you know, for a moment? I gotta gotta, you know, a bio break, whatever it is. Just something that just breaks the pace for a moment just to give yourself a chance to come into your full potential to deal with a situation that surprised you or that or that made you angry.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:32]:
And how powerful silence can be sometimes too. Right? You know, you tell a story in the book. I was thinking about you said a moment ago of, like like, pinching the palm of your hand a little bit to just give you awareness of something else beyond the immediate thing in front of you. And I seem to recall you telling a story of you being in front of a a president in a pretty high stakes negotiation and and and them coming at you with a ton of anger. And you use that that, like, pinching your palm just a bit just to force yourself out of that, like, that moment of providing a different perspective, and and it worked.

William Ury [00:14:08]:
It did. It was president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. It was a number of years ago. I would I was there as a part of a political mediation, and I was meeting with him at midnight in front of his entire cabinet. And I said something like you know, he asked me how things were going. And I said, I think that the parties are making some progress. Well, that’s not what he wanted to hear. He just flew off the head and said, are you naive? Are you are you crazy? You 3rd sider, you can’t see anything, you can’t see the dirty tricks.

William Ury [00:14:33]:
And he leaned very close to my face and proceeded to shout at me for approximately 30 minutes. And I was embarrassed. I was thinking what I was gonna say. And then I remembered that to just this friend of mine said, pinch the palm of your hand. And that kind of brought me back into presence. And I thought, wait a minute. I was just about to think about what I could do to defend myself. And I thought, wait a minute.

William Ury [00:14:56]:
Why am I here? That’s the essence is why am I here? I’m here to try to calm the situation. Is it really going to do any good if I get into an argument with the president of Venezuela? And so I bit my tongue, pinched my palm, and just listened to him and just watched him as if it was a play going on the stage, as if I was on the balcony. And sure enough, people get really angry and he could go on for hours and hours, but, you know, after a while, he didn’t have anything to react to. And then I saw his shoulder slowly sink, and he said to me, in a weary tone of voice, he said, so Ury, what should I do? And that, my friends, is the faint sound of a human mind opening. That was my opportunity right then. If I’d gotten angry before that, we could have gone on all night. But that was that moment when he was actually asking me for something. And and I said, well, mister president, it’s December.

William Ury [00:15:55]:
It’s Christmas time. No one can really enjoy their Christmas with all this conflict raging. I said, why don’t you just give everyone give everyone a break, you know, 3 weeks to no talking about the conflict? Let’s have a tregua, they say in Spanish, a truce. And he looked at me for a moment. He stopped, and then he clapped me on the back and he said, that’s an excellent idea. I’m gonna propose that in my next speech. And his mood had completely shifted. And what I learned from that is that maybe the greatest power that we have in a negotiation is the power not to react.

William Ury [00:16:29]:
It’s to stop for a moment and go to the balcony.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:32]:
The power of pause. Incredible. One of the other invitations that you make in getting up on the balcony is zooming in, and you share a very personal story in the book about your daughter, and shortly after she was born, and meeting a physician named doctor Tanner. I think it’s a great example of zooming in. Would you share that story?

William Ury [00:16:57]:
Yeah. Well, zooming in means kind of like when you’re on the balcony, zoom into yourself and ask yourself, what do you really want? What is most important to you? And, and that story is like my daughter, Gabby, was born with all kinds of congenital problems and she was having surgery when she was 5 months in Chicago on her spinal cord and, very, very delicate surgery. And we were in to see a doctor beforehand in a clinic And he had his medical students around him. And then he turned to them and he said to them, right in front of my wife and me, who was cradling my daughter, he said, this is a 5 month old female scheduled for surgery on her tethered spinal cord in Chicago later this week. And I’ve seen many surgical cases just like this where the patient came out paraplegic. And, you know, I was like frozen for a moment, like, oh, you know, and but also just about to, you know, burst out. But I, you know, I contained myself in that moment. He turned away and went went on with this.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:01]:
Like you like you and your wife weren’t even there?

William Ury [00:18:03]:
Yeah. It was like we weren’t even there. And then he was just talking to his students, of course, but there’s this kind of utter insensitivity in that moment to how we might be feeling about that and for my wife to be learning that right then, you know, just in this offhand conversation. And, you know, so anyway, went on and then maybe a month later, I was looking around for a doctor after Gaby gotten back. And we’d gotten back from Chicago, looking around for a surgeon, a pediatric surgeon for another surgery. And, and I found out that he was considered the best surgeon in town, the very same doctor Tanner who had made that remark. And when I mentioned that to my wife, she said, never will I let him touch my daughter. And I understood that, of course, but I went for a walk.

William Ury [00:18:50]:
I went for a walk, and I thought about it. I thought, well, if he’s the best surgeon, you know, maybe I’d better check up. So I made some follow-up checkup calls with with a nurse in the clinic. And she said, well, actually, Doctor. Tanner is actually caring. And I find him quite caring, and he’s the best doctor. So I went back to my wife and she said, look, let’s just set up an appointment to see him, at least, because we owe it to our daughter. And we went to see him and he was.

William Ury [00:19:19]:
Turned out, he gave us an hour’s time. He turned out to be carrying. He accompanied Gaby for a long time and carried out a number of her surgeries. And I looked back on it, and I realized I almost we just, in that initial reaction, almost ruled it out, but it turned out that he was the best doctor and he even turned out to be empathetic. So pausing on that first reaction, not acting out of it, zooming in, asking, what do I really want? What’s what what was really most important here was the long term health of our daughter. And so we’re able to set that initial incident aside and it made a huge difference in her life and ours.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:00]:
You write, “In the language of negotiation, to zoom in means to focus on the interests that lie underneath our positions.” When I think about that point in your story, there’s a distinction between position and interest. And I think that’s a pretty significant distinction. Could you share, like, what is the distinction when you’re moving people from just thinking about their position to starting to explore what interest is?

William Ury [00:20:29]:
Positions are the things we say we want. You know, it’s the dollars and cents. It’s the numbers. It’s that I want that corner office. It’s the concrete things we say we want. Interests are the underlying motivations, like the underlying needs. You know, I want to see subs. The underlying needs, the underlying concerns, the underlying fears, the honoring aspirations and desires.

William Ury [00:20:56]:
Positions are what we say we want. Interests are why we say what we want. And oftentimes, in negotiation, negotiation go around positions. I want it for this amount of money. I want this or whatever the thing is. But actually, what you’re trying to do in negotiation is to satisfy your interests, the underlying deep motivations. And so often in negotiation, we end up in a kinda contest of positions, and we’d lose sight of what the underlying interests are. Like in that proverbial story that my colleagues and I told in in getting into yes of, 2 sisters quarreling about an orange.

William Ury [00:21:30]:
They’re quarreling about an orange. Each, each one wanted the orange. That’s the position. Right? And then they took the orange, cut it in half. One sister took her half, used half the peel for baking a cake, and the other sister took her half, threw away the peel, and used the fruit to eat. They ended up with a half appeal for 1 and a half of fruit for the other when if they had looked behind the position of the orange for why they wanted it, which is one wanted it for cooking, one wanted it for eating, that they would have ended up with a whole a whole peel for 1 and a whole fruit for the other. And that’s what often happens in negotiations is why it’s so valuable to look behind the positions for what to ask that question, why do you want that? Help me understand. What is it about that office that you like? Or what is it about the raise that you want? Is it just more money? Or do you wanna develop yourself? Because you may not be able to satisfy their position, but you might be able to meet their underlying interest.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:33]:
You invite us in thinking about our what our interests are to try to get beyond just the surface interest and really see if we can recognize our deeper motivations and I’m wondering how do we know that we’ve really done the work to get to the deeper motivation, the thing that really matters to us?

William Ury [00:22:57]:
Well, imagine for a moment, the motivation is like an iceberg. Position is the part of the iceberg above the water that you see. Underneath the water are is what you don’t see, the underlying motivations, interests. And what I found in difficult negotiations is the deeper you go, if you really go down to the bottom of the iceberg and get to what are people’s basic human needs, if you get there and you can hear that and you can address those things, then often that’s the key to changing the situation. I was once advising a business leader who was in a bitter fight with his, he was the chair of the board, and the other one was the main shareholder. And they got into a bitter fight that lawsuits and got into the press, and it was very ugly. And when I sat down with him for a moment, I asked him what he his name was Abilio.

William Ury [00:23:52]:
I said, Abilio, what what do you really want? And and he said, I was in his living room, and he said, well, like a good business, but I want the I want this amount of stock, and I want the elimination of the non compete clause, and I want the the company headquarters. He had this whole list. I said, Abilio, what do you really want? And he looked at me. We just think about our positions. What do you really want? What’s underneath it? What do you want most here in this situation? And he paused for a long time. He thought about it. He said, really what I want? I want my freedom. That’s what I want.

William Ury [00:24:24]:
I want my freedom. And when I heard the word freedom, that’s when you know I mean, that goes to your question. It was like almost with my ears, a certain tonality. It just came from a deep place inside of him. He wanted his freedom. Now he had been you know, he’d had the experience, I knew, of being kidnapped 20 years earlier and held in a kind of coffin for a week, and he thought he wouldn’t survive. So freedom really had a visceral meaning for him.

William Ury [00:24:50]:
And then I asked him, so what does the freedom actually mean to you tangibly? Just to make it more concrete, he said, well, it’s freedom to spend time with my family. He pointed it to his kids who are in the, you know, running around. That’s the thing I carry, and freedom to make the deals I love to make. And then I realized, okay. Now we can work on getting you your freedom. And that, once you get to the bottom of it, then this conflict, which seems so difficult and impossible to most people, we’re able to resolve within less than a week.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:25]:
It it really it’s so different when you get to that deeper motivation. And you recognized in that moment that that was the deeper motivation, that word. When did he recognize that?

William Ury [00:25:38]:
Well, I think in that moment, that was aha moment for him. That was a moment because sometimes, you know, your our job is not just to go to the balcony ourselves. Our job is to help others go to the balcony. Right. I was helping him go to the balcony in that moment by listening to him, by asking him questions like you were doing. And I think he realized in that moment, there was a kind of like, oh, that’s what I really want here. Because when you’re in a conflict, it’s all this dust and dirt flying around.

William Ury [00:26:07]:
It’s hard to see anything. And that’s why it’s so important to kind of let the dust settle. One of my favorite quotes from, the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu is, you know, 25 100 year old manual there of wisdom is, do you have the patience to wait until the mud settles and the water is clear? Because often our minds are like fizzy water. You know, like, you know, you fill your glass full of water. It’s all fizzy. You can’t see through it. You have to wait a moment till it settles, and then you can see through the and our minds are like that. We need that kind of clarity.

William Ury [00:26:43]:
In that moment, he had that clarity somehow to see that that his real underlying motivation was he wanted freedom. And, you know, it’s funny. That happened, like, 10 years ago, and I went to his birthday party recently. And he talked to his friends and family about what these 10 years of freedom have meant for him. He said it’s the best years of his life. And at the end of the when the when the conflict was when we reached agreement, I asked him, did he get what he wanted? You know, even of the things he said. He said, yeah.

William Ury [00:27:15]:
He said, I got everything I wanted, but the most important thing is I got my life back.

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:20]:
It’s such a powerful example, and I love the analogy of letting the water settle till it’s clear. And what a great invitation for us to as a check for us to, like have we really gotten to the deeper motivation or if we just articulated a position? And the other things you mentioned, like, in the stock options and all that, like like yeah. I mean, tactically, those are important to figure out, but it’s not really the water settling. Like, what a great reminder for us to do that for ourselves as we think about our own motivations. There’s a third invitation, and it’s maybe not opposite of zoom in, but it’s a different perspective. It’s also zooming out. And I mentioned in the bio that I read about you that you were involved in the wildcat strikes on the Kentucky mines early in your career. And you start the story about this in the book by describing this as your first big failure as a mediator.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:19]:
What went wrong?

William Ury [00:28:21]:
Well, it’s like this. When you go to the balcony, it’s almost like this is, I think, one of the fundamental competences we need as leaders and is the ability to go to the balcony and almost like it’s a camera lens, you zoom into what you want, but then you’ve got to zoom out and see the larger picture because we get so caught up that we can’t see that larger picture. And that’s the big mistake I made in my very first mediation. I was, you know, still in graduate school. I wanted to get, you know, apply, get my hands dirty. I wanted to get some experience. And I met a law professor from Chicago, Steve Goldberg, who was involved as an arbitrator in the coal industry. And he asked me if I would like to come along because he had a situation where he, you know, he knew how to arbitrate, but mediate with something different.

William Ury [00:29:09]:
Where we got down to this coal mine where the miners are going out on strike all the time in contravention of the contract. That’s wildcat strikes. There were bomb threats. The men were packing guns to the mine. There was, you know,, the management had taken the miners to court and the judge in his infinite wisdom had jailed the workforce overnight. And it was just getting very ugly and it looked like it could escalate into a nationwide coal strike. When Steve and I got down to the mine, manager and the union would not even sit in the room together. That was how bad the tension was.

William Ury [00:29:47]:
And so we shoveled back and forth listening to both sides, trying to get some ideas from them and present some of our ideas. And after 6 weeks of shuttling back and forth, finally, there was enough on the table there that they’re willing to come down and finally grudgingly sit down with each other. And over 2 days, they were able to work out an agreement. And there were like 10 union leaders and 10 managers, and it was like, you know, a peace accord. And they were they were excited and so on. And then there was just one tiny little detail, which was the agreement had to be ratified by the workforce, by the miners. Everyone assumed it was a mere detail, and sure enough, a week later, the vote was nearly unanimous in rejecting the very agreement that that their union leadership have come up with with management.

William Ury [00:30:35]:
And everyone was shocked. We were all shocked. It was like, okay. Now we’re back to square 1. And why did the miners reject it? Because they didn’t trust management. And even though the agreement was better on paper than what they had, they thought there must be some trick. And so it was just safer to say no. And that lesson of the that was a failure on our part to zoom out.

William Ury [00:31:06]:
To see that, in fact and this is one of the key lessons in negotiation, to see that it’s not you just don’t focus on the people who are at the table. But who’s not at the table? Who is at the internal tables? There’s always 3 tables in any negotiation, at least 3. There’s the table where you kinda see, you know, the 2 sides, but then each side has their own internal negotiations, their own internal dynamics. And in this case, it was the miners. And and we need to zoom out, see the larger picture, see the people who are not at the table because if those people don’t feel included, if their voice is not heard, if their suspicions are not addressed, then they’ll kick over the table. And that’s what happens. So it’s a a lesson that served me very well ever since is to remember to go to the balcony, zoom out, see the 3 tables, focus not just on who’s at the table, but who’s not at the table, and then really focus on the issue of trust. How do you build trust when that trust doesn’t exist?

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:07]:
So easy, isn’t it, to get 2 people in a room and come to an agreement and forget the business partner, the spouse, the employees, like all the people I’ve I’ve meant the the minds what an amazing example of that the miners had their leaders representing them, but then they didn’t trust the agreement that had come out. And what a beautiful analogy of thinking about 3 tables. Right? Engaging all 3. So key if you really want to come to something that’s gonna move everyone forward, isn’t it?

William Ury [00:32:36]:
That’s the thing, Dave, is, you know, when I ask people, I say, there are 2 kinds of negotiations that we get engaged in. The external negotiations with the client, the ones outside of the organization, and then the internal negotiations inside with our coworkers, with our boss, with our staff, and so on. Which personally do you find more problematic? And I’ve asked this question many times. And do you know most hands go up on internal? It’s actually as difficult as the external negotiations can be. A lot of people find the more challenging negotiations to be the ones with the people with whom supposedly we’re on the same side. We have the same objectives. And I find that more often than not, in fact, the most internal negotiation is with ourselves, and that is the most difficult negotiation. And so it’s really important to focus not just on the external dimension, but on the internal.

William Ury [00:33:31]:
I find that when things break down, often it’s not it’s because of a failed internal negotiation where you haven’t gotten your colleagues. You know, sales hasn’t gotten manufacturing on board and finance and so on. You gotta get your ducks in a row before in order to negotiate effectively externally.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:51]:
You make 3 big invitations in this book to us and thinking about how we open up possibility in conflict. We’ve only really zeroed in on one in this conversation because it does start with us, but there’s a lot more so I’m hoping that if you’re listening to this and thinking about a conflict you’re in right now or wanting to get better at this as a practice that you’ll pick up the book really get into the depths of this because there’s so much here that I think helps us to open up what’s possible and not see conflict as just a negative thing but how do we actually utilize conflict to open up doors for us? William Ury is the author of Possible: How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. William, thank you so much for the invitation for us to do better on this. I so appreciate it.

William Ury [00:34:40]:
It’s a huge pleasure to speak with you, Dave. I wish your listeners much success in getting to yes.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:54]:
If this conversation was helpful for you, a few related episodes I’d recommend. One of them is episode 262. Negotiate s if your life depended on it. Chris Voss was my guest on that episode, former chief hostage negotiator for the FBI. Chris and I talked about his experience in some of the most difficult situations on earth, how he approached them, the principles that he used, and most importantly for us, what can we learn from him in order to handle the most difficult situations that come up? Episode 262 for that. Also recommended are 2 episodes from my pal Kwami Christian, director of the American Negotiation Institute and host of the Negotiate Anything podcast. I’ve learned so much from him over the years on how to negotiate better. The 2 episodes I recommend, one of them is episode 380.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:41]:
How to find confidence and conflict. He walked us through his compassionate curiosity model, the mindset we can approach for a difficult situation. It’s such a great compliment to this conversation with William, episode 380 for a step by step process on how to begin.And then a situation that we talked about in episode 416 that many leaders find themselves dealing with. I know I’ve been in this situation. How to negotiate when others have power? How do you approach a situation when you know going in that the other party or the other organization has the more powerful position. What do you do? What’s the right mindset? And how do you ensure a good result both for you, your organization, and, yes, also the other party too, episode 416 for exactly how to do that. All of those episodes you can find inside of the coachingforleaders.com website.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:35]:
And I’m inviting you to set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com. It’s gonna give you access to tons of benefits inside the free membership. One of them is the ability to search by topic. Negotiation skills is one of the dozens of topic areas inside of the free membership, but many others as well too. And one of the other resources inside of the free membership is full access to my own personal library. When you’re logged in to the website, you’ll see a link that says Dave’s library. And when you click on that, you’ll get access to thousands of library entries all sorted by topics. You can easily find what you’re looking for.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:14]:
I have been pulling for years YouTube clips that I think are helpful. Articles from Harvard Business Review, articles from the Wall Street Journal, articles from Forbes, other episodes from other creators, things that I found that I think are helpful for you in your ongoing leadership development. And by the way, lots of topics that aren’t related to leadership as well are also database in there. I’m adding to the library every single week. If you’re looking for an article or a resource or a video or a podcast episode that is for you or maybe your team or a client, that’s a great place to start. It’s worth setting up your free membership just to get access to that. Again, you can just go over to coachingforleaders.com for full access. And if you already have been using the free membership, I’m inviting you to find out about Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:03]:
Coaching for Leaders Plus goes the next step of helping you to get even more insight and support from me. And one of the practices I have each week is writing a journal entry on a topic that I’m hearing about right now that I think will be helpful to you. The last couple weeks, a few of our members said to me, I’m dealing with a lot of uncertainty in our organization right now. We’re going through restructuring. We’re going through layoffs. What do I say to my team when we show up for a staff meeting on a Wednesday morning? They’re looking to me to say something. I answered that question in a recent journal entry. What are the things you do when there’s chaos happening around you in an organization? It’s one of the benefits inside of coaching for leaders plus that weekly journal entry from me with some more thoughts to support you in your work.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:54]:
If you would like to find out more, go over to coaching for leaders dot plus for all the benefits inside Coaching for Leaders Plus. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next week, I’m glad to welcome Charles Duhigg to the show. We’re having a conversation on how to connect with people better. Join me for that conversation with Charles, and I’ll see you back next Monday.