Richard Ryerson:
This is Richard Ryerson. Thanks as always for tuning into the show.
Got a great guest today, William Ury. He is a co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and is one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation and mediation. He has done it all. For the past 35 years, he’s been a negotiation advisor and mediator in conflicts ranging from the Kentucky Wildcat coal mine strikes to the ethnic wars in the Middle East, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union. He’s partnered with former President Jimmy Carter and co-founded the International Negotiation Network, which is a non-governmental body that seeks to end civil wars around the world.
He’s helped end the civil war in Indonesia. He’s assisted in preventing one in Venezuela. My goodness, he’s just passionate about this whole negotiation process. And he’s authored a bunch of books, too. His latest one is Getting Yes to Yourself, which just came out in January.
It’s a sequel to his world’s best-selling book on negotiation called Getting to Yes. He’s also authored The Power of Positive No, Getting Past No, and also The Third Side. We talk a lot about his latest book, of course, Getting to Yes with Yourself. In this book, the whole premise is that the greatest obstacle to really successful agreements and satisfying relationships isn’t the other side or the other person. The biggest obstacle is actually ourself because it is our natural tendency, and we’ve talked about this on the show a lot, to react in ways that don’t serve our true interest.
But as he points out in this book and in this conversation, the obstacle can also become our biggest opportunity. He talks about six proven steps to get what you really want in life and in negotiations and effective tips and strategies, and he hits some of these in this conversation. I think you’re really going to enjoy it. Again, here’s William Ury on Dose of Leadership. Well, William, so glad to have you on the show.
Welcome to Dose of Leadership.
William Ury:
It’s a real pleasure to be with you today, Richard, to talk about such an important subject.
Richard Ryerson:
Yeah. I love the book that just came out in January, Getting Yes to Yourself. Tell us a little more about that and yourself and the genesis of the book.
William Ury:
Sure. Well, about over 30 years ago, I had the privilege of working on a book with Roger Fisher called Getting to Yes. That book was a negotiation book, but it’s also a leadership book. It’s about how to influence people, but it’s about how to reach agreements that are good for both sides. It came out at a time when a lot of the books, kind of the popular books on the bestseller lists were looking out for number one and winning by intimidation.
Getting Yes struck a different note. It kind of promoted a popular mindset that has become known as kind of win-win, the idea that we can work together for mutual gain, expand the pie so there’s more for everybody. Over the last 30 years, three decades or more, I’ve had the privilege of serving as a – helping people negotiate or mediate, I’ve been a mediator in situations ranging from labor strikes to boardroom battles and from family feuds to civil wars around the world. I’ve kind of specialized in dealing with difficult people in difficult situations because the question I got most often was, how do you get to yes with people who don’t want to get to yes? You’re right.
Anyway, over the years, it slowly dawned on me, Richard, that maybe the most difficult person we ever have to deal with, the person who is the biggest obstacle to us getting what we truly want in life and in negotiation is actually not the person on the other side of the table. As difficult as they can be, it’s the person on this side of the table, namely us. So true. So that’s really the genesis of this book, Getting to Yes With Yourself.
Richard Ryerson:
It’s so true and probably one of the biggest kind of lessons I’ve learned or kind of maybe clarities or epiphanies or whatever you want to call them from doing this show is, man, we do sabotage ourselves quite a bit and especially when you talk to entrepreneurs and anybody that’s trying to do something of significance, we’ve got these dreams but it’s usually not the external that stops us.
It’s ourselves.
William Ury:
Isn’t that true? That’s been my experience entirely. We human beings – I’m originally actually an anthropologist by training and I study human beings and human beings, we tend to be kind of reaction machines and as the old saying goes, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret and that happens. We do sabotage ourselves.
We get in our own way and so I set about to kind of ask the question, could we take the same kind of negotiating principles, getting the yes principles that work well in influencing others, can we use them to actually influence ourselves first so that we can get what we need but also it helps set us up for success in dealing with others.
Richard Ryerson:
Yeah. So what is probably the biggest saboteur I guess of us? Is it fear? Is it limiting beliefs?
Is it doubt? What do you think stands out the most? What stops most of us?
William Ury:
Yeah. Well, I would say it’s in that area.
I would say it’s our – we react out of – yeah, I would say if I had to pick one, I would say it’s fear. I mean there are many of them obviously and fear and then limiting beliefs I’d say is very much – well, limiting beliefs are often based on fear and so that’s what I look at in my book is like, okay, so – because to me the foundation of successful negotiation is an ability to – I like to use the metaphor of going to the balcony. It’s almost like you’re negotiating on a stage with someone, be it your business partner or your spouse or your colleague or your client and part of your mind goes to a mental and emotional balcony overlooking that stage. It’s a place of perspective. It’s a place of calm.
It’s a place of self-control. It’s a place where you can keep your eyes on the prize and to me that’s where you can actually view. You can see your limiting beliefs. You can see the fear. You can see the anger.
You can see the things that get in our own way.
Richard Ryerson:
I like that perspective. It’s so true. I think one thing that’s always confused me about kind of the limiting beliefs or the sabotaging of success is if someone – I’ve seen so many times in people that I’ve coached or talked to and I’ve seen it in myself in my own life where I’ve got so close to either the finish line or the goal and then we do something or I’ve done something that kind of stopped it. Is that – and I try to think about that.
It wasn’t so much – was it the fear of success or maybe that we don’t – I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist. But is it almost like we feel like we don’t belong in that space or we don’t deserve that space I guess.
William Ury:
Does that make sense? You know what?
The more I think about it, what’s underneath it? What’s underneath the fear, the limiting beliefs? I would say – I mean I would characterize that as a no. I mean basically it’s a no to ourselves and the question is how can we get past that no to a yes to ourselves, to our deepest, truest, authentic self, to our deepest needs? And that’s really it.
I mean how do we – how can we see that no? Because a lot of us are even – we’re surprised by that. We don’t know that – wait a minute. I don’t have – because on the surface of it, it seems like this is what we want. But then I think that there’s part of us that’s blocking us partly because as you say Richard, maybe we feel we don’t deserve it.
Maybe we’re kind of repeating an old negative pattern that maybe we learned in childhood where we heard a voice of an adult saying, you can’t do that, you’ll be a failure and that keeps on repeating itself to us.
Richard Ryerson:
So what do we do? Your book has six steps that helps us to kind of get the strategies or what we really want out of life. What are those steps?
William Ury:
Yeah.
So the paramount foundation is to be able to go to the balcony. But as people tell me often and as I see myself in my own experience too is we have a tendency to fall off that balcony or not – we can’t stay on there. So the first step to me is the ability – I call – I mean again, taking a negotiating principle. It’s to put yourself in your own shoes. It sounds funny because after all, we’re not already in our own shoes.
But truly, how many of us really understand ourselves, see for example our limiting beliefs or see that – no, understand our fears. If we can – in negotiation, when people ask me what’s the most important principle for a negotiator, if you had to pick just one, the one I usually pick is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. In other words, if you’re trying to influence that person, you’re trying to change their mind, you need to know where their mind is. You need to be able to listen to that person, be it your client or your boss or your partner. But the – so the thing is that I found it’s very hard for people to put themselves in the other person’s shoes, particularly under stress, particularly under conditions of conflict.
The missing step, the kind of the psychological antecedent is because we have all these thoughts and emotions and beliefs that are in our head already and there’s no space to be able to take in the other person. So that’s where we need to kind of listen to ourselves first, put ourselves in our own shoes, figure out what we truly want, do that own kind of inner work so that we can then be available to be at our best when it comes to dealing with others.
Richard Ryerson:
Yeah, of course, it makes sense and knowing yourself and always seeking self-improvement, I guess it seems so intuitive but you’re so right. You said that how many of us truly know who we really are? I think that’s a large part of – I mean it’s a lifelong process.
It never stops. It never stops but I think it starts with an intentionality of step of really trying to figure out who we are.
William Ury:
That’s it. These things are – these are in some sense, these are timeless principles and you’re right. There are things that we have to – they’re not just things you do once and you get away OK.
Check that box. I put myself in my shoes. I know myself. OK, fine. Right.
These are kind of lifelong practices and the great opportunity we have is that we get lots of chance to practice because we’re with ourselves 24-7. So we have a chance to observe ourselves all the time and day by day, we can make steady progress.
Richard Ryerson:
All right. So what’s the second one?
William Ury:
The second one actually – well, let me give you an example actually of the first one if I might just because it will lead me into the second one which is I was working with a leader, a very well-known – one of the best-known business leaders in Latin America last year.
I was asked by his daughter who was also a business leader to help her father who was enmeshed in a terrible dispute with his former business partner over the control of Brazil’s largest retailer. This dispute had gone on for two and a half years, arbitrations, lawsuits, it was all over the media. I think the Financial Times called it perhaps the largest cross-continental boardroom showdown in recent history. Anyway, when I sat down with my client who actually became a friend, Abelio, in his home, I listened to him and he, like many of us, you may think you know what you want but I don’t think – I got the sense he really didn’t know what he truly wanted. Did he want to fight because he was slated to be chairman of the company for another eight years until he was 84 and is this really how he wanted to spend the rest of his life?
Or did he want to find some kind of way out of this situation and I think he was a little bit divided and then when I asked him what you want, he said, well, he gave me a list of things. He said, I want the stock at a certain price. I want the elimination of the non-compete clause. I want some real estate. He gave me a list.
But as I listened to him, I tried to probe. I said, but Abelio, you’re a man who seems to have everything. You’re a billionaire. What do you really want? What do you most want?
And he paused. He thought about it for a moment and finally he said, you know what I want? I want freedom. I want my freedom. And I said, that’s it.
So, what do you want the freedom for? He said, well, I want the freedom to be able to realize my business dreams and to be able to spend time with my family, which is the most important thing in my life. So, then I asked him, and this leads to the second point in the method is, Abelio, who can give you what you most want? Is it really your adversary in this dispute? Are you really his hostage?
I mean, only he can give you freedom? Or to some extent, can you give yourself that freedom independently of whatever he does? And as he thought about it, he realized, yeah, it’s me. And so, once, that’s what I, the second step, which is I call, I use again a negotiation term, which I’ll explain in a moment, called developing your inner BATNA, but it’s your inner ability to take care of yourself, to meet your own needs independent of the other side. And once Abelio realized that, he said, okay, well, fine.
And then he became chairman of another company. He took a vacation with his family. He started doing other business deals. And psychologically, that freed him so that he wasn’t so dependent on the other side for a resolution. And paradoxically, that made it a lot easier for us to reach an agreement.
And in four short days, we took a two and a half year dispute and were able to reach an agreement that wasn’t just a kind of a grudging compromise. But Abelio said, I got everything I wanted. But most important, I got my life back.
Richard Ryerson:
All because he realized that he was in far much control of his ultimate want and need. He was looking externally to get the freedom.
But once he realized it was all him, he kind of released everything.
William Ury:
That’s it, Richard. And so, he, by getting, that’s what I call getting to yes with yourself. He got to yes with himself. It was a lot easier to get to yes with his opponent in this conflict.
So, to me, that’s the key is the ability. In negotiation, you have to ask yourself, what do you most want? And then, where’s the power going to come from to give you what you most want? And in negotiation, one of the terms we use for power is what we call, what Roger Fisher and I term we coined in getting to yes called your BATNA, which stands for your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. It’s your best course of action if, for some reason, you’re not able to reach agreement.
If you’re not able to reach agreement with one customer, maybe there’s another customer. With one supplier, maybe there’s another supplier. Knowing your BATNA or having a good BATNA gives you confidence and power. But also, what I’ve realized over time is a lot of people, we don’t think that way. And I think the reason we don’t think that way is we forget our inner BATNA, which is our ability inside of ourselves to take care of ourselves, which then allows us to exercise our full power, our full authority in life.
Richard Ryerson:
We’re talking with William Ury. He’s got a new book out there, and his background is mediation. The book is called Getting to Yes with Yourself. You’ve also written some books, The Power of a Positive No, Getting Past No, and The Third Side. Tell me a little bit more about some of the steps.
And I want to get into some of the other initiatives. But quickly, what are some of the other steps that you have in getting to yes with yourself? Sure.
William Ury:
Well, the next step actually has to do with what you were calling limiting beliefs. And it’s one of the great powers in negotiations, the ability to reframe.
Asking yourself, where does satisfaction really come from? Because what I’ve noticed in negotiation, the key thing is to be able to change the game from a kind of a win-lose contest where it leads to a lose-lose-lose outcome with a loss also for the family or for the workplace or for the society. But it’s hard for people to do. And because I think we have a limiting belief, which is a mindset of scarcity. This is a dog-eat-dog world.
The universe is very unfriendly, and there’s not enough to go around, and I need to get mine. Right. And so I think by reframing is kind of changing the way you view life. And it’s just kind of question that belief and say, is that really true? And do I actually have a choice?
Can I choose to see instead, even when there’s adversity, life is essentially being on my side, that actually there’s not just essential scarcity, but I can actually create sufficiency or even abundance. And if you challenge that limiting belief and realize that we have a choice, we have a choice as to which belief we choose. Because who knows what reality is, but we can choose one way or the other. It was Einstein, interestingly enough, who once said the most important decision that any human being has to make is to decide whether or not the universe is friendly. Now, why would he do that?
Because he realized that his reasoning was that if we see the universe as being unfriendly, basically unfriendly, we’re going to treat everyone as our enemy and we’re going to react at the first provocation. And on a collective level, with all these nuclear weapons, we’re going to destroy life on Earth. But if we can choose to see life in the universe as fundamentally friendly, then we might choose to see, well, maybe there’s a chance to see others as potential partners and see if we can cooperate with them and preserve life on Earth.
Richard Ryerson:
I like that the difference between a scarcity and an abundance model and the difference between a scarcity and an abundance mindset. And it’s so critical to success, and particularly from a leadership perspective. You can’t be a transformative leader unless you’re coming from a place of abundance because it’s all about pouring your life into somebody else and being a servant and sacrificial and selfless.
And I can’t explain it, but it’s so true. When you look at it that way, you actually get more than you ever could imagine to get if you have an abundance mindset. And the scarcity mindset just kind of keeps you either at a mediocre status quo or worse. It never gets you out of the pit. Yeah.
William Ury:
And basically, it sets you up for the following steps in the method, which very quickly are to – it sets you up to be able to stay in what athletes call the zone. It’s a place of peak performance and peak satisfaction. It also sets you up to respect the other person, even if at first they may not respect you, which I find is the key to turning conflicts around, and is that respect may be the cheapest concession we can make in a negotiation because it costs us very little. You know, being in the Marines, how important respect is. And then that leads you to exactly what you’re saying, to basically the principle of giving and receiving rather than just treating the negotiation as something take, take, take, but as something where you can actually give.
You can actually help address the needs of the other side, and they’re much more likely to help you address yours.
Richard Ryerson:
I love that. How did you come to the point of – I love how you kind of flipped it on its head of taking your plethora of negotiating experience and being a mediator and flipping it on to how we can use those same tactics on ourself. Did you always know that or throughout your process did you realize, you know what? This is all about helping ourselves.
I mean, when did that kind of aha moment happen about flipping your tactics on its head and applying it to ourselves?
William Ury:
Yeah, it was a kind of – it’s a good question. No, I didn’t always know it. I think, you know, to me I see this book Getting to Yes with Yourself as kind of the missing first half of Getting to Yes. It’s a prerequisite course I don’t think I knew even existed when Roger and I first wrote Getting to Yes.
But over the years, you know, it would dawn on me that we could be our own biggest opponents and there lies the opportunity that we can be our own best allies. But I think, you know, some of the aha moments, they were both professional and personal. On a professional level, I remember thinking a lot about this when I was engaged as a mediator in the country of Venezuela between the president, Hugo Chavez, and his political opposition about 10, 12 years ago at a time of intense political unrest and there were like a million people on the streets of Caracas demanding the resignation of President Chavez and about a million people supporting him and there was a lot of fear that there would be civil violence and civil war even. And I had a number of encounters with President Chavez. He was kind of a volatile guy and I had to watch myself very carefully but I’ll just give you one story, a quick story, which is my colleague and I were invited to the presidential palace to see him at 9pm and we were waiting there in the presidential palace and waited and midnight finally came and they ushered us in and instead of him being alone, he had his entire cabinet arrayed behind him and he said, Bill, tell me about the situation.
What do you think? And I said, well, Mr. President, I think there’s been some progress. He said, he got triggered. What do you mean progress? Are you blind? You’re not seeing the dirty tricks the other side is up to, those traitors?
And he proceeded to lean very close into my face and yell at me for about 30 minutes in front of his entire cabinet there. So, you know, I felt, you know, wait a minute, that’s not true. If you look inside my own mind, defending myself, wanting to defend myself but then I was able to go to the balcony, just observe my own thoughts and feelings and feeling like, wow, okay, two years of work now down the drain and all that and just observe it, let it go and listen to him instead of reacting, instead of getting into an argument because he was a man who was known because he could have gone on forever. But how would that serve my purpose to get into an argument with him? And sure enough, after half an hour, I saw, you know, just listening, his shoulder sank a little bit and he said to me in a somewhat weary tone of voice, so Bill, what should I do?
Oh my. And that’s the sound of a human mind opening. And so I said, well, Mr. President, you know, it’s December, it’s almost Christmas time, why not declare a truce and just let everyone enjoy Christmas and then in January we can take it up again. He said that’s a great idea and his mood had completely shifted. How? Because I had gone to the balcony, because I had gotten to yes with myself, because I had not reacted, I was able to turn the situation around with him.
So it was moments like that that gave me a sense like, wow, if I can do this inner homework, I can be much more effective in my work.
Richard Ryerson:
I love that. What a great story, man. How did you get involved in mediation and negotiation? I mean, surely you weren’t 11 years old and thinking, you know what, I’m going to be a mediator someday. I mean, how did you get into that?
William Ury:
Well, you know, it’s interesting because I grew up in the Cold War and I could never quite get over the fact that we had all these nuclear weapons aimed at us and ours aimed at the Russians and what was that all about?
So I went into anthropology partly to try and understand what was going on here with humanity and, you know, in human evolution. But I wanted to apply it to something practical so I thought, you know, what if I wrote my thesis on imagining I was a fly on the wall say in the Middle East peace talks. What would you see as an anthropologist? What would you observe? And I sent it away to a professor, I was a graduate student in anthropology at Harvard, and sent it away to a professor in the law school working on international conflict resolution and one January night I was up in my attic rented room and I got a call at 10pm and it said this is Roger Fisher I just read your paper about the Middle East and I’ve just sent it to the Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East and I’d like you to come work with me. And so, you know, I was like thrilled that, wow, okay, something I could come up with might actually be practical so I started working with Roger and then, you know, about the theory of mediation and negotiation but I wanted to get real practice so I looked for opportunities and I had some opportunities to work as a mediator in a very bitter coal mine strike in Kentucky and so I one thing led to another so that’s how I got in the field and I’ve been in it ever since, that’s been my passion really is helping people, organizations and societies get T.S.
Richard Ryerson:
I find that just fascinating especially, you know, as you’re being triggered you know, I was talking to my kids the other day about they have no recollection of when we talk about the Cold War you know, my oldest is just getting ready to graduate high school but I remember thinking back in grade school and junior high and early 80s late 70s, I remember being petrified of nuclear war, I mean, literally afraid of it and I think a lot of people were, I think it was less so then but remember that movie that came out in the 80s, what was it called? The Day After? The Day After, remember that?
William Ury:
Oh, I do, I remember it well. I spent many years actually working on a project called the Avoiding Nuclear War project I worked with the U.S. government and I was actually a consultant to the White House at one point on how to reduce the risk of accidental nuclear war.
Richard Ryerson:
Yeah, and we came close a couple times too, anybody that’s ever studied it, you know?
William Ury:
Yeah, we did, in fact, as part of this project I had the privilege of on the 25th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis of sitting around a table in Moscow with the surviving participants American and Soviet and Cuban to kind of figure out what really happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis and we had Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy and just a whole bunch of people and it was amazing to me just how again, how our own fears, our own misperceptions, our own mistakes can actually lead to a kind of deadly cycle of escalation.
Richard Ryerson:
Yeah, you’re right In fact, my daughter was even talking, because they’re studying the Cuban Missile Crisis, like how did we even get to that point? I said, you know, it’s interesting you know, and you’ve got to take into account too, you know still fresh off the heels of World War II and the Red Scare is still fresh in everybody’s minds and, I don’t know it’s just a, it’s amazing to think about, I’m curious to think about, you know, the other thing too, is those nukes, a lot of those nukes, the nukes are still there, and so it’s funny how we never really talk about them anymore.
William Ury:
It’s true It’s true, I mean, it’s a kind of a mindset I mean, and they’re, you know, they’re still I mean, it’s not quite as objectively dangerous as it was, because we’re not, you know in a life and death struggle with this union, but yeah, it’s, I think that the jury is still out, I mean, I think we this is how I got interested in negotiation is I figure, you know, there’s a race going on between our ability as human beings, our technological genius at devising weapons that are increasingly destructive and increasingly accessible, and our moral, social abilities to to resolve conflicts to deal with each other, to deal with our differences in constructive ways and that’s where, you know, negotiation and leadership are so key.
Richard Ryerson:
Tell me more about the Abraham Path initiative, when I was reading about that, I just, I love it when people are actually doing something to shine a light on on leadership and diversity and showing the other cultures, so tell me about what prompted you, tell me what it is, first of all, and then tell me why you started it.
William Ury:
Well, yeah, it was actually in the wake of 9-11 and the Iraq War and I could just see this huge kind of chasm of fear and separation and a lot of misunderstanding between, you know, the West and, you know, the Middle East, between the West and the global, you know, Muslim community, and I thought wow, what could, how could we possibly come to understand each other a little bit better and I remembered, you know, the because I’ve been working, you know, I’ve been a student and I’ve done some work in the Middle East on the political negotiations over the years back in the late 70s and 80s and 90s even 2000 and then but I was thinking of what’s the kind of out-of-the-box kind of way approaching, and I thought of a simple idea which was, you know stories, because so much of that conflict is about identity and story why not go back to a story that actually reminds us of our connections which is this ancient story of Abraham and his journey which is kind of the founding story of Christianity, of Judaism, of Islam and it’s kind of the origin story for over half the planet and why not give people a chance just to kind of walk in the footsteps reenact that journey as it were follow that journey of Abraham and in the course of that meet each other and learn a little bit more of each other and see where that leads us and people thought that’s the craziest idea, no one’s going to walk in the Middle East but you know it’s like when there’s a danger, sometimes you need to move into the danger as you know, being in the Marines and you know but anyway so I decided to take it on as that’s a negotiation job how do we negotiate a path like the Appalachian Trail but through the Middle East or like there’s a pilgrimage path in Europe very popular called Campostella why not and I watched what’s the future of the Middle East one future is terrorism that’s our perception and the other possibility is tourism, I mean everybody would love to go to these places because we feel part of those stories, we know those stories from our own face and just from our own culture that’s the cradle of civilization so over the last 6-7 years, my colleagues and I, we studied the idea at Harvard for a while to study other paths what works, what borders would you have to cross and then we started to explore and now the path, there’s a website actually if you’re interested called AbrahamPath.org but it’s an online guidebook to we’re developing, our teams are developing the path but we’ve got already over 10,000 kilometers of path ready to walk in Jordan, in Turkey, in Palestine, the West Bank and in Israel where you can actually walk the path stay in villagers homes, get to know other people and it’s transformative for people who do it and it’s a kind of one thing I know is that however long conflicts last, the path will outlast the conflicts because paths can last for hundreds of years.
Richard Ryerson:
I appreciate that. I love the vision, I don’t know if I would maybe I could get the courage to do that someday, I’m sure it would be a transformative experience, how do you get past some of those barriers
William Ury:
Yeah, I know there’s a big barrier of fear but the truth is actually the parts of the path where we walk are safer than walking I mean objectively, again you have to face your subjective fear but objectively they’re safer than walking down the streets of a big metropolitan city in fact I’m headed there just in a few weeks to walk part of the path in that region.
Richard Ryerson:
I love how you at least, people like yourself I really love having people on the show that are shining a light in so many different areas and you’re certainly doing it and I never would have thought of negotiations of, like I said, flipping it on the head and helping to improve ourselves, which we’re all about here on the show and so I just learned so much from this and I’m excited to dive into your book even more. As we get close to the end of the conversation, I always like to ask all of my guests, like if you had the ultimate night for the most fantastic dinner party you’ve ever had and you can invite five people alive or dead, who would those people be?
William Ury:
Wow okay that’s a good one well, I don’t know, the first one that popped to my mind was actually Mahatma Gandhi another one is Abraham another one is Einstein and who else I would like to meet someone like, who else Mother Teresa I’d love to have a conversation with her and understand a little more and then who else I would say Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Richard Ryerson:
Oh, good choice I like, I hope I can come, this is a heavy hitting guest list this is a that would be an interesting night for sure you know, people pick Gandhi a lot you know, that’s what’s interesting, Gandhi’s come up he might be up there, Lincoln is up there a lot and Gandhi is up there a lot, they have to be the top two when I ask this question.
William Ury:
Lincoln would be great, and let me if I have a moment, can I tell you one story about Lincoln to me that illustrates this whole thing which is, Lincoln in the waning months of the Civil War, as a leader he was thinking about how does he how do we bind the wounds of the nation and heal and he was talking sympathetically about the South when a patriot in the audience, a Yankee patriot took him to task and said Mr. President, how dare you speak kindly of our enemies when you ought to be thinking of destroying them and Lincoln thought about it for a moment and he said Madam, do I not destroy my enemies when I turn them into my friends beautiful, that’s a reframe and that’s based Lincoln did a lot of work inside himself he was a master at getting to yes with himself that made it possible for him to get to yes with others.
Richard Ryerson:
Amazing, well guys, where can people find you and get in touch with you?
William Ury:
They can find me on my, through my website it’s probably the best way, it’s just my name WilliamUry, U-R-Y dot com and they can find the book pretty much anywhere on Amazon or on the web or in bookstores and I just want to wish all your listeners much much success in getting to yes with yourself and getting to yes with others as well.
Richard Ryerson:
I love it. Getting Yes to Yourself is the book I’ll have links to his website and the book and I highly encourage everybody to go out there it’s a very popular TED talk, The Walk from No to Yes William, you’re one of the great ones out there I really appreciate you coming on the show.
William Ury:
It’s been my pleasure Richard, I hope we get a chance to meet in person someday.