Maya Mathias:
Episode 15, In Conversation with William Ury. Hello, book lovers! It’s great to be with you again. Welcome to this interview series for our podcast. President Jimmy Carter best summed up my featured guest today by saying, Bill Ury has a remarkable ability to get to the heart of a conflict and find simple but innovative ways to resolve it. William Ury is co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation and he’s one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation and mediation.
He’s the author of a grand total of eight books on the subject, starting in the early 80s with the world’s best-selling book on negotiation called Getting to Yes, which now has almost 12 million copies in print in English and has been translated into 34 languages. His latest installment, Getting to Yes with Yourself, was featured in my recent podcast, Episode 13, so go check it out if you haven’t already listened to it. Now, for the past 35 years, William has served as a negotiation advisor and mediator in conflicts ranging from coal mine strikes to ethnic wars to boardroom battles, and he has helped end a civil war in Indonesia and assisted in preventing one in Venezuela. So, on the back of this illustrious career, I was intensely curious to find out not just about his body of eight books, but also the man behind the work. What inspired and motivated someone like William to get on this path in the first place and to help us start to draw inspiration from it for our own journeys through life and to help us start to speak our truth even more?
So, sit back, relax, and drink in the wonderful wisdom that William shared with me. Welcome to the Executive Book Club podcast. I’m your host, Maya Mathias, and I help executives, business owners, and non-profit leaders like you tap into the insights of leaders and critical thinkers who have come before us. I share ways to integrate their practical wisdom, accelerate your soul-searching, and access a state of inner peace. Tune in every Monday and Friday as I share work or life strategies to help you benefit from both the written knowledge of the ages and modern-day leadership superstars.
Make sure to head over to execbookclub.com, that’s E-X-E-C bookclub.com, to take your free leadership style assessment. And now, on with the show. Wonderful. So, William, it is such a thrill. Hello there. It’s a thrill to be interviewing you today for my Executive Book Club podcast. I’m just looking forward to our time together today, and I’m excited to talk about your newest book, Getting to Yes With Yourself, and just more about your life and your body of work that you’ve accomplished to date.
So, thank you for spending this time with me. It’s a great pleasure, Maya. So, one thing I’d like to do to start off with is just share with our viewers here some of the wonderful books that you’ve written to date. And I do admit I haven’t read all of them yet, but I have read your most recent one, and I just want to give everyone watching this a lay of the land as to your body of work to date. So, correct me if I’m wrong, but I sort of think of these three books as part of a trilogy.
William Ury:
It started with Getting to Yes that you did in the early 80s with Roger Fisher, and then that sort of led to Getting Past No, and more recently to The Power of a Positive No. And then you also have this sort of corollary book called The Third Side. And my understanding, just glancing at the books, is these three books are more about dealing with the dynamics of the two sides that come up in a conflict, although this last book, Power of a Positive No, sort of alludes to some more of the inner work that you focus in this book. And The Third Side, which is really intriguing to me, is thinking about the greater community and the larger context within any sort of dispute or conflict exists. And most recently you came up with this book, Getting to Yes with Yourself, which you’ve described as a prequel to so many of the other books that you’ve written.
Maya Mathias:
So I’m really curious to understand how you started on this journey, on this body of work, and how this evolution, both personally and professionally, got you to this most recent book.
William Ury:
So, let’s see. When I was a teenager, let’s say, I had that question, which was, how can we human beings deal with our differences, our most profound differences? Because I was living in those days, we were living under the shadow of the atomic bomb, we were living in the Cold War, the days of the Cold War. You know, it was never clear whether you could wake up any particular morning and there’d be a crisis, like the Cuban Missile Crisis or a crisis, and there would be a war, and that would be it. No future. So I could never quite understand why that was, and so I started studying anthropology because I thought anthropology would tell me a little bit about human beings and our human story.
And then I started studying, in particular I wanted to apply anthropology to something practical, so I decided to apply it to the problem of conflict and to the problem of war and peace. And that’s really how I started this whole process.
Maya Mathias:
Yeah, that’s beautiful. What is your earliest memory, apart from what you’ve just shared about your visceral experiences around the Cold War, what’s your earliest memory about wanting to champion peace in a very real and tangible way?
William Ury:
Very good question. Well, I mean, it might be, I’m trying to think.
I certainly remember when I was a boy, I was born in Chicago, but when I was six we moved to Switzerland, and I went to school there for many years, with children from, with boys actually from all different parts of the world, all different cultures, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, and so on. But I do remember there were fights and so on. In fact, I remember for some reason, I’m just recalling this right now, but there were, even among the American boys, there was kind of, in those days, I don’t know why, the people from the South were fighting with the people from the North.
Maya Mathias:
Like 200 years after the Civil War that was still going on. That’s funny.
William Ury:
I just remember, I mean, there’s got to be a better way.
There must be a better game to play than this one.
Maya Mathias:
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting that you bring up having, as a young child, being in sort of a different culture from where you were raised, and being surrounded by these people from different cultures, and for better or for worse, needing to find a way to get along with everyone else, or having them get along with each other, right? I can relate to that because I was born in Singapore, actually, and I moved here eight years ago to the Bay Area, and both living in Singapore, which is a very multi-ethnic place, and coming here, which initially was a huge culture shock to me, even though I had grown up with American culture via TV and all that. Just coming here and starting to understand at a deeper level what it means to embrace a different culture, live with people from a different culture, and eventually thrive in a different environment. I know we’ll talk about this at some stage in this conversation, but I also know that that was one of the great drivers and triggers for you to create the Abraham Path in the Middle East.
It’s building that cross-cultural dialogue and understanding, which is the antithesis to so much of what’s going on over there right now, right?
William Ury:
That’s true. That’s it. I just got back from there, actually, from walking the Abraham Path. I’d like to take a step back to the larger perspective of the balcony and take a look at where are we in the human story right now? I’m an anthropologist by training, studying human beings, and imagining that an anthropologist, like a thousand years, were to look back at this particular moment in time. I like to think they might call this the age of the human family reunion.
In other words, for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, all human beings, all the tribes on the planet, all the language groups of which there are perhaps 16,000 of them, were in touch with each other thanks to the communications revolution, thanks to what we’re able to talk through right now through Skype. Like many family reunions, it’s not all peace and light. There’s a lot of inequity and resentment and fear and anger and so on. The great question that’s facing us is, how can we deal with all of our newfound cousins, as it were? To me, that’s the great challenge, which is, how do we deal with all these cultures?
Because in every culture, whether it’s San Francisco or whether it’s Singapore or whether it’s Europe right now, everywhere it’s multi-ethnic. How do we deal with all of our differences? How can we celebrate our differences rather than just turn our differences to destruction?
Maya Mathias:
Yeah, it’s a great point because we’re living in an age, as you say, it’s this global family reunion, and in some ways, this reunion has been forced on some people. Some of us welcome it and embrace it, and then there are others of us who go, wait, I don’t want these foreign people in my backyard.
There is that flash of ideals.
William Ury:
And you have to empathize with those people because it’s all gone so fast, and there’s challenges and shocks to our values and our sense of culture. So you see a kind of a backlash, which often can take the form of fundamentalism or whatever, but what’s behind it is a kind of a discomfort with what’s going on. And so we tend to protect ourselves, and we protect ourselves by excluding others. And to me, that’s the great challenge in the world is how do we react to the fast-changing environment?
Do we react by exclusion and protection and fear? Or can we choose to react by inclusion and connection and try to understand? And I think that’s in every single human being. But it’s the great choice facing us today is between exclusion and inclusion. You know, there’s a poem that I’ve always loved from an American poet who lived maybe about a century ago during the Great Depression.
His name was Edward Markham. And I have a friend who heard him declaim this poem. He remembers it with a great shock of white hair. And the poem goes, you know, They drew a circle and shut me out, A rebel, a heretic, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle, a big circle, and took them in.
Maya Mathias:
Oh, wow. That’s beautiful.
William Ury:
To me, there’s a kind of a jujitsu in that. In other words, you know, they try to exclude us. And if we just exclude them, we just end up in a battle of exclusion.
And that’s what you see all the way around the world. Yeah. But maybe if we can invoke the power of connection, the power of love, and have the wit to win and draw a bigger circle and take them in, that turns the tables and that changes the game.
Maya Mathias:
I love that. And I also love, because this reminds me of something you mentioned in your TED Talk.
When you were explaining the motivation for the Abraham Path, you said that Abraham represents so many ideals and so many, it’s such an important and integral part of the story in the Middle East. And one of the things that Abraham symbolizes is this idea of connection and unity and extending kindness to strangers. And just knowing that by this sense of inclusion, you are acknowledging the other person’s humanity. You’re acknowledging that we’re all part of the same human race and we may express our humanness in different ways culturally, but fundamentally, we are one and the same. Right? That’s it.
William Ury:
That’s it. And I just got back from the Middle East and walking in Jordan, in the deserts of Jordan, walking to Petra for five days. Yeah. And just the goat herds. They want to offer you a cup of tea.
There’s that deep tradition of hospitality in a place in which, through the media, we’re trained to expect hostility. And what do we receive instead? We receive this kind of open-hearted hospitality that’s associated with the story of Abraham because it’s believed that he had his tent open in all four directions to receive strangers. Right. And in a world today, a globalized world, where we’ve got so many different cultures, there’s a lesson we can learn from those very simple, like a goat herder in the Middle East, which is they have an expression, they say, welcome, welcome, you are among family.
That’s the greeting. Welcome, you are among family. And so there’s something there, I think, buried. It’s funny. Sometimes in nature, when you find a poison and you look for the antidote, it’s often right next to the poison, the kind of plants.
And so here we think of the Middle East as the most conflicted, most intractable. It’s the place where human beings, where we have the most despair around. It’s like if the earth were a single human body, the Middle East would be the pinched nerve. It’s the place where all the pain is referred. And yet right there in that same region is the secret of hospitality, of open-hearted kindness towards strangers, which is the antidote to the destructive conflict.
Maya Mathias:
That’s beautiful. I really love that. And if we could build on that, one of the reasons I created this podcast is, first, I’m fascinated by books. I love reading. I’m fascinated also by authors.
It’s such a thrill to talk to you and sort of understand the human behind the body of work. And one of my goals for this podcast and for my business really is to help leaders, as many leaders around the world as possible, lead from their truth. And I see you as being so emblematic of that. So what does it mean to you when I talk about leading from your truth? What does that connote and conjure up in you when you say that, when I say that?
William Ury:
What it means is maybe being yourself, in the sense of, in the end, there’s an expression, there’s a saying I’ve always liked, which is, you might as well be yourself because everyone else is taken. Taken, yeah. And so leading from what is deepest in you, your deepest set of values, and learning to trust that inner voice inside of us, instead of worrying about what other people are going to think. I was inspired from the time I was young by people like, when I was in high school, I wrote a paper about Gandhi. It was a person who, in fact, his autobiography talked about experiments with truth.
He was someone who was always learning to lead from the truth inside him. And you see other great leaders, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. I mean, they’re all people who were able to do, they were so effective in the outer world because they’d done some work inside, which is really what led me to write this latest book you have there, Getting to Yes With Yourself, realizing that, in fact, the missing key to being able to get to yes in these challenging times is to first do a little bit of inner homework so that we can then both be more happy within ourselves, but also be much more effective in getting to yes with others.
Maya Mathias:
Yeah, I love that. And from what you’ve just shared, you know, you started that inner homework at a fairly young age, writing about Gandhi. I mean, that takes it back a few years. Right.
What has your journey to your inner truth been like? What would you like to share with the viewers here?
William Ury:
Well, I mean, I began with this question, as I mentioned, of how do we human beings learn to deal with each other? And what I’ve found is that if you can pick a question, any question, whatever you like, but pick a question and live into it and live with it, it can guide you. And for me, personally, you know, one of my favorite activities is going for walks, which is going for walks in nature, because I find that I can, it’s my way, you know, in negotiation I often use that metaphor of going to the balcony.
It’s my way of going to the balcony, of just getting to a place of clarity so that I can be in touch with whatever I have to contribute in this question. I believe that every one of us has something to contribute. And we just have to get in touch with it.
Maya Mathias:
I love that. I love that.
And for some of us, that journey takes an entire lifetime. And for others, it occurs to us much sooner on our life’s path, right? So it’s really interesting.
William Ury:
But as long as you get to it, it doesn’t matter how long it takes. I agree.
Maya Mathias:
I agree. Because I think that’s actually a big part of or a big reason for being alive. It’s finding and getting to that place of truth and then living from it as much as you can. Yeah, I love that. Something that occurred to me as I was reading your books and listening to all, watching all the videos, preparing for this talk was, you know, it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes, and it takes a circle of love and support to build and nurture a leader in his or her own space.
So I’d love for you to share with us what is the circle of love and support that you go to and that you turn to in order to nourish and nurture you along your journey?
William Ury:
Well, first, it’s my family. You know, it’s my wife, my children, my daughter Gabby, as you know, who’s kind of a teacher for me, particularly in this last book. And then my friends, you know, people who I feel kind of kindred spirit with over the years, and they’re actually scattered all over the world because my world is, you know, my work leads me in different places. And so I don’t feel like I’m alone in that sense.
But the other thing that really inspires me, you know, and gives me that is nature. I just find that going back to walking in nature, there’s a sense of wonder, and it just kind of like becomes clear what life’s all about, is that, you know, I mean, just having just come back from this walk in the Middle East where you would imagine, you know, okay, going to the Middle East, you know, people said, you’re going to the Middle East, you’re crazy, it must be suicidal, you know, ISIS and everything. Right, right. But I can tell you that, first of all, walking there on the path in Jordan, we walked like five days into Petra, it’s most extraordinary natural beauty, cultural heritage, hospitality from people, and I must say it felt safe, and it felt safe. And the ironic thing was, there’s a colleague of mine on the path who, you know, he’s kind of from the States, he’s kind of, you know, he said, you know, in the States, it feels like ISIS is the elephant in the room.
I mean, everyone’s kind of glued to the TV. What is this? And paradoxically, we were just a few hundred miles away from ISIS, as it were. But he said, here, it appears like it’s the mouse in the room. Wow.
You know, because the perspective, you know, the perspective of, okay, yes, it’s a very real danger, but we blow it out of proportion by our reaction to it. And then, of course, we may not react in the wisest way to dealing with a phenomenon like that. So it’s like just going back to nature just puts everything in perspective, and it just feeds you. At least it feeds me.
Maya Mathias:
Yeah, I can relate.
It’s part of that circle. It is. I can relate. Actually, my first, the first degree I did was in biology because I love nature, and yeah. For me, nature is one of my temples, and I just love getting lost in it.
William Ury:
Yeah, it is. It’s mine. You know, the cathedral, I mean, if you’d been in these places, I mean, just the magnificent mountains and vistas and, you know, positively biblical, it was deeply moving and grounding, and it gives you the clarity and perspective to be able to see, look at the events in the world today, including the events in the Middle East, put them in perspective, and just see what might be possible and discern the way forward.
Maya Mathias:
Yeah. What do you feel are some other ways that, you know, leaders, executives in all walks of life can come to that place of perspective?
I mean, if they’re not natural, if they’re not nature buffs like us, what are some other ways they can seek perspective? Yeah.
William Ury:
Well, you know, I mean, Steve Jobs, you know, for example, he was a walker, you know? Yeah. So I believe even if you’re not in nature, just a walker, just, you know, there’s a Stanford University study suggesting that walking actually makes you more creative.
It gives you more clarity, you know? So I like to take even, like, my meetings walking, you know? Because it’s funny, when you’re walking, you’re side by side, and you’re moving in a common direction, and even if you’re interviewing someone, you know, just to have an interview with someone, you’re going to learn more about them if you go for a walk, I find. But other than that, you know, it might be just taking in this world where there’s so much going on, there’s cell phones going off and texts and tweets, and it’s so interrupting and distracting, the ability to just pause for a moment, take a moment of silence. Like, for example, before I get onto a difficult phone call or a difficult interaction, I’d like to just take a few minutes of quiet so I can listen to myself, calm myself down, and set an intention for that particular interaction, be it with, you know, the president of a country or a guerrilla leader or whatever, allows me to then, you know, be at my best.
Maya Mathias:
Yeah, and I love that you do expand on that into a framework in this latest book, Getting to Yes With Yourself, you have the six-step inner yes method that, you know, people can really look to as a quick pick-me-up, if you will, before you enter into anything that’s potentially contentious or that could push your buttons in some way. So that’s one of the reasons I love this book. I’d like to just pick up on a thread we started to explore a few minutes ago, which is, you said, you know, Gabby, your daughter is one of your greatest teachers. What are some of the lessons she has taught you in your life so far?
William Ury:
Well, she’s 16 now, and the day she was born, she was diagnosed with a rare congenital syndrome called Bader syndrome, which meant a lot of structural anomalies in her spine, her legs, her organs, and so on, which required 15 or 16 major surgeries, which was extremely hard for her parents as well as for her.
But the amazing thing that I find about her is that she never sees herself as a victim. She has this kind of indomitable spirit of just, you know, just taking each day and enjoying and seeing the possibility for fun. To the extent that she, you know, doesn’t let anything stop her, you know. She had this dream, for example, of always wanting to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, you know. And so when she was 12, she tried, I don’t know, the longest hopscotch course in her driveway, in the driveway, and then she tried the most socks on one foot.
Anyway, a year ago, she announced to us that for her 16th birthday party, she was going to go for the world record in holding the longest abdominal plank. Do you know the plank position? I can do it. I can do it for about a minute or two. You know, you stretch out your body, you put your elbows up, and you try to hold it like you’re in a plank.
Well, she sent away for the world record, and for women it was 40 minutes, which was unbelievable. But she started training, you know, and then she said, okay, my 16th birthday. And then a week before the birthday party, the current record holder somehow let her know, found out about her or something, that she was going to try it. She said, oh, by the way, I beat my own record, and now I’ve just sent it in to the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s going to be an hour and five minutes.
Wow. But that didn’t stop Gabi. And, you know, on her birthday there in front of, you know, we had a little, she had her friends and family around, and we had to take it very seriously at the last moment because I realized she’s really going for it.
Maya Mathias:
She beat the Guinness, yeah.
William Ury:
We had to get cameras and independent witnesses and, you know, the whole thing for Guinness, just in case she was able to beat the record.
And lo and behold, if she didn’t go for an hour and 20 minutes, she doubled the world record. Amazing. And it was just an example to me of just someone who just doesn’t let anything stop. It’s just like she, and so in terms of she’s able to kind of reframe. You could either see life is against you, right?
You know, one of the basic choices you can make, I talk about in this book, is you can see life is against you. Of course, you can find lots of confirming examples of that. Anybody can. Yeah. However, we have this choice of seeing life is on our side.
We can reframe. We can change the way we see the situation. And Gabi is like, she’s able to just reframe and just see that, you know, she’s not a victim. She takes, you know, responsibility for where she is, and she just makes the best of it, and that allows her to do these kinds of amazing feats. So to me, she was able to get to yes with herself, you know, get to her yes.
And coming from her yes, which is a yes to life, really. You know, she was able to manifest this, and not just do it for herself. She actually used the feat to raise money for the children’s hospital here in Colorado where she had most of her surgeries to help other children. And she was able to, you know, she set the initial goal. We thought it would be a real stretch target to get to $5,000, but she ended up getting close to $60,000 for children with special needs there.
So by getting the yes with herself, you know, she was able to help get to yes and help others. So to me, she’s just a teacher to me in that regard. If ever I feel like, if I, you know, worry about her, she’s also just in the present moment, you know. She’s not worried about the past, you know, feeling sorry for herself or whatever, worried about the future. She’s right there in the present, and that to me is the key.
Because the present is the only place where you can actually change things for the better.
Maya Mathias:
Exactly. I mean, it’s funny because this morning, I stumbled upon this quote, which, you know, I know you’ll appreciate. It’s by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it speaks exactly to this. It says, what lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
William Ury:
That’s it. And Emerson is one of my great, and I was inspired by him from the time I was a teenager too.
Emerson was like, he also, he’s just a very deep, deep soul, very wise man.
Maya Mathias:
And his connection to nature, obviously, inspired him.
William Ury:
Yes, I lived in the same town as he did. I lived in Concord. Oh, I didn’t know that. I lived in Concord and I used to walk in the same woods where he used to walk.
Maya Mathias:
Oh, my goodness. Wow. That’s so special. Let’s see. Let me look at my questions here. Oh, yes, there was something that we wanted to spend a little time on, which is, you mentioned in a recent interview that you gave with Simon Sinek, well known for his work getting to Y, where you mentioned you had a year of blessed shock around about the time when Gabby was born. And that was, you know, you had the joy of welcoming her into the family, although she had all these health complications. And it was also the year where you lost two loved ones very close to you. And I know how that can just turn your life upside down in many ways.
So I’m curious to understand what that year taught you and how those lessons have carried you into the present day.
William Ury:
Yeah, it was 1997, 1997, 1998, and that’s how it turns the year. And true, it was a year of shocks. At the moment, it didn’t feel like blessed shocks, but only in retrospect. But it was a kind of a wake-up call for me, and it actually turned me in the direction that led to this book. It led me to think, you know, I’ve been focused on the outer aspects of, like, how do we influence people?
How do we get along with others? But it really caused me to kind of look within and look at myself, and am I able to get to yes with myself? And to look at, you know, the voices inside me, you know, the inner critic, the one that we all have. Psychologists say that we have, like, as many as 60,000 thoughts in the course of a day, the great majority of which may be 80% or negative. You know, just to, you know, could I actually not just put myself in the shoes of others, which I was helping people do, but could I put myself in my own shoes, you know, and accept myself?
And just really, so I think that year, looking back on it, you know, my wife and I, you know, we learned a lot of lessons from going through all those surgeries, and myself, you know, from losing my mother and my brother, of asking myself, you know, what’s the lesson for me to learn here? You know, really discovering something that I’d long appreciated, but we’re kind of rediscovering how much, you know, happiness, really, is something that isn’t just comes from outside things, it actually comes from our own ability to do that. So, you know, coming into contact with my own truth, as it were, and what is life all about, and what is the meaning of life? So now, you know, it really caused my wife and I to really go deep and deep in our own relationship, to our own bond, because, you know, under all that kind of tragic circumstances, you tend to go within yourself, and you have this tendency sometimes to isolate yourself, to reach out. And so we did a lot of that kind of inner work, which, you know, has made us happier, more satisfied, more fulfilled human beings.
So this is why I can look back at that year as a year of blessed shock, you know. I can frame it as, it’s not that I would voluntarily have chosen those things, but I can look back and see that, in fact, there was a genuine gift there.
Maya Mathias:
Thank you. You took the words out of my mouth. I was just going to say the universe sometimes sends us gifts. Sometimes the packages are larger than we’d like them to be. That’s it.
But when you get that perspective over the course of time, and you see the gift for what it is, then you really understand the blessing that lay within it.
William Ury:
Exactly. And what’s life about? Because, you know, we’re born and we’re gone in the blink of an eye, really. I mean, you know, I have to apologize. I can particularly appreciate it. But, you know, it’s just like every generation is just a kind of one, tens and tens of thousands of generations. But we’re gone. And so if we haven’t learned some of these lessons, whether we learn them young or we learn them old, it doesn’t matter.
But, you know, appreciated what life is all about, then it’s a pity if we don’t do that. And sometimes, oddly enough, we sometimes learn our deepest lessons through tragedy, through adverse events.
Maya Mathias:
Yeah. I’m just so happy that you were able to see the gift in it, because there are a lot of people who go through similar situations and are much to the worst for it. So I’m really happy that you were able to see the light shining through that dark cloud in your life. It’s interesting because just kind of to circle it back to the work that you do, you know, in terms of conflict, mediation, negotiation, when you talk about the blink of an eye, it really is so true.
You know, our lives just go whiz by in the blink of an eye, the blink of a cosmic eye, if you will. And in that perspective, in that context, any individual conflict that we have is even shorter than the blink of an eye. And so when you’re able to take that perspective on anything that you’re feeling conflicted about, it really helps you deploy all the things that you talk about in your book. You know, putting yourself in your own shoes, in the other person’s shoes, going to the balcony, just having that broader perspective of, yeah, what really matters? Is it really important that I squeeze another million dollars out of this deal or not?
You know, what are the deeper things that I value in life? And I think that that’s really helpful at the end of the day.
William Ury:
That’s it. You know, it’s interesting you should mention that because, like, I was involved in a business negotiation about a year, year and a half ago. And there were billions of dollars at stake.
It was a huge thing. Yeah. A huge conflict. And when I first, I was just on my way to meet, have lunch with the other side, you know. I was helping one side.
I was trying as a third side to see if we could put an end to a really bitter battle. Yeah. And as I was, it was in Paris, and I was walking by and I saw there was a new installation in the Place de Vendôme. Just as I was walking by, these huge, giant Buddhas from China. I mean, golden Buddhas, silver Buddhas, but they were kind of blissful.
They were kind of playing in the clouds. They were these huge things. I mean, huge sculptures. And that gave me, you know, my line to start off this talk. So when the other side asked me why I was there, I said, because life is too short.
You know, life is too short for these battles. You know, in this case, it was a boardroom battle. Yeah. Which not only just, you know, destroyed people’s lives, but also the families, 150,000 employees of the company. What’s it all for?
Life’s too short. There’s got to be a better way. And sure enough, that was on a Monday. This conflict had gone on for two and a half years. By Friday, we had both sides sitting side by side.
Arch enemies, as it were, but sitting side by side, shaking hands, wishing each other well, making a joint statement to the company’s employees. And they got on with their lives. And my client said, you know, in the end, he said, you know, I got everything I wanted, but the most important thing is I got my life back. That perspective that we need. Because we just get lost in these battles.
Yeah. Over what? I mean, in the end, this Earth is a tiny little dot in the cosmos, you know. Exactly. And it’s just a blink of the eye.
If you could just go to the balcony and get a larger perspective, you’d say, wait a minute, you know, might as well enjoy a little bit of it while it lasts.
Maya Mathias:
Yeah. That’s beautiful. Well, I’m conscious of time. We’re coming on the end of our time together.
I’d love to give you the floor and talk about some of the most recent projects that really light you up. I mean, you mentioned, we’ve mentioned the Abraham Path a couple of times now. And I also heard from one of your recent talks, you talked about the listening revolution. So if these are the two you want to talk a little more about, please, or if there’s anything else that’s really bubbling up for you.
William Ury:
Well, we talked a little bit about the Abraham Path, which is a long-distance walking trail across the Middle East, a little bit like the Appalachian Trail, or for those who know the Compostela in Europe, which is a long-distance pilgrimage route.
But it’s a chance to, it connects the entire continent, the entire region of the Middle East, this path. And it’s, you know, it’s, however long the conflict lasts, the path will last it, you know. Because paths, you know, this path, it’s not something we’re inventing. It’s something we’re just dusting off the footsteps of this journey that really changed everything, you know. It really gave birth to, you know, three great faiths and just changed the way we see things.
A journey that took place 4,000 years ago, but it’s a journey that exists today. Every one of us is on a journey, you know, to leave, as Abraham did, the land of his father and go find yourself, you know. Go find your own truth, as you were saying, as a leader. And go realize, in fact, that we’re, you know, no matter what divides us, which is a lot, what unites us is far, far greater. So there’s that path, and along that path, to me, one of the key things is the ability to listen to others, you know.
To me, this is what I’ve always found, is that even though we think of negotiations as talking, really, negotiation is really about listening. Listening is the key. If you observe the behavior of successful negotiators, you find that they listen far more than they talk. And if we can, if leaders could learn to listen, you know, if we chose leaders on their ability not just to be persuasive talkers, but an ability to listen. If we listen to our clients, if we listen to our spouses, our kids, you know, that that may be the greatest gift we can give others, is the gift of a true listening.
Not just listening to their words, but to what’s behind their words. Not just listening to what’s said, but to what’s not said. Listening for the essence of the human being. Putting ourselves in their shoes. Not just listening and criticizing, I agree, I disagree with that.
But really, if we could do that, then I think we could begin to transform. There’s probably, there’s no limit to how far we can go in this world, and I don’t believe there’s a single problem on the face of the planet that we can’t solve. No matter how big it is, whether it’s climate change or nuclear war or any business dispute or family dispute, if we can learn to listen, and learn to listen to ourselves, which is part of getting to yes with yourself. That’s why my dream is a kind of a listening revolution, which can start very simply with you and me listening to each other, and it’s contagious.
Maya Mathias:
So where can people go to learn more about both of these ideas from you?
William Ury:
Well, there’s that book right there, Getting to Yes with Yourself. I’m going to do a post-op now, yes. Getting to Yes with Yourself and Other Worthy Opponents. I love it. That’s it, and that’s available anywhere on Amazon or anywhere.
And if you just want some more information about my books or just tips and videos and so on, I have a website, which is just William Ury. My last name is U-R-Y, WilliamUry.com. Wonderful.
Maya Mathias:
It’s been such a thrill and a privilege to talk to you today, William. Thank you again for your time, and I really loved this conversation.
I listened.
William Ury:
I was listening too, Maya. It’s great. I really enjoyed it, and I want to wish you and all your listeners and viewers much success in Getting to Yes with Yourself and with others.
Maya Mathias:
Thank you so much.
Talk to you soon again. Bye.
William Ury:
Bye.
Maya Mathias:
You’ve been listening to the Executive Book Club Podcast with me, Maya Mathias. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review here on iTunes, and make sure to share this podcast with your friends who could use their own dose of practical wisdom.
If you’re looking for a speaker for your next Lunch & Learn, workshop, or public event, count me in. Just fill in the contact form on execbookclub.com. That’s E-X-E-C, bookclub.com. Till next time, remember to live well and lead large. Bye for now.