William Ury:

We often act in ways that go exactly contrary to what will actually get us what we want. And the reason is, is that as an anthropologist, I know this, you know, we human beings were reaction machines. And as the saying goes, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. Oh, that’s good.

Kathy Caprino:

Hello, everyone.

This is Kathy Caprino and welcome to my podcast, finding brave. I’ve created the show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life to rise up, speak up and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions each week.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. This week has been something else. This, I believe, is coming to you in late February and we’re not there yet. We are in the middle of January, but it’s been quite a year so far with amazing people to talk to like my guest today, William Ury.

Thank you, William, calling from Colorado. Thank you for joining me. I’m so excited to talk to you and learn.

William Ury:

It’s a huge pleasure, Kathy. Thank you.

Kathy Caprino:

Thank you. All right, people. I hope your new year is off to a beautiful start and I also hope that what we are talking about today is going to hit home for you and hopefully touch a good nerve and get you thinking and perhaps get you rethinking about our key topic, which is how, let’s call it the right thing, your new book, Possible, How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. You know, in reading over your material, looking over your book, William, you say a few things that really pique my interest and make me confused, which is a good thing because in therapy and my work as a coach, conflict is everywhere. And in our world, it seems to be growing in every way.

And you say some things that I think people will find a very different way to look at it. So without further ado, we’re going to dig in, but let me tell you a little bit about William. William is the author of, as we said, Possible, How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict, and the co-author of Getting to Yes, the world’s all-time best-selling book on negotiation, with more than 15 million copies sold. Bravo to you. Wow.

And co-founder of Harvard’s program on negotiation, which I would so love to take. William has devoted his life to helping people, organizations, and nations transform conflicts around the world. Having served as a negotiator in many of the toughest disputes of our times, consulted for the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, as well as dozens of Fortune 500 companies. He has served as a negotiation—why can’t I say it? Negotiation advisor and mediator in conflicts ranging—I’m sorry, people, this is very, very serious content, and I’m butchering it.

Mediator in conflicts ranging from Kentucky wildcat coal mine strikes to family feuds, from U.S. partisan battles to wars in the Middle East, Colombia, Korea, and Ukraine. William is an acclaimed speaker, and has two popular TEDx talks with millions of views, and you live in Colorado, and you love to hike the mountains, where you don’t have a lot of conflict to deal with when you’re hiking, I’m sure. All right, now we know who you are, William. How did you get into this work of negotiation? Were you fascinated at an early age?

I’m fascinated with how you did this.

William Ury:

Yeah, I’ve often thought of that question, too, Kathy, I ask myself. And I think as a child, I was fascinated. At the age of six, my family spent a year in Europe, and it wasn’t that long after World War II, and you can kind of see the ruins of buildings in France, in Germany, and places like that, and London even. And there was World War II, there’d been World War I, all the cemeteries, and even in the school I went to, there was a nuclear bomb shelter. So there was an expectation of World War III.

And as a child, I couldn’t quite get my head around it, like, there must be a better way for us to deal with our differences than all this bloodshed. And then, on a very micro level, in my family, there was the ordinary kind of bickering at the dinner table between my parents, which I found painful. And so I thought, you know, conflicts everywhere, just like you were saying. And so that became my kind of guiding question, was how, as human beings, can we learn to deal with our differences constructively rather than destructively? How do we live together? And that’s why I went into anthropology, because I thought anthropology might give me a kind of a lens into understanding human beings, and how we got the way we are.

And I wanted to apply it very practically, and that’s how I sort of came into the field of negotiation, as a methodology for dealing with conflicts openly and creatively and collaboratively rather than destructively.

Kathy Caprino:

And I find it so interesting what our childhoods lead us to do and be. And now that I’ve interviewed a lot of people, and the same is true of me, so much of what we experience in a painful way in childhood, or the thing that puzzles us, that makes us say, what’s going on here? I don’t get it. And no one can actually give us the answer we’re really looking for because it’s probably not there yet till you do the work. It’s just fascinating to me, Walt.

We’re grateful that you are doing the work. Now, tell us why you have Getting to Yes. You’ve been a co-author of other books, have you not?

William Ury:

Yeah, I’m getting past, the next book was Getting Past No, Negotiating with Difficult People, and then there was The Power of a Positive No, because I realized I had to do justice to the word no, which is a really important word for standing up for ourselves, and a host of other books as well. My last book actually before this, before Possible, was Getting to Yes with Yourself and Other Worthy Opponents.

Kathy Caprino:

Oh, I love it, because we are often, I did not read that book, shame me, but we are often in the way of Getting to Yes, aren’t we? Personally, deeply, spiritually, we’re in the way somehow, aren’t we?

William Ury:

That may be, Kathy, my biggest realization since co-authoring Getting to Yes is that the single biggest obstacle to me getting what I want and what I need, what I desire in life, isn’t actually the difficult person on the other side of the table, as difficult as they may be, it’s right here. It’s myself.

Kathy Caprino:

Oh gosh, tell us more.

William Ury:

It’s the person I look at in the mirror every day, because negotiation is goal-oriented behavior, trying to get to a certain objective, but what I’ve noticed in myself and in others is we often act in ways that go exactly contrary to what will actually get us what we want, and the reason is that, as an anthropologist, I know this, we human beings, we’re reaction machines, and as the saying goes, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. Oh, that’s good. And that happens, you know, whether or not we, you know, we fall into what I would call the kind of the 3A trap, and all of us have a certain propensity, but it’s like some of us have a propensity to avoid, you know, to avoid conflict. I kind of grew up, I was a little bit avoidant of conflict, and others accommodate, you know, they just give in. And others yet attack, you know, and sometimes, often we do all three, you know, we’ll avoid for a while, then we’ll accommodate, then we get frustrated, and then we lose it on the attack.

We snap, and we just go around in a circle, like a mouse in a maze, and for me, the choice that I kind of try to lay out in Possible is, why not do the opposite of avoiding, which is to actually paradoxically embrace the conflict, meet it, and transform it? In other words, we’re not going to be able to get rid of all the conflict, because conflict is around, it’s natural, as you were saying, it could even be healthy and productive. How do we transform it? How do we change the form from destructive, vicious fighting that destroys relationships, resources, even lives, into constructive, honest, vulnerable, transparent, communication, creative collaboration, and really try to get to the bottom of it in a way that can help us grow and help our relationships grow.

Kathy Caprino:

That’s a lifelong masterclass, is it not? Because what, now I have so many questions.

Raina Min, Kathy, what I thought you might be saying, and this gets into one of your comments, is you actually posit that we need more conflict, not less, but I think that the way we define the word conflict, the connotation and the denotation, it’s conflict, it’s the way I write about power, that I’m helping women embrace and men, positive power, positive influence. But the word power to women often means harsh, critical, abusive. So it’s how we’re defining it. But I want to ask you this, because this is what really strikes me. You said we have to get to yes ourselves, and then you describe that, what if we embraced conflict?

But then that’s about the how, isn’t it? It’s like, let’s say you and I really disagree over something politically, whatever. The how of it, the how we’re going to engage with each other is going to make or break if there’s any resolution or any agreement or any wish to agree, right? But is there ever a situation where even before the way the people or the countries go about engaging in it, they themselves do actually not want a resolution to the conflict? Do you understand what I’m getting at?

William Ury:

Absolutely. I mean, that’s more often the case than one would think, and particularly nowadays. I mean, we live in a time when conflict is intensifying, it’s increasing, it’s polarizing us as a country, it’s polarizing us as a world. It’s often poisoning even our relationships. It’s toxic sometimes, and it paralyzes us from doing what we need to do to solve the problems around us and around the world.

Kathy Caprino:

And what is that? What would you say in one sentence that we need to do to solve the problem?

William Ury:

Well, what we need to do, I’m just saying anything, whether it’s creating a vibrant democracy, whether it’s creating a vibrant society, whether it’s feeding people, whether it’s hunger, whether it’s climate, any issue you take in the world. The thing is, if I was a Martian anthropologist, you know, looking down, I would say, wow, this species, they have a paradise down there on the planet, and they have amazing, abundant resources and technology and intelligence, and they can communicate with each other, and their only problems really are problems that they themselves create. So if they themselves create it, they can uncreate it, right?

And that’s why that’s the message of Possible, is that this is not like an asteroid about to hit us. This is something that we can actually do something about with leadership, with the kind of courageous, brave leadership that you talk about in your podcast. That’s what’s needed right now and applied to conflict.

Kathy Caprino:

So we’re going to walk through the pathways that you’ve articulated in your book. But before we do that, two things, you’re an anthropologist, so I think you can answer this better than most.

I’m 63 years old, proud of it, but it feels like in my life, the U.S. has become more polarized, more toxic, more hateful, less empathy, less talking, more screaming, more hatred. From an anthropologist’s standpoint, is that actually accurate? Or I mean, I often read other people saying nonsense. We’ve been conflict-ridden like this for, you know, millennia. Is it more conflict-ridden, you know, from the way we measure that right now?

William Ury:

You know, it’s hard to measure, but I would certainly agree with you. I can’t remember a time in my lifetime when, you know, maybe you’d have to go back to the 60s, but when conflict is as present and pervasive and imperiling everything that we hold dear, from our families, to our workplaces, to our communities, to our world, and part of it is, sure, is perception, is the fact that now with the new media with which you communicate, their algorithms actually, which want engagement, accentuate, feed you conflict. They want more conflict. They make profit from conflict. So, you get a sense that there’s more conflict than there probably is.

At the same time, it’s, you know, my field is often, you know, I’ve, my passion is working on trying to prevent wars and there’s more. If I look around the world, I work on Ukraine, the Middle East, Korea. I mean, all at once, I don’t think I’ve seen an international geopolitical situation or politically in our country when there’s been more kind of toxic polarization. At the same time, what’s interesting, because you’re asking me as a kind of a social scientist to think about this, the interesting thing is, still, even given all of that, the majority, the great majority of Americans, there’s a term for them, it’s called the exhausted majority, because what you’re hearing is from the extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. The great majority of Americans still believe, still believe, that Americans have more in common than we have in different, and the majority of Americans still believe in the importance of reaching out to their neighbor who might have a different opinion.

So, there’s still that potential there. It’s obscured by all the fights in the media, but there’s still that potential and that’s what the new kind of courageous leadership that we’re going to need to help us get out of this mess can draw on, that, I think that common sense and common decency in human beings in this country and elsewhere.

Kathy Caprino:

I can listen to you for hours. There’s so much to learn. All right, we’re going to dig in here about, I think we’ve talked about why it seems so destructive, and I’m so fascinated like when you’re working with countries to avoid war, you’re working with their leadership, their leaders, right?

What an honor and what a, what’s the biggest thing? Let’s just go macro and then dive in. When countries are fighting, are they fighting about the same things humans are fighting? Humans, they are human. People, citizens are fighting about what I want, what I value, what’s important to me, what we think is.

Oh, there we are. I cut out. Can you hear me?

William Ury:

Just one second. Okay.

Kathy Caprino:

I can hear you just fine. Going back to, do countries fight about pretty much the same categories of things that citizens fight about?

William Ury:

You know, there are major differences. I don’t mean to say it’s exact same thing, but from my point of view as an anthropologist, yes, they’re fighting about, you know, security. They’re fighting about economic well-being, you know, the basic human drivers.

They’re fighting out of fear. They’re fighting out of, you know, contest for power or status or recognition and, you know, and all of those things, the macro reflects the micro and the micro reflects the macro. For me, it’s, I mean, the wonderful thing that I’ve loved about my work over the years is, you know, I work in the micro and even when you go in working with leaders, you’re working in the micro, you know, their psychology, their personal psychology, you know. So often, I find the same dynamics, whether it’s in a family or an organization, in a nation, in the world, because we’re all human beings and we all, you know, no matter how different we might seem, we all have the basic same human needs, you know, and in that lies promise too. If we can get down to that level and realize, you know what, you know, I mean, just take, you know, the Middle East, which right now is like this focus.

So both sides, all sides, what do they want? They want safety. They want dignity. They want to be able, and if we’re going to get through a conflict like that, it’s going to find a way to live side by side, giving people, human beings, satisfying their basic human needs.

Kathy Caprino:

You make it sound very simple.

I would love to be in a negotiation where you come in and help. It’s probably simple, but not easy, right?

William Ury:

That’s it. This is, I mean, the paradox is it’s simple. But this can be some of the hardest work you can ask human beings to do.

I mean, as we know in our own situations, you know, to listen to people with whom you disagree or when there’s been trauma, you know, people, you know, where you’ve been, you know, as there is, then it’s, you really, it takes, it’s not easy to listen. It’s not easy to sit down. It’s not easy to work through these things. But when you do, as I’ve seen time and again in different parts of the world and in different parts of this country, there is a, there’s a feeling of breakthrough of, I mean, it’s almost a spiritual, like, wow, there’s a, it’s funny how adversaries, when they break through, they, it’s electric. It’s, and actually in a very strange way, it’s playful and it can even be, there’s a lot of laughter, oddly enough.

Release. Release. Release and release. Release, psychic release.

Kathy Caprino:

I also, you know, not to get woo-woo, I think it’s a spiritual endeavor, meaning, I don’t mean religious.

I mean, if we think we’re more than this, this. Yeah. And there’s something more at play, like our spirits wishing for collaboration when our ego and our reptilian brain won’t let it happen. I don’t doubt that there’s laughing and crying and a big release. Oh my gosh.

Okay. Now, let’s get down to what do we do, William? What do we do? What are your pathways? Where do we begin here when we’re having, and is it helpful for people to bring in mind the biggest conflict they’re having with someone right now?

William Ury:

It is very helpful. So think about some, bring to mind some kind of like, it could be, you know, with a child or a partner or colleague or a co-worker or could be in the community, whatever scale you want. And think about, wow, okay. It seems hard. You can think of all the obstacles in the way, you know, there’s distrust, there’s suspicion, there’s fear, there’s anger, you know, you name it.

There’s baggage from the past. There might even be trauma. You know, it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it seems almost, you know, it doesn’t seem easy at all. It might even seem intractable, even impossible. Like I could never, you know, and, and this is, this is where I’ve really spent my life being curious about, because my motto is meet animosity with curiosity.

And, and really, so I believe, I’ve seen this with my own eyes, whether it’s in, you know, whether it was in South Africa during the race wars between blacks and whites, or, you know, in Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants, the sectarian wars, or more recently in Columbia, where, you know, hundreds of thousands have died, millions of victims in a kind of war between kind of rich and poor, it was around social justice and things. And, and, and I’ve seen, I’ve seen humans at their worst, but I’ve also seen humans at their best in the, in these things. And I’ve watched how in seemingly impossible situations, people have risen to the challenge. And what I’ve tried to do impossible is lay out what I see us doing, which is actually awakening our own human potential. It’s right here.

It’s not some magic and it’s not even a magical person like myself showing up. It’s within us all the time. The question is, how can we unlock that potential? And there are basically three kinds of potential that we can unlock, that if we can unlock all three, then we have a chance to transform these seemingly impossible situations into creative, productive conversations that can lead to transformed relationships.

Kathy Caprino:

All right, let us have them.

What are these three?

William Ury:

The first one, the first potential is it’s an inside job. You know, the thing I’ve learned is, yeah, as we were saying before, we are our own, I’m my own worst enemy. So, because human beings are reaction machines. And so the first thing is to do the exact opposite of reacting, which is to pause, just even for a microsecond, breathe, and go to what I use the metaphor of go to the balcony.

It’s almost like what’s happening in front of you that you’re involved in, take your conflict, you know, you’re there, someone else is there, you’re all on characters on the stage. Part of you goes to a mental and emotional, even perhaps even a spiritual balcony, some place of calm and perspective where you can keep your eyes on the prize. What is it that is most important here? In the family situation, what is the most, with a child, what’s the most important thing to you in that moment? And then you can sort of zoom into that, you know, and really figure out what’s most important to you, what’s most important to them, maybe, and then zoom out and see the bigger picture like from the balcony and say, now, through this labyrinth, how am I going to find a way through this relationship here?

That ability to step back and go to the balcony is a human superpower. We all have it. We all have our favorite ways of doing it and we just need to hone it and develop it. You know, it might be to just, in the moment, pause, breathe, or it might be take a break. It might be have a conversation with a good friend.

It might be, I love to go for walks in nature. I find that’s really calming, inspiring, you know, the views and, but whatever is, what’s your favorite way of going to the balcony? Let me ask you.

Kathy Caprino:

I love it. It is walking in nature and I read that the reason we feel better in many ways is when you’re at the ocean, it’s so vast and we’re so small and we’re reminded of that, right?

Or when I’m with trees or by the water, my energy shifts. It’s almost automatic and it gives, I think, perspective. Are you also, when you talk about the balcony, I think of it in my mind as almost like we’re watching our life on a video, that we’re detached. Is that, is detachment part of it? That, get out of the maelstrom of it.

William Ury:

Exactly, it gets a little bit of, you know, psychologists call it perspective taking, you know, it’s kind of, just get a little bit out of your situation and watch yourself as if you’re an actor in that play. Now, it doesn’t mean suppressing your emotions. It, when you get detached like that, you can actually understand yourself better. You can actually listen to yourself and this is the funny thing is, you know, because the next step is the bridge of which, of course, the ability to listen to others like you do as a therapist, for example. But the reason why I find it’s so hard for people to listen to others in difficult situations is they haven’t listened to themselves first.

They haven’t understood and paid attention to their own emotions and thoughts and that’s what you can do on the balcony with that detachment. You can actually observe yourself, you know, let me give you an example. Yes, please. You were talking about, you know, you know, working with presidents. Well, some years ago, I was working in the country of Venezuela and there were a million people on the streets demanding the immediate resignation of the President Hugo Chavez.

There were a million people on the streets supporting him. There was violence. There was fear of civil violence, maybe even a civil war, intense polarization in the country and I met with him. President Carter had asked me to meet with him and I met with him and one time I met with him. It was at midnight and he had his entire cabinet arrayed behind him and he said, so Yuri, he called me Yuri, he said, Yuri, what do you think of the situation here?

And I said, well, Mr. President, I’ve been talking to a few of your ministers here and I’ve been talking to leaders of the opposition and I believe actually they’re making a little bit of progress. Well, that’s not the word he wanted to hear. He said, what? You third parties know nothing.

You can’t see that nobody tricks those traitors on the other side are up to. And he proceeded to lean very closely into my face and shout at me. I could actually, you know, almost I could feel his breath, you know, his hot breath for approximately 30 minutes and you know, and I at that moment was like, oh, wow. Okay. I’ve been working here for a year.

All that works down the drain. I’m embarrassed in front of the whole cabinet, you know, he’s going through all that. What am I going to say in response to defend myself? Then what? Then I caught myself for a moment, you know, I was a friend of mine said, you know, when you’re in a tough situation, pinch the palm of your hand.

I said, why? And then he said, because that will give you a momentary pain. It’ll keep you alert. So I did that and I just like, oh, okay, and I noticed from the balcony, all my feelings that gave me that little bit of detachment. So I didn’t need to react in that moment and I could ask myself instead, is it really going to advance things?

If I get into an argument with the president of Venezuela and so I decided to bite my tongue and just listen to him and okay, then what happened? Well, this is what’s interesting is because I was listening. I noticed, you know, this is a guy who could give seven hour speeches. I wasn’t giving him anything to react to. I was just kind of looking attentively like you’re looking at me right now.

Kathy Caprino:

You defused it.

William Ury:

Basically, he right balloon went right with curiosity. I was like, you know, I was I was nodding my head and you know, like tell me more because I’d been able to influence myself from the balcony. Then I was able to start to build a bridge a connection with him.

Kathy Caprino:

What did you say to connect?

William Ury:

And so and so I said, this is what happened is I watching him and and just kind of stuck, you know, with curiosity and then at some point I watched his shoulders sink his body language and in a weary tone of voice, he said to me. Ury, what should I do? Now that Kathy is precious.

Kathy Caprino:

Yeah. I mean that says a lot about him too.

Yeah, you know, I mean a pure dictator. Narcissist autocrat does not ask that question, correct?

William Ury:

Right, right. So and he He what should I do? What should I do?

And so what did you say? That is the faint sound of a human mind opening. It’s an opening and that’s what I listened for in those moments. I’d looking for where are these little cracks of opportunity? And so I said, you know, Mr.

President, it’s December. It’s almost Christmas time. I’d been on the streets. I’d saw that the haggard faces the tense faces of everyone on the streets. No one was in a mood to celebrate Christmas with their families.

I said, why don’t you just Give everyone a break a truce, you know, in Spanish. It’s a traigua, you know, just for three weeks. Just let everyone enjoy the holiday with their families. And then in January, we can come back and maybe people will be in a better space to be able to listen to each other. Well, he looked at me for a moment and say anything.

He said, you know what? That’s an excellent idea. I’m going to propose that my next speech. He clapped me on the back and that was it.

Kathy Caprino:

So you did not have to solve the world’s problems in that moment.

There’s so much. There is so much about what you share that you did extraordinarily well. I mean, you don’t need me to tell you that but you were calm. You didn’t react the way the reptilian brain acts defending yourself. I’m going to look foolish.

I got to fix this. You pinched yourself to give you that breath. You let him speak for as long as he needed to until he exhausted himself. And somehow he saw in you someone he could that’s is interesting someone he could ask advice from why did he why do you think aside from all these things? We just dissected.

Why do you think he felt that?

William Ury:

Well, because I trusted you somehow. He trusted me because I had not reacted. I’d not taken the bait, you know, and you had not.

Kathy Caprino:

Advised first, you got it.

That’s you know, women. I don’t mean to paint anyone with the same brush, but women often laugh that they’ll tell their husband a problem and the husband will often just jump in and fix and I myself have said I don’t need your fixing. I’m able to fix. I need to talk right? That’s making sense.

You let him do it.

William Ury:

You know, it’s so interesting. You should say that Kathy because I’m just before that I’d been down in Brazil and there I heard a song and the song had a line in it that just struck me which was do not give advice to those who are not open to receiving it and and and it was like wish everyone would hear that 17 times and you know, because you know, it’s so interesting because that’s so I I took that really to heart and I didn’t give him advice until he asked for it.

Kathy Caprino:

I’m shocked that he got to that place. That’s what a story but now I’m going to push back and challenge tell him because we need help.

I think what you’re talking about is self-mastery that you had it.

William Ury:

You who do this work developing it and I’m still working on it. It’s a lifelong right.

Kathy Caprino:

If you said you had all of it that you need I’d say oh boy got a little narcissism going on but how do I want to ask this question and I want to hear you have you know, the bridge and then that’s your second and then there’s a third pathway, but this is what I want to say. All of this requires more emotional awareness more I don’t like the word control in any way but mastery mastery of yourself mastery like in this situation.

You’re not Venezuelan. So maybe you are a little more detached than if you were meeting with the leaders of our country. Maybe you have strong feelings either way, but we have to in order to address conflict productively. We can’t be losing control of ourselves constantly. Would you agree with that statement?

Absolutely. I mean, well, what do you tell people when they’re not able to do that? They’re well, you know, they don’t have self-mastery. What do you do then? Well, you mind me asking?

William Ury:

No, not at all. Very. I mean, this is a lifelong study for all of us, right? And you know, no matter how good we get it, we can fall. So the so and particularly in the difficult situations that we face that we increasingly face.

This is why to me, you know when getting the yes was about building a bridge, but you know, and it’s great. It’s necessary was but I come to realize and this is what I this is what I posit and possible is that we need more than that. We need the self-mastery that you’re talking about. In other words, if we want to influence others, which is what getting to yes is about and what negotiations about we first need to learn how to influence ourselves. And even that as you mentioned is hard to influence ourselves in those situations.

And this is why we need the third leg of the of the stool here, which is we need help. We have to realize that in conflict. We, you know, especially when things get heated. We tend to reduce everything to me versus you us versus them two sides. And what we fail to realize is in fact, there’s always a third side, which is the friends, the neighbors, the relatives, the co-workers, the colleagues, the community around us.

That’s affected by the conflict. And that actually is a resource for us. I call that the third side, you know, in other words, there’s a third side in every conflict and because it’s hard for us to to master ourselves in in thing. We need to engage the third side to create a container safe container like a therapist. The merit your marriage comes in, you know, kind of is like is you provide that third side that can tell you may not say a word but you provide a container within which the partners can then begin slowly to transform their conflict and and the community can play that role.

And so part of the art is is you need to go to the balcony. You need to build the bridge and you need to engage the third side. You need all three all at once if you’re going to have your best chance at taking an impossible situation and making it possible.

Kathy Caprino:

There’s so much there. Oh, you know, I think about people I know in my life or my career coaching clients or whomever who will not see a therapist who will not get outside help. They won’t do it or they say I’ve been to seven and they’re all terrible.

That’s not possible that all seven are, you know, sure a few but it points to if you will not seek the community aspect of it, what you’re going to do is you’re setting it up to remain closed. You can’t even almost get to the balcony. You’re just thinking about your own. I don’t need help. I don’t need to hear what his view is.

Well, you’re really cutting yourself off at the knees, right? Am I making sense?

William Ury:

You’re making perfect sense. And the thing is if you’re in that point of view, it’s you’re clearly not on the balcony and and and those if you can recognize that oftentimes we recognize it the hard way because we get into a, you know, because you get in these conflicts and you think you’re going to win and guess what? Everybody loses not just the not just the two people, but the kids, the family, the surroundings, the company, whoever it is.

Everybody loses in these things and so and that’s actually the incentive for the community those around who say, hey, we’re affected by this. This affects us too. And so those people who are close to you can serve as your balcony, you know, even if you’re a professional, I don’t know hostage negotiator. They never negotiate alone because in those situations when someone’s life is at stake, your buttons get pressed, you get drawn, you get identified in it. You need to have a partner who is serves as your balcony.

So ask yourself, who is my balcony in these tough situations? How do I construct it? How do I recruit it so that I can actually navigate my way and have the best chance of success?

Kathy Caprino:

It’s so much. I have to let you go, but I have to ask two things.

Who’s your third? Who’s your community when you’re talking to the president of Venezuela? Who is your community?

William Ury:

Well, I wasn’t there alone. There was, I had a couple of colleagues.

I see, standing right there with you. Yeah, well, they were, yeah, they were nearby. Exactly. You know, I, that’s why I don’t try to do all this alone and take it all on myself. And in the end too, I mean, I’ll tell you one thing was going into that situation.

It’s so easy. There’s all this kind of everything. It’s, you get so, you know, you go, you know, the presidential palace to get in, there’s people beating on the car and there’s thousands of people. So there’s so much tension. I try to take a little time beforehand by myself to either meditate or sit in a garden and just kind of like compose myself so I can repair myself for that.

But I also use as an image, the third side being like for me was a child, a Venezuelan child, like what’s their future? That’s what this is all about. And I try to kind of visualize and imagine that and saying that’s, that’s the, that’s the symbol of the whole.

Kathy Caprino:

That’s so beautiful. Oh my gosh, I could talk forever.

Now, the final question here. Is there any other thing from your book or your work that you think people really are blowing? They’re really, wow, like yikes, you’re really not getting it folks. I, that’s not you. I mean, you’re so, I do want to also ask you, you, you have such a joyful way about you.

And to be honest, before this call, I, I had an assumption that you’d be a kind of a stern person. Isn’t that funny? But you’re joyful. You, if we watch the video, you’re smiling the entire time. Does that joy infuse your work?

Do you think that, can you tell us about that? So maybe we can try to bring that out in us a little more.

William Ury:

It does, Kathy. I mean, this is the paradox is, as I mentioned, as a boy, I used to worry about this stuff. But what I find is that when I turn towards it and I engage with the very thing that I fear and I move into it.

Oddly enough, there’s a lightness. There’s a joy. There’s a, there’s even, I believe that in order to enhance our potential to deal with conflict, we need to, we need to tap into the power of play. And, and there’s a creativity. We need to bring our maximum curiosity, our maximum creativity, our maximum collaboration.

If we’re going to have a chance here and that’s, you know, someone said to me, if you’ve got something really hard to do, relax first. Take a moment to relax, you know. That’s what we need to do. We need to kind of, it’s a paradox, but the more serious the conflict, the more relaxed we need to do if we’re going to bring our full potential to, you know, just like in music, art, anything you bring, you play. That’s what brings out the highest human potential.

That’s what we’re being invited to do. That’s what the book Possible is about. It’s about inviting us to apply our own innate human potential to these very tricky, difficult, painful sometimes situations.

Kathy Caprino:

The way I’m going to leave that, tell me if I’m right or wrong. When we do that and you know, I sing on the side, I play tennis.

These things are life-changing for me. I mean, they’re not just fun little habits. They, you know, singing, lifting your voice with others. Oh, I levitate, but tell me if I’m wrong. I think when we play, whatever way you want to, when we last, when we relax, we’re actually bringing out our innate problem-solving ability, our innate greatness.

And we’re not letting that amygdala, that’s the word, isn’t it? The fear-based mind take over. That there really is more greatness and more ability in each of us than we’re tapping into. Is that right?

William Ury:

I could not agree more.

Kathy Caprino:

That’s certainly been my experience. I feel like this is, have you done a master class? You know, the master class? Well, I wish I had a connection for you because everybody I know would scoop that up. Anyway, where do we find all about you?

Where do we get the book? Where do we learn more, William? Tell us.

William Ury:

Well, the book will be wherever books are, your local bookstore. Amazon, et cetera.

Amazon, all that stuff. And, you know, my website has a little more information if you want to go to it. It’s just my name, williamyury.com. It’s U-R-Y, William Ury, U-R-Y.com. We’ll link to it below.

And yeah, I just really want to just leave your listeners with just the message that we can do this. You can do this. It’s, you know, it’s exactly what you do on this podcast. It’s finding the brave in us to engage, sometimes joyfully, if possible, with these really difficult conflicts that are arising all around us. And if we can do that, if we can transform those conflicts, we can transform our lives and we can transform our world.

Kathy Caprino:

That is so beautiful. And I think I needed to hear this more than even my listeners. Thank you, William. What a gift you are to our world. Thank you for helping dig in here, writing this incredible book and helping us see that we can do this.

We can. Don’t give up. Go to the balcony right now. Get your community. Build the bridge.

Thank you again. Thank you. All right, everybody. Oh, it’s so fun. People, you know I say it, but I’m going to say it again.

If you don’t have a question about this, I give up. I mean, I hope that you listen deeply and you think, now, wait a minute, I want to engage in this, but I’m confused. I’m not sure how to do it. I’m failing. And we would love to hear from you wherever you see this.

Please share it. Please like it. And please post a question or a comment. We’d love to hear from you. Until then, wow, I’ll meet you on the balcony and have a wonderful two weeks and we will see you next time.

Thank you again, William.