Alex Jensen:
Your news program every morning with up-to-the-minute news and extensive analysis of issues from Korea and abroad. This morning with Alex Jensen on TBS eFM. So they’re next up a very special guest for us on this morning. The author of the perennial Getting to yes and various other books that followed along that theme including getting to peace would be a great source of wisdom for anyone whether it be Trying to secure better negotiating tactics in our daily business lives or even to political negotiators in fact Dr. William Ury has been involved in much of that co-founder of Harvard University’s program on negotiation And I can without further ado introduce you on the line now.
William Ury:
Good morning to you from Seoul It’s a great pleasure to be speaking with you, and you’ve got this new book getting to yes with yourself I mean did you have any idea when you started this whole series of of? Books that that it would go this far the the getting to series if you like I had no idea in fact I had no idea that getting to yes would be such a Best seller you know over 30 years after its publication
Alex Jensen:
But you’ve obviously Hit on something we all like to find solutions and in negotiating It can be very challenging to I suppose feel empowered When when dealing with strangers and and and holding true to what you want while trying as well to be polite I mean that what are some of the biggest challenges that people face do you think?
William Ury:
Well just one thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a we’re all negotiators We may not think of ourselves as negotiators, but in the broad sense of the term back-and-forth communication You’re trying to reach agreement with the other person And you have some interests you hold in common like an ongoing relationship and perhaps other interests Which are intention like you would like to get paid more by your employer, and maybe they don’t want to pay you quite as much In that general sense we’re negotiating all the time and more and more these days Negotiation has become the kind of the prime Competence I would say for navigating in this world the main challenge I found which is the subject of my latest book getting to yes with yourself Turns out to be not the person on the other side of the table It’s the person on this side of the table. It’s the person we look at in the mirror Ourselves, it’s in our own very understandable human tendency to react. In other words to act without thinking and if you can do that does that help you come full circle and and be able to Get to yes, which came back out in in 1981.
Alex Jensen:
Do you think we’re at better able to do that if we can get to yes with ourselves?
William Ury:
Absolutely, I’ve seen it many times if we can get to yes with ourselves In other words if we can influence ourselves We’re gonna be much better off better able to influence others It’s the key that I hadn’t seen back in 1981 my co-author and I But it’s the key. It’s just it’s this ability to if we’re able to suspend our natural reaction which might be to attack if we feel attacked or to withdraw or to walk away I Like to use the metaphor of going to the balcony It’s almost like you’re negotiating on a stage with the other person or the other people Part of you goes to a mental or emotional balcony overlooking that stage The balcony is a place of clarity of calm perspective where you can keep your eyes on the prize. What is truly important to you in that negotiation if we can do that? We’re much more likely to get what we need or want from others as you say that I’m just thinking of all the conversations many of us will have had where we come out of them thinking. Yeah, why did I do that? Why did I say that and you can avoid all that by following that sage advice one tip that you offer though? Which I think is really interesting is getting our opposite Negotiator whoever that may be in life to voluntarily offer what we want instead of having to persuade them
Alex Jensen:
And that sounds great. But how does it work in practice?
William Ury:
Well, it stems from the general observation that the more we tend to push the more the other side tends to resist that seems to be a universal and so what you find successful negotiators doing is the exact opposite of pushing which is they attract and It’s a principle that goes way back to even to the the Chinese military strategists a great strategist Sun Tzu who wrote the art of war he talked about the importance of building the other side a golden bridge build them a golden bridge and To me the the essence is how do you make it easier for the other side?
To do what you’d like them to do. Let me just give you an example if I may the filmmaker Steven Spielberg he talks about when he was 13 years old there was a bully a big bully him an older boy who was 15 who was always picking on him abusing him Roughing him up This bully made his life pure hell until one day. He asked himself. How do I get this bully off my back? So he goes up to the bully and he says, you know, I make these little home movies even then he was making movies It says that I’m making one about fighting the Nazis and I was wondering if you would Like to play the war hero well, the bully laughed in his face, but a couple days later it comes back a little grudgingly and says, okay, I’ll do it and Spielberg makes him the war hero gives him a backpack and dresses him up Makes him the war hero in the movie after that Spielberg reports That bully became his best friend his best friend in high school was this bully who had beaten him up How did that happen? How did that shift? How did Spielberg build the bully a golden bridge? In other words if you ask yourself, and this is key in negotiation What motivates the other side what motivates the other side to bully? Well, often it’s things like they want attention. They want power. They want a sense of control It often comes from insecurity rather than security So Spielberg said well looked around said how can I help address his need for power attention control? Well, I can make him the war hero in my movie and by doing that He flipped the bully from being his enemy to being his best friend.
Alex Jensen:
It really is fascinating Dr. Ury because there’s no stage apparently that’s too small or too big for you You go across the the spectrum and just to highlight that you’ve been involved in thorny geopolitical conversations nuclear agreements between the US and the former Soviet Union Unrest that almost toppled Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in the early 2000s I understand you’ve been helping to negotiate the end of the 50-year civil war in Colombia?
William Ury:
But it’s genuinely the same principles that operate today. They do because they’re basic principles that operate among human beings and we all have that feature we’re all human and there are certain, you know, there’s certain difficulties that we have in That bring us into disputes and and yes Of course Every situation is different and political situations are a little bit different business situations, which are a little bit different than personal situations But the underlying principles that govern human behavior are I find universal and North Korea is a classic example for us in this part of the world that has proved to be an impossible Negotiation we’ve been round and round in circles.
Alex Jensen:
From your perspective If you were to be called in to the next Seoul Pyongyang talks, what would you want to bring to the table?
William Ury:
Well, I can only speak as someone who’s you know, who’s read the newspapers and followed it from afar. So But I would say this I would say from my experience for example in US Soviet negotiations Where they were extremely difficult there was high levels of distrust What my colleagues and I did was we looked for is there at least one area? where Because they you know, everyone sees things in a very zero-sum. It’s either I win you lose You know, that’s probably how the North Koreans see it and maybe that’s how you know, the South Koreans and the Americans see it The question is can you find some element where you can both agree? Where there’s a common shared interest and in the case of the Soviet Union and the United States What my colleagues and I worked on was? No matter what the United States and the Soviet Union would disagree upon the one thing they could agree upon Was they both wanted to avoid an accidental or inadvertent nuclear war by definition No one wants an accident. You know, if you want a nuclear you may want a nuclear war, but you don’t want it by accident so we set up a dialogue with the Soviets on that subject and came up with a system for how to reduce the risk of An incident like it, you know be a naval incident or a firing incident that happens on the border or whatever it is how to prevent that from triggering an escalation into an unwanted war and We worked on for example a proposal to create what are called nuclear risk reduction centers in Washington and Moscow where Americans and Soviets would be stationed with computers linked and Where there’d be protocols about how to respond to these things incidents so they didn’t escalate and that was an agreement that President Reagan agreed upon with with Premier Gorbachev and So the one thing I would look at in the in the North Korean situation is are there any other other similar? Subjects that where you could begin where you actually have a shared interest. Where you could begin as a first step in that regard.
Alex Jensen:
Dr. Ury, do you think you could become involved in the North Korean negotiations in the future?
William Ury:
Who knows But I but my my passion I will say this my passion is peace and my passion is helping Individuals organizations societies countries Get to yes, see if they can find a way to change the game from just a zero-sum I win you lose Win lose which usually leads to lose lose outcomes right into situations where they can find Some modicum of mutual gain even if the mutual gain is averting a catastrophic war.
Alex Jensen:
Dr. Ury, thank you so much best-selling author a pleasure to have you on the line.
William Ury:
My pleasure speaking with you and I wish you and your listeners much success in getting to yes.
Alex Jensen:
Thank you very much. And we could start by getting to yes with Ourselves to use the title getting to yes with yourself the book that was published earlier this year from Dr. William Ury.