Tim Ferriss:

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different domains, whether that be sports, government, military, chess, entertainment, you name it.

We really cover the broadest spectrum possible. Today, we have William Ury as a guest. I am extremely excited about this guest. I have been familiar with William’s work for decades. And when his name popped up as a possible guest, I had to hop right on it because I had many, many questions for him.

So who is William? William Ury. You can find him on Twitter at William Ury G-T-Y. You can also find him on LinkedIn and other socials. He is co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation.

He is one of the world’s best known and most influential experts on negotiation. He is co-author of Getting to Yes, the all-time best-selling negotiation book in the world. The author of one of my favorite books on negotiation, Getting Past No, Negotiating in Difficult Situations, which, side note, I used to help build my first company. And he is author of the new book, Possible, How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. He has served as a mediator in boardroom battles, labor conflicts, and civil wars around the world.

An avid hiker, he lives in Colorado. There are some incredible stories in this podcast episode. They will blow your mind. The role that Dennis Rodman has played in helping William to understand the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. There are stories about Hugo Chavez or Hugo Chavez, the former president of Venezuela, yelling in William’s face and how that came about and what came of it.

Lessons learned from Nelson Mandela, in addition to Warren Buffett. And the stories just go on and on and on. But beyond the stories, there are strategies and tactics that you can use today. It is incredibly, incredibly practical. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

It was a thrill. Without further ado, please enjoy William Ury. William, I’m so thrilled to be spending time with you today and having this conversation. So thank you for carving out the time.

William Ury:

Oh, it’s a great pleasure, Tim.

I’ve been looking forward to this.

Tim Ferriss:

I’ve read more than one of your books and in fact, used Getting Past No specifically to help build my first company and have really used many of your frameworks and techniques. So this is a real treat for me. And I thought we might hit rewind, though, going back in time before Getting Past No to Getting to Yes, but more specifically, looking at Roger Fischer and learning about Roger Fischer. How did the two of you first connect?

William Ury:

We connected at Harvard. I was 22. I was a new graduate student in social anthropology to study anthropology because I wanted to understand human beings. I was curious. It was a license to be curious and to travel, learn about other cultures and figure out why we’re so strange in some ways.

But I wanted to apply anthropology to something practical. And I thought, what about the subject of war and peace? I mean, something you could really sink your teeth into. Why is it that we’re poised on the verge of self-destruction as a species? And so I had to write a research paper in anthropology about what I might do field work on.

And I thought, why don’t I do field work on a peace negotiation? So I heard Roger Fischer was over at the law school and he was working on peace negotiations. So I went in to see him and he was very generous with his time. And then he said, send me your paper. And I sent him the paper.

I didn’t think of it twice. And then January 1977, cold January night, I was on the third floor of my attic room, you know, grading my students’ exams and studying for my own exams. And the phone rings and there’s a voice that says, this is Professor Roger Fischer. I just read your paper about taking an anthropological view of the Middle East peace negotiations. And I found it so interesting.

I sent the central chart to the assistant secretary of state for the Middle East because he’s working on these things. I thought he might find it interesting. Well, I was floored. I was just like speechless. I didn’t know what to say.

He said, and I’d like you to come work with me. And so that phone call, I can honestly say, changed my life. That generous phone call, that generous invitation from Roger to come work with him on international peace negotiations and other negotiations. Never did you get a call from a professor, let alone on a weekend night. And never in my wildest imagination would I have imagined that some idea that I’d cooked up in my little attic rental room on the third floor would be a possible use to a practitioner in the world’s most complicated negotiations.

So I got hooked and I’ve been on that journey ever since.

Tim Ferriss:

I can see that being quite the dopamine reward rush of not only receiving the call, but having your work sent to the highest levels on the front lines is really something out of the storybooks. At the time, was Roger teaching the devising seminar, or was that a precursor to what he was doing at the time? Or maybe it came afterwards. The devising seminar was a, it was just doing that.

William Ury:

And that’s what he asked me to work on to coordinate and facilitate this devising seminar, which was an amazing thing, which was every couple of weeks at the Harvard Faculty Club over dinner, a bunch of faculty from different disciplines and visiting diplomats would be invited to what Roger called the devising center. Devise means to create, to be inventive, you know, to kind of craft something new.

And he would pose a question that you would never ask in academia, which is what can, I don’t know, the secretary of state or what can this president do tomorrow morning? What can they operationally do tomorrow morning that could help take us on a help take us forward on the Middle East or South Africa or the cold war or Northern Ireland or whatever the issue was. And instead of just sitting back and predicting or analyzing this collective intelligence was being harnessed to try to focus in on what practical step could someone do tomorrow morning?

Tim Ferriss:

What in Roger’s background drove him to be so motivated to take action in these type of conflicts or circumstances?

William Ury:

He just graduated from Harvard. He’d gone into world war two and fought in the Pacific war. And when he came back, a lot of his friends were gone, didn’t come back. And his father had been a lawyer. He went into international law. He went to work in Paris on the Marshall plan, but his passion really was seeing if we could find a better way to deal with our differences than dropping bombs and destroying everything. And I had the same passion.

Actually I’d spent some time growing up in Europe in my childhood and I’d seen the ruins still in France and Germany and other places. And you saw all the graveyards of world war one, world war two. And then there was every expectation that there might be a world war three. There was a nuclear bomb shelter in the school and it was like, we’ve got to do something about this. We’ve got to do something about this.

And it was like, we’ve got to have a more creative way. And that’s I think what led to the devising seminar and to Roger’s work. And, and that’s how he and I really came together with a common passion.

Tim Ferriss:

Are there any particular, maybe intervention is too strong a word, but conclusions or next actions that came of those devising seminars that stand out to you?

William Ury:

There were several, but many one was about a year into my work, less than a year, probably. Yeah, actually about a year into my work. It was the end of August, 1978.

Roger called me into his office and said, guess what? I just came back from Martha’s vineyard and I happened to play a game of tennis with Cy Vance, who was the U S secretary of state. And he told me about, there’s this peace summit planned in September, where president Carter is bringing the leader of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, the president and the prime minister of Israel Menachem Begin together for a peace summit. And he asked me if I had any ideas and I brought it back to the cottage and I showed him this little booklet that Roger Fisher and I’d worked on hard, which was called international mediators, a working guide, which we joked there was about maybe six in the world. So I had a very small audience, but there was an idea in it, which was a creative idea that came out of the law of the sea negotiations for a one text process. And he suggested it to Vance and Vance had asked him to write up a memo. And he said, we called a devising seminar. We got Louie Sohn who’d worked on the law of the sea. We got all these professors. And then we wrote a memo and sent it to Cy Vance and then camp David happened.

The Egyptians and Israelis arrived at camp David for this retreat. And after three days, they were just going out at hammer and tongs. They were just dug into their positions. Egypt demanded the entire Sinai back Israel wanted to keep a third Menachem Begin said, I’ll pluck out my right eye. And cut off my right hand rather than surrender a single settlement.

They were just about to give up. And then Cy Vance remembered the memo in his briefcase. And he said to Carter, he said, well, why don’t we try out this idea for a one text process? And they tried it out. And this is the way it went. Was the Americans instead of asking the Egyptians and the Israelis in the traditional way, you know, the mediator goes in and asks you to make a concession.

No one wanted to make a concession. No one wants to make the first concession because that’ll signal weakness for sure. And, you know, beg it. And so that said, well, I have to go back and consultant. It wasn’t going to go anywhere. So the Americans said instead with a one text process, they said, don’t make any concessions. We understand what your positions are. Just tell us what your interests are. And they said, what do you mean? It was so tell us what you really want. What are you really concerned about?

I mean, it’s, you’re trying to draw a line in the sand, but what’s the underlying driver of what you’re trying to do? You’re trying to draw a line in the sand, but what’s the underlying driver? What is it you’re really afraid of? What are you concerned of? What do you really want? And the Egyptians talked about sovereignty. So that said, you know, that this land has been ours since the time of the Pharaohs and we want it back.

And the Israelis talked about security, you know, said Egyptians had attacked them four times in the previous 30 years across the Sinai. And they didn’t want that happening again. So then the question became not where do we draw a line in the sand, but how do we get Egyptian sovereignty and Israeli security? And the Americans went back and drafted up what’s called, we call it a one text. It’s a non paper paper. It’s very low status. You’ve got coffee stains on it or whatever it is, but it was an idea to do both to try and reconcile both interests to meet the interests of both. And it was based on an idea, actually, the Egyptians had surfaced, which was a demilitarized Sinai, a Sinai where Egypt gets the entire Sinai back.

The flag can fly everywhere, but it’s demilitarized. So Israel gets security.

Tim Ferriss:

And in this context, demilitarized means there cannot be presence of military forces.

William Ury:

That’s it. Egyptian tanks can go nowhere. And basically Americans, the idea was to propose that, you know, the Americans would put technical means you put a little multinational force in there, but you could tell if a goat crossed, but no armed forces there exactly. Got it. Wow. What a story. Yeah. I mean the idea is, I mean the one text, the way it works is very simple.

It’s kind of like what in Silicon Valley called rapid prototyping nowadays, but essentially the Americans took the idea and they said, we’re not asking you to accept it. We don’t want you to make any decisions. All we want you to do is criticize it. Well, no one likes to make a hard decision, but everybody loves to criticize. So the Egyptians criticized it. The Israelis criticized it. The Americans went back and redrafted the proposal to try to address the concerns. And then they brought it back and did it again. And again, more criticism.

The Americans went through that process 23 times. There were 23 drafts over the course of 13 days, even less because there was fewer days. And by the end of it, only at the very end of that process, did Carter go to Sadat and Begin the two leaders and say, this is the best we can do. We can’t improve it anymore. We can’t make it better for one without making it worse for the other. This is the best we can do. Do you want it or not? And then Sadat and Begin were faced with a very different decision.

Instead of having to make multiple painful concessions, they had to make only one decision. And only at the end of the process when they could see exactly what they were going to get in return. And so Sadat could see he was going to get the entire Sinai back. Begin could see he was going to get an unprecedented peace with Egypt. And they both said yes.

And that’s what led to the Camp David peace treaty to a treaty that has lasted 40 years has lasted actually more than that at this point to 45 years to this point has lasted to this day, even in the midst of wars, assassination, coup d’etats. And it was the inventive idea of like applying our creativity, not just to the hardware of software of computers, but to the way in which we negotiate that there are better ways to negotiate more effective. And that was a really just powerful example for me.

Tim Ferriss:

I mean, it’s the software of humans in a way.

William Ury:

The software of humans, that’s what we need. That’s really what we need.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah. And to sort of debug. So you mentioned a few things I want to underscore.

The first was the powerful looking behind positions for the underlying interests. I suspect we’ll come back to this for sure, but identifying the wants, desires, concerns, fears that are behind a request or sort of unrelenting position. And you also mentioned something and you didn’t say it in these words, but it seemed to imply what I’m about to mention. And that is writing the other side’s victory speech and quotation marks. Like what are they going to use to explain to others why they agreed to X, right? Whatever that is. Would you mind expanding on that? Doesn’t need to be in the camp David context could be in another context, but it strikes me that in both cases, I mean, these leaders need to go back and explain to their cabinets, to their populace, why they did X and that that type of consideration of external judgment, I would imagine accounts for a lot of failures at the negotiating table.

William Ury:

The victory speech is one of my favorite exercises because you’re looking at an impossible situation. It could be with your boss, could be with your roommate, or it could be an international conflict, but you’re looking at something seemingly impossible. It’s kind of like, you know, I like to climb mountains. You know, you’re at the bottom of the mountain. You look at the top of the mountain and it seems impossible to get there. You can’t get from here to there in your mind, but you might be able if you use your imagination, put yourself on top of the mountain, get from there to here, and then you can figure out your way back. In other words, you can work backwards and that’s what is behind the victory speech, which is when you’re facing a difficult conflict, start by writing out the other side’s victory speech. Imagine you’re asking your boss for something, you know, it might be a situation and you write out, what is it? You imagine just as a thought experiment, imagine your boss says yes to you.

They accept what you want them to do. They say, yeah. Now imagine your boss then has to go and justify that to someone else whom he cares about. Maybe his board of directors, maybe his peers or her peers and write out the victory speech. Just write up maybe three talking points. Like how could they present to the people that they care about why they said yes to your proposal? It’s got to be a victory for them. It can be a victory for you, obviously, because they’re doing what you want them to do.

But think about it and think about the hardest questions that they’re going to get, the criticisms that they’re going to receive. And then think about what are the best answers they can give. Go through that exercise and then see your job as a negotiator, as helping them deliver that victory speech. And I can tell you about how I’ve used it, but that’s the essence of it is to work backwards. Think about what victory would look like and then work forwards.

Tim Ferriss:

I would love to hear how you’ve used it in any context.

William Ury:

Well, one context in 2017, Donald Trump had become president. Kim Jong-un of North Korea was testing nuclear missiles, ballistic nuclear missiles aimed at the United States testing nuclear weapons. I mean, Obama had warned Trump that this was the most dangerous situation he was leaving on his watch. And Trump was saying this won’t happen and experts were worrying this could be a nuclear war, a nuclear crisis, you know, that some people were saying was a 50% odds of war.

And so I sat down with my colleagues and I thought, okay, let’s sit down. I don’t know that much about North Korea a little bit, but let’s see if we can write out Donald Trump’s victory speech. And more importantly, Kim Jong-un’s victory speech in which they decide not to go to war, but to actually meet instead and try and work out an agreement for Trump. You know, he was more of an open book cause you could, you know, knew a lot about him. You know, he would have to say, you know, his three talking points might be, this was the best deal ever. Obama couldn’t do this. Clinton couldn’t do this. Bush couldn’t do this, but I could do this.

I made the biggest deal that really spared the world from nuclear war. It’s the biggest deal ever. That was point number one. Point number two would be I kept America safe. And point number three is, and I didn’t spend a penny that was important for him, but Kim Jong-un was, there was nothing known about him, a black book. It was like nothing really known about him. He was new and so on.

And the only person I could find out who knew anything about Kim Jong-un when on the web was a retired American basketball player by the name of Dennis Rodman. So in order to write Kim Jong-un’s victory speech, you know, I tried to figure it out on the web, you know, what he would care about safety and respect and economics. But to really understand him, I had to try and track down Dennis Rodman. And that is the key is to really go to the ends of the world. Whoever you need to talk to, figure out what drives the person you’re trying to influence.

So what happened? Did you get ahold of Dennis? Well, did you guys have a powwow? What happened? We did. It took a while. He tried the proverbial six degrees of separation. This person, that person, I know someone who knew the coach of the Lakers who’d been their coach, whatever, but that didn’t work out. And then I tried a different way and I finally got hold of someone who is a friend of Dennis Rodman’s. And I talked to him and explained, look, the world’s in danger here. And I need to talk to Dennis. He’s the only one who seems to know Kim Jong-un as the only American.

And he said, well, Dennis comes to visit me sometimes. I’ll arrange for us to have pizza sometime. I’ll let you know. He’s in LA. He’s come stay with me. So I, at the appointed moment, I flew out there for pizza. Dennis wasn’t there. The guy said, Oh, he goes out partying. Sometimes he forgets or whatever he said, but you can spend the night. And so I canceled my plan, spent the night. Next morning, Dennis Rodman’s there, you know, and he says, what do you want? Bad day, man, bad day. Why do you want to talk to me? And I said, well, because you’re the only one who knows Kim Jong-un and I’d really like to hear what you learned from him about what makes him tick. What are his interests?

And he then proceeded to tell me the story of how he’d gotten to know him. He’d gone over for an exhibition basketball game one day, and he was just watching the game. And suddenly Kim Jong-un is sitting right next to him. And then Kim invites him out to go drinking. And then he goes home and he holds Kim’s baby. And he told me a couple of things. He said, I actually believe that Kim doesn’t want war.

I know he’s perceived in the West as kind of a madman and so on, but he doesn’t want war. He actually wants to engage with the West. And then as an example, he said, you know, one day I was talking to Kim and he told me what his dream was. I said, what was his dream? He said, his dream he told me was one day to walk down fifth Avenue with Dennis Rodman, go to Madison square garden and watch the New York Knicks play the Chicago bulls. Bingo. It was like, you know, I listened for those little, this is what you do in negotiation. You listen for those little nuggets that give you an insight into the dreams. You know, it’s beyond the interest. It’s deeper than the interest.

The dreams and the fears, those two things are really big, the dreams of the other side. And I got a sense, okay, maybe there is something possible here. My colleagues and I then worked on it, but the world was shocked. You know, a year later when Donald Trump sat down with Kim Jong-un in Singapore and they actually got along with each other, but I wasn’t shocked because I talked to Dennis Rodman. So Dennis Rodman helped me figure out what Kim Jong-un’s victory speech was. And what was interesting was after Singapore, those two guys didn’t wait. Donald Trump tweeted, the American people are safe now. No worries. He tweeted his victory speech already. And Kim Jong-un also hailed this as a great victory for North Korea, just their meeting.

And what was key was that even though they didn’t reach an agreement, they changed the atmosphere through meeting and the perceived risk of nuclear war went down from maybe 50% to 1%. So it shows the power of the victory speech of each one, being able to be a hero to the people that they care about.

Tim Ferriss:

So William, I’d love to ask you a question, which I hesitate to ask because it’s a hot button issue, but because you have so much time in conflict zones, or at least operating as an advisor to those who are contending with conflict zones, what do you wish you could do or orchestrate or what type of conversation do you wish you could coordinate with respect to the situation in the Middle East as it stands right now? Was there anything that would be on your wishlist or at the top of your priorities in terms of strategy and how to defuse some of what’s happening in the Middle East?

William Ury:

Wow. So this is what I would say. It is a hot button issue.

I would say there is no solution in the Middle East. Let’s be realistic. There’s no like two state solution. There’s no solution because there’s no end to it, but there might just be a beginning, a new beginning. I’m a possibleist. People ask me, you know, after all these years, are you an optimist? Are you a pessimist? And actually, even though I am an optimist of sorts, I’d like to say I’m a possibleist. I believe in possibility.

And even when it comes to a situation seemingly as impossible, as heartbreaking, as heart rending as the Middle East is right now, I actually think that even in these times of extreme crisis, you can see possibilities. If you can just stay still for a moment, if you can, what I call go to the balcony, just kind of detach yourself a little bit, watch it as a play, see where the possibilities are. And even though there might not be a solution, there could be a process, even though there’s no end to the conflict, there could be a beginning of a different way of living together. Because if you look behind the positions, the things that people fight about, the things that people say they want for what their deep underlying interests are, what are their deepest concerns? What are their deepest fears? What are their deepest aspirations? If you dive down the, like go down the iceberg to what’s underneath the water, then I think the question then becomes reframed as how can the Israelis and Palestinians, two peoples live together? How can they live together? It’s the ancient stoic question, right? You know, how do we live together? How can they live together in dignity, security? How can they live alongside each other? And if that’s the question, you know, then you ask yourself, has that ever been done in the world before with other impossible conflicts?

And I can say in the last 45 years, whether it’s in South Africa where blacks and whites, there was a race war or Northern Ireland, you know, sectarian war between Catholics and Protestants or Columbia guerrilla war and other places too, where it seemed absolutely impossible. I’ve watched people do that. I’ve watched people. There was no solution. There’s no ending of the conflict, but there’s a transformation of the conflict. The conflict has transformed and remarkable results occur. And I think that that’s still possible in the Middle East.

Tim Ferriss:

What were any of the key elements in any of the conflicts that you mentioned that provided the opening for that transformation, that turning point? Are there any common ingredients or any historical examples that you can think of?

William Ury:

Well, one is, I’ll give you just an example from South Africa, someone I admire who’s a like iconic possibleist, you know, Nelson Mandela, who was a kind of very reactive kind of guy. He was a boxer, quick to take slights and so on. But when he went into prison, he was in prison for 27 years. He really focused on self-mastery. He learned to meditate. He learned to observe himself.

He writes about it in his autobiography. He learned to control his natural reactivity. He learned what I call to go to the balcony, not to react, but to go to the balcony. And then he also studied the language of his enemies. I mean, that’s the first thing he did in jail was he studied Afrikaans, the language of his enemies because he thought language is the way into someone’s, that’s the way you connect with people. And he studied their history. He studied their traumas, the Boer war and how they’d suffered concentration. I mean, the whole thing, he got into their suffering. He also mobilized people. When he got out, he started meeting with the other side and building them what I call golden bridge, a way out.

He was trying to help his political enemies find a way out of the situation. He helped write their victory speech. In other words, and he helped mobilize the community, which is what I call the third side. So he did these three things, which are go to the balcony, which is detached from the situation. Don’t react, help build the other side of golden bridge, make it easier for them to make the decisions you want them to make, and then mobilize this resource around of the community, which was the community in South Africa, blacks and whites and all others, and then the worldwide community to create a container within which even a seemingly impossible conflict could be transformed. So to me, it’s a kind of the leaders and the community can work together. It struck me so much that Mandela, he once said, people say it’s impossible until it’s done. And I was in South Africa when he was in jail, people thought this was going to be 30 years, 40 years.

I came back five years later, he was the president. It wasn’t easy. There was a lot of political violence, but the conflict was transformed. If they could do it, then I believe it can be done in the Middle East. And it’s not just a magical leader. It was the whole community engaging in a way that works.

I’ve seen the same thing in Northern Ireland. I’ve seen the same thing in Columbia. It’s our birthright, really. I believe we can all do this. It’s hard work. There’s no question, but it’s possible.

Tim Ferriss:

Let’s take a closer look at going to the balcony and watching something as a play, sort of taking this detached observer role, perhaps if that’s not too much of a strain of a descriptor.

This leads me to wonder what you have found or discovered or observed to be effective for deescalating emotions when things get heated in the midst of a negotiation. Now that could be, you need to go to the balcony, but you need some space. So what do you say? What do you do to create that space? And equally important if the other side maybe does not have your books and does not have the capacity or the eagerness to go to the balcony, how do you help them go to the balcony or at least deescalate things so they don’t spin out?

William Ury:

First of all, I think these are all innate human potentials. Don’t have to read my book. You could read my book, but these are innate human potentials. It goes back, you know, it’s this is our birthright. It’s about self-mastery.

It’s the idea that negotiation, even though we think of it as trying to get the other side to do what we want them to do, it starts with influencing ourselves. You can’t possibly influence someone else unless you can influence yourself first. And human beings were reaction machines. You know, the saying goes, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. And that happens more often than not.

Tim Ferriss:

And the email you will learn to the best email you will regret.

William Ury:

That’s it. You said the best email you will ever regret. Exactly. That’s it.

The best texts, the best WhatsApp, whatever it is that you will ever regret. And we do that all the time. And we live in a very reactive age where you just instantly, you know, the temptation to just to hit the send button to just like, Whoa, okay, no, there’s a save as draft on email for a reason that’s the balcony button. And what’s the alternative. I mean, it’s very natural for us to react. You know, we act, especially in conflict, you know, where there’s a lot of anger, there’s fear, whatever it is, you’re quick to react, but the ability to pause for moments, that faint gap between the stimulus and the response, the ability to, I like to use the metaphor of imagining that you’re negotiating, you know, the negotiations taking place on a play. All the characters are there. Part of you goes, your mind goes to a mental and emotional balcony overlooking the stage where you can suddenly keep your eyes on the prize.

What is most important to you? And then see the big picture. What can you do? What can you do? See the larger picture. Where’s the way through this labyrinth in front of you, that art of going to the balcony I’ve found is key. And, you know, I’ve learned it, had to learn it over and over. You know, when I fall off the balcony, you get back on the balcony.

Tim Ferriss:

…Are there rules or conditions you can set to mitigate some of the risk of emotional spiraling? And what prompts this question is a story. I believe it was a labor management group where in the conversation you adopted the rule that only one person could get angry at a time. So it seems like each party knew they would have their turn to get really pissed off. So that’s it.

You wouldn’t deal with the sort of arms race of yelling and screaming and whatever tantrums might go along with it or aggression. Are there other techniques that you have used successfully in these types of potentially heated conversations or negotiations?

William Ury:

Well, the one you mentioned is a good one because it’s kind of a joint rule, right? Another is just to take frequent breaks. Just sometimes, you know, negotiations, I remember labor management negotiations, there was a, you know, they’d go on for hours and hours and hours. And it was kind of almost like a, no one wanted to call break. It was almost like an exercise in bladder control or something. And I find frequent breaks, breaks are time to be on the balcony.

It’s that time for that in the corridor conversation that you can have with someone or with your own side, frequent breaks. And that’s just, even when you’re dealing online, just taking breaks, really helpful. I like to go for walks, you know, before any difficult negotiation in the middle of it, just go for a walk, clear your head. Some people work out anything you can do to change your state. So you can kind of bring your best to the negotiation rather than as often we bring our worst, you know, even a simple one. What I like to do is like, I learned this in a very high stakes negotiation once when the president of Venezuela was shouting at me, uh, you know, for 30 minutes, you know, Hugo Chavez, I don’t know if you remember him, but you know, it was like midnight in front of his whole cabinet. And I’d been sent there to try and mediate between him and his political opposition. He said, Yuri, so how are things going? And I said, seems to me, Mr. President, I’ve been talking to some of your ministers.

I’ve been talking to the opposition, making some progress. Well, progress wasn’t the word he wanted to hear. What do you mean progress? Are you a fool? You’re not seeing the dirty tricks. Those the other side is up to. And he leaned into my face. I could kind of almost feel his hot breath, almost his spittle. And he proceeded to shout at me. And I was like, Oh God, a year of work down the drain. I’m humiliated or embarrassed in front of his whole cabinet. You go through all these things.

And then I remembered a simple technique, which a friend of mine had once told me, which is when you’re in a tough situation, pinch the palm of your hand. And I said, Adnan, why would I pinch the palm of my hand? He said, because it will give you some momentary pain. It’ll keep you alert. So whatever reason I remembered at that moment, pinched the palm of my hand. And sure enough, then I was able to kind of like stop for a second and ask, I was just about to think about what I was going to say and reply to him. And I thought, what’s my interest here?

My interest is in calming the situation. Is it really going to help the situation if I get into an argument with the president of Venezuela in front of his guys? Right. So I bit my tongue and I proceeded to listen to him like, observe him like, why, why is he doing this? He’s trying to impress his cabinet and so on. And you know, when you don’t react, there was no fuel for him, for his anger. So after 15 minutes, 20 minutes, this guy could go on for seven hours. He was known for giving seven hour speeches at around 30 minutes.

I saw I was watching his body language and I saw his shoulders sink. And he said to me in a weary tone of voice, he said, so Yuri, what should I do? Well, that my friends is the faint sound of a human mind opening. And at that moment I thought, you know, Mr. President it’s December, last Christmas of festivities were canceled. Why not just take a break, give everyone a truce, you know, for three weeks, let everyone enjoy the holidays with their families and come back in January. Maybe everybody will be in a better mood to listen.

He looked at me for a moment. He was kind of startled. And then he clapped me on the back and he said, that’s a great idea. I’m going to announce that in my next speech. His mood had completely shifted. And what I learned from that, Tim, was that maybe the greatest power you have in a negotiation is the power not to react. It’s the power to go to the balcony instead.

Tim Ferriss:

This seems like a nice bridge to discuss, and we’re going to get to all sorts of specifics, batons and whatnot, but this is a specific, which is the different species of silence.

How can you use silence in different ways? Because I remember, for instance, I listened to this audio book. This was a hundred years ago when I was just thinking about starting my own company. And I listened to this book. It’s an audio book. It was mostly real estate focused. It was called Secrets of Power Negotiating. I think it was Roger Dawson. I might be getting the name wrong. In any case, he talked about the flinch, but the flinch followed by silence, right? And this is very mundane, maybe, but certainly having spent a lot of time in foreign countries, just looking as I look, my price is automatically 20 X retail, right?

That’s the starting point. So sort of the flinch and then wait. But if you fill the void with words, it doesn’t have the desired effect. Where they tell you the price, you’re like, Oh God, it’s so expensive. Then you just shut up and let the silence do the heavy lifting. You just gave a much more sophisticated example and higher stakes environment.

What are some of the ways that people can use silence? This applies to interviewing also, by the way, I had Cal Fussman who used to write the, what I learned column for Esquire magazine, who interviewed Gorbachev and Muhammad Ali and all of these icons. He said, let the silence do the work. That was one of his tips to me. What are some of the different ways that you can use silence or stories related to using silence?

William Ury:

Yeah. I’m a big believer in the power of silence in our culture.

We tend to fill up space because we, we feel like if there’s a moment of pause, I mean, in East Asia, as you know, silence is appreciated and, you know, in an elevator, if everyone’s quiet, everyone, you know, gets a little nervous. But in fact, if you can just relax into the silence and pause in negotiation, when you ask for something, it gives the other side a chance to think about it. And maybe if you say no and, you know, or whatever it is, you just, you weaken your no. If you follow it up, just let it hang in the air, let them work through it because human minds take a little time to digest it and let the discomfort, if there’s any work in your favor, there’s no reason why you have to say something. And the other thing is, you know, I have a colleague, Jared Curran, who at MIT, who’s done studies of silence, just taking like negotiations, they record negotiations and then they measure the amount of silence in the negotiation, the number of pauses. And interestingly enough, they found a correlation between the amount of silence and the outcomes that are mutually collaborative and cooperative. That actually silence actually helps you arrive at agreements that are good for both sides, just because it gives people a chance to pause. So silence in the sense you were talking about can give a chance for the other side to actually digest it.

And maybe it strengthens the persuasiveness of your argument. So I absolutely agree. Silence is one of your very best tools in a negotiation, the art of pausing.

Tim Ferriss:

The art of pausing. Let’s talk about the use of objective measures or data for maybe preventing escalation or just facilitating negotiation. For instance, if you are asking for a raise, you might talk about inflation rates and X, Y, and Z, which ideally you’re not really debatable points, right?

If they’re reasonably agreed upon facts, how can you use facts in negotiations effectively? And do you have any examples that people might be able to try to wrap their heads around?

William Ury:

One of the big things in negotiation is negotiation about a raise, for example, is you want one thing, they want something else. It often becomes a contest of wills, you know, who’s stronger, who’s going to hold out longer, whatever. And if it’s a contest of wills, oftentimes it gets emotional. It gets, I’m not going to give in, you know, my, you know, manhood is on the line or whatever it is. You get into this kind of contest of wills and it doesn’t go anywhere and it’s high stakes. And there is an alternative to that, which is not to make it a contest of will, but say, look, you think you should get paid this much. I think you should get paid that much, but let’s look objectively at the market rate.

What is the market for your kinds of skills in this kind of job? Let’s look at the average thing. And suddenly it’s a lot easier for people to defer to what seems to be a persuasive objective standard than it is to give in. No one wants to give in. No one wants to give in and people will fight not to give in. So preparing those objective criteria persuasive, and then, okay, let’s take a look. There’s this criteria, there’s that criterion.

And then suddenly you’re in a collaborative exercise to figure out what’s a fair resolution rather than in a contest of wills where one side is going to win. One side is going to lose and the losers are going to make the winner pay for it.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah. This is a big deal in so many, probably all cultures on some level, but the whole concept of losing face say in China, Julian to lose face, this is a very big deal. And people will not just fight not to lose face, but in some cultures, I mean, they’ll take it themselves to the grave to not lose face, right? It is a very, it’s a huge variable in terms of, of consideration.

I’d like to ask you about respect in my notes here. I have it listed as the cheapest concession you can make. And at face value, this makes perfect sense to me. My question is how do you express that respect? What are some ways that you have, and let’s take out maybe some of the complex cultural differences where it might be very different if you’re in the penthouse in a chairman’s suite at Mitsubishi than it would be in other places, let’s just say, but in an English speaking environment, Western environment, what are some of the ways you might express that respect?

And if you want to expand first on what you mean by the cheapest concession, then we can do that too.

William Ury:

The other side’s dignity may not mean much to you, but it means everything to them, as you just mentioned in China, you know, or in East Asia where it might be their life. And so if you can give the other side simple, basic human respect, I’m not talking about a lot of people confuse respect. Oh, they’ve got to earn my respect. Now I’m talking about the respect that is everyone’s birthright by virtue of being a human being respect. Actually, the word comes from the Latin respect, to see again, you know, like specters and spectacles reason again, spectator to see the human being that’s there. And so even if you’re dealing with a hostage taker, I don’t care who it is.

That’s what police hostage negotiators do is they give the person some respect. That’s the way you connect with human beings. That’s the currency. That’s the currency for actually making a connection. It costs you nothing and it means everything to them. That’s why it’s the cheapest concession you can make. And maybe behaviorally to go back to the first part of your question, the easiest way to give someone respect, the most basic way to give someone respect is to listen to them. You know, we think of negotiation as talking, but successful negotiation is far more about listening than it’s about talking a persuasive negotiator, someone who’s a persuasive listener, because when you listen to someone, you are seeing them, you are hearing them, you’re tuning to them. You’re, you ask them questions, you know, what is it that you really want here? You’re showing interest in them.

You’re that is the basic level of respect. And in addition to that, it gives you a lot of information about what they want so that you can more effectively influence them to arrive at something that satisfies their needs and satisfies yours at the same time.

Tim Ferriss:

Is there any, uh, aside from listening, any particular advice you would give to someone going into an important negotiation in terms of ways they might indicate respect?

William Ury:

Well, like you, you learn as you teach, you know, how to learn languages very quickly, learning a little bit of their language, you know, the basic formalities of their language. That’s a sign of respect. It goes a long way. It goes a very long way. And you know, I mean, just going back to Chavez for a moment, you know, the first time I met him, he asked me what was my advice. I said, why don’t you sit down and talk with the opposition? And he said, Oh, they’re traitors. You know, they, you know, they tried to mount a coup d’etat.

You know, they tried to kill me, you know, never talked to them. And so I said to him, I understand you don’t trust them. Right. He said, absolutely. I don’t trust them. I said, let me ask you something. Is there anything that they could do tomorrow morning? That would be a sign of respect. That would be a sign that maybe they’d change a little bit and maybe they were worth talking to anything that they could do. He said, yeah, he said, they own the private TV stations.

They could stop calling me a mono on national television. And the mono is, is a monkey. And you know, he took it as a kind of a, like a racist insult. It’s not in most places, a compliment, right. And you know, what I realized in that moment, it’s about respect. He’s feeling that intense disrespect. And so that led to a whole process where we tried to negotiate a whole set of ways in which to try to deescalate the crisis.

What were signals of respect that the other sides could give each other that would change the atmosphere? And even just having a conversation about what the other side would see as respect and disrespect helped calm the situation down a little bit so we could move forward.

Tim Ferriss:

Now in a situation like that, maybe it’s not the best example, but I imagine you’re being sent not as an emissary, but a mediator of sorts, facilitator in a lot of situations. How does, and this is an opportunity to define what this is, but BATNA, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, how does this fit into your strategizing or thinking about circumstances in Venezuela or circumstances in any situation that comes to mind?

William Ury:

BATNA is an acronym that Roger Fisher and I coined back in getting to yes, for your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. It’s your best course of action. If you cannot reach agreement, it’s your plan B.

It’s like you’re negotiating a job interview. If you can’t get this job interview, you’ve got another job interview. If you can’t sell to this one client, maybe you have another client and it’s your alternative. And it turns out to be extremely important in negotiation because in negotiation, we often make the mistake of thinking, okay, I want this agreement. Our focus is on the agreement, but it turns out that paradoxically, one of the best ways to prepare for that negotiation is to think through ostensible failure. Ask yourself the question before you go into the negotiation, what am I going to do to satisfy my interests if I am not able to reach agreement with the other side?

And sometimes people don’t like to go there because they say, well, that’s negative thinking. It’s actually alternative positive thinking. It’s like, what’s your alternative? What’s your BATNA? And if you do that, imagine go back to the job. Imagine, you know, next week you’ve got one job interview and it’s the only one you got and you’re going to be negotiating about your salary. Imagine how that negotiation is going to go if you have no other alternative. But imagine if you take the intervening time to research, what are you going to do if you don’t get that job? Will you continue looking? Are you prepared to move sectors? Are you prepared to make a lateral move?

Are you prepared to go back and get some education? Whatever your BATNA is, maybe you get another job offer. Maybe it’s not even such a great job offer, but you’ve got something in your back pocket. You’re going to negotiate with more confidence because you know you have an alternative. So actually having a BATNA in my experience makes it more likely that you can actually reach an agreement because it gives you that intangible confidence that makes all the difference.

Tim Ferriss:

Totally. Are there any real world examples that come to mind or other hypotheticals?

William Ury:

I was helping a client who became a very good friend of mine was a Brazilian who was in a battle Royal with his business partner over control of the company.

And this was rather a large company, 150,000 employees to be precise. And they’d been fighting tooth and nail for like two and a half years. Every board meeting was just a battle and there were lawsuits and there was it got into the press, the character assassinations. I mean, it was the worst and everyone thought it was absolutely impossible. And so this fellow asked me if I would come see him and I went to see him. I went to his home and I began by asking him the first question before you get to the BATNA, which is, what do you want? What are your interests? You know, because your BATNA is your best course of action for satisfying your interests.

So I said, what do you want? And he said, well, I want a whole bunch of stock here and I want an elimination of the three year non-compete clause and I want the company sports team and I want the company headquarters. And he had his list, just a really intelligent businessman. And I said to him, I understand that, but tell me what do you really want? And he looked at me as surprised. He said, what do you mean? I said, no, I mean, you’re a man who seems to have everything. What do you really want in life? What’s really at stake here for you? And I don’t think he’d been asked that question before.

It was a chance for him to go to the balcony and he paused for a while. There’s some silence. That’s the power of silence. And then finally he said to me, you know what I want? I want liberdade, which in Portuguese means freedom. I want my freedom. And the way he said freedom, just the tonality of it. And that’s what you want to do is listen for the tone. It’s not just the words, but what’s the tone. I knew I’d kind of struck gold because it was like deep.

It was like really deep inside of him. And I had read his little bit of his biography and he’d been kidnapped 20 years earlier and held in a coffin by a group of urban gorillas for like a week. He thought he was not going to make it. You know, they had little air holes and they played this loud rock music. And it was only by a miracle that he was freed. But freedom really meant something to him because that’s often the case where hostages of these difficult conflicts. And he was hostage of this conflict.

And he said, I want freedom. And then I said to him, what does freedom mean to you specifically then? And that’s the thing you want to do. Once you get that interest, you want to ask, okay, operationally specifically, what does it mean? And he said, well, it’s freedom to spend time with my family, which is the most meaningful thing in my life. And it’s freedom to make the deals I love to make. I love to make deals. And then I asked him the BATNA question. I said, okay, Obelia, imagine that you can’t reach agreement with your business rival, who’s now your bitter enemy. Imagine you can’t, we don’t reach agreement.

Is there anything you can do to advance your interests, which in this case is spend more time with your family and make more deals. And there was an aha for him because he had assumed that he couldn’t advance his interests without settling this first. And he had to fight this. It was a fighter and he was going to fight this, but then no, then he realized that, okay, yeah, I’m not dependent on the other side for the interests that matter most to me. And when you realize that, again, it goes back to the wisdom of the Stoics. When you realize it’s you, you actually have control over the things that matter most to you, not the other side. You know, he went on a vacation with his family, opened up an office, started to do deals that actually allowed him to relax so that in the end we were able to make a deal.

Tim Ferriss:

The followup question that hops to mind for me, I’m so curious is what then happened? Like what, we don’t have to get into all the specifics of the deal, but I could see on one hand possibility that he would have ultimate walkaway power in the sense that he would be less likely to make certain concessions because he feels like he can address his interests elsewhere.

So he could kind of hold out indefinitely feeling like he can manage the endurance more than the other side. I can also see it going the other direction where he’s less attached to it and is more likely to make concessions. So what ended up happening? I could see that realization manifesting in a number of different ways.

William Ury:

That’s a really, that’s a really good point, Tim.

So in this case, I think it’s both. It both strengthened his sense of confidence that, you know, he could do it. And at one point he said to me, you know, maybe I’m going to have to fight this for the rest of my life. And this conflict was going to go on for at least another seven years because that’s how long he was going to be chairman of the board. But I think in the end it was the second thing, which is he relaxed on it.

And I had to keep on reminding him because he was very reactive and I’d say, remember what you told me you really want is your freedom because we get so attached. He was so attached to these things. In the end I met with the representative of his business enemy. I went to Paris and over a restaurant. I met him. He said, you know, come and meet me. We went to lunch at his restaurant. And this fellow who was a French banker at a very distinguished French banker asked me, so why are you here? You know, because this thing hasn’t been settled in two and a half years, the lawyers are better. And I said to him, using his language, French, I said, because life is too short.

That wasn’t what he was expecting. And I said, yeah, because it’s to kind of help everyone go to the balcony. I said, life’s too short for these conflicts in which everybody loses. I mean, these guys are losing their time. Their families are suffering. The employees are suffering from divided loyalties. Just think of all the losses here besides all the, you know, all the money going to lawyers and everything. And so he said, so what would you do? And I said, well, if we could just agree for both of our friends, it wasn’t like we were adversaries. It’s mostly like, let’s help our friends settle this. You know, you just reframe the situation. Both of our friends want their freedom to go on with their lives, you know, freedom from this dispute. And they both want their dignity. They can’t afford to be seen as, you know, losing.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah. And William, just a quick question to the extent that you can describe it. Could you explain the dynamic? Just so I have some understandings. You’ve got Amelia, the chairman, and then there’s somebody else who’s also at odds. I see.

William Ury:

The French entrepreneur was the principal shareholder and there’d been an agreement that at some point control would shift to him and they were fighting over control over this company.

And this was a company that had been founded by a Belio, my friend and client with his father. It was Latin America’s largest retailer was a supermarket chain.

Tim Ferriss:

And Emilio brought you in to try to help the situation.

William Ury:

Actually his daughter and wife who were very concerned, brought me in. How often does that happen? That’s the third side.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah. Yeah. I would imagine you get brought in by the third side. That’s not infrequently. I would imagine.

William Ury:

That’s it. The third side turns out to be key. You know, it’s like the people around the conflict who have a stake were being affected by it. Want to find some way to transform it.

Tim Ferriss:

So you’re saying you said life is too short. Let’s talk about our friends.

William Ury:

Let’s talk about our friends.

And if we can give them both freedom and dignity, then maybe there’s a chance. And he looked at me and we had a very nice lunch, French meal. And then about an hour later, I got a call. I gave him my number. As he said, when are you going back to America? I said, I’m going back tomorrow morning. I got a call about an hour later. He said, do you think you could stay tomorrow so that we could meet? And I said, sure. And so I went to see him in his office and we spent 45 minutes in his office trying to figure out this very complicated deal, what it would mean to give each man freedom and dignity so that no one could be seen to lose. In 45 minutes, we came up with a little formula on the, it was just very simple on the, on the page there. That was a Tuesday.

By Friday, we had both men in a law office in Sao Paulo, Brazil, signing an agreement in which they ended it. We had a joint statement where they wished each other. Well, I accompanied both men to talk to the leaders of the company, to explain to them executives of why they’d done this. There was a press conference and it was over. And I asked Abelio later, I said, how do you feel? He said, well, I got everything I wanted. He even got, you know, the things he wanted.

He said, but the most important thing is I got my life back. Lawsuits, seldom winners all around. And even the other guy, the other guy was very happy too. So that’s the amazing thing is that it seems like it’s an impossible situation, but by treating it as a win-lose situation, there is no way out. But then looking for those possibilities, there was a way in which both sides could win, could benefit that, you know, could get their freedom and their dignity and the community, the third side, actually the families and the, and the company could also benefit.

So it was a win, win, win, a win for, for, for everybody.

Tim Ferriss:

What is a trust menu and how do you construct a trust menu? But what is a trust menu?

William Ury:

Well, trust is one of those things, which is so important in negotiation. I mean, you know, you’re always looking, I know on the show for efficiency, you know, like how do you, can you do something more efficiently? Well, in negotiation, what creates the greatest efficiency in negotiation is trust Warren Buffett, who I’ve had the pleasure of knowing a little bit. He once had a negotiation with a partner, a business partner, Charlie Murphy over the buying ABC, the television network.

This is many years ago. And Buffett was going to put up $500 million. Looked like the deal was going through. So Murphy called up cap cities, USA called up Buffett and said, Warren, the deal is going through. What are the terms? This is on the phone. And Buffett said, well, where if you probably thought about it more than I have, what do you think the terms should be? And Murphy just set out the terms. Buffett said, fine. End of negotiation, 30 seconds, $500 million negotiation. Now it turned out that it was a very good deal for both sides.

ABC was later sold to Disney, but the trick was, or the secret was both men trusted each other such that they knew that it didn’t matter who proposed the thing. They knew that it would be fair for both sides. They knew they had that degree of trust. And so they could operate at the speed of trust. Now that high degree of efficiency, otherwise it might take six months or it might never happen. So that’s the coin of the realm in negotiation question is, what do you do if you don’t have trust? And that’s where a trust menu comes in.

Tim Ferriss:

Okay. So let’s say we’re not starting with that level of trust.

William Ury:

Yeah. Oftentimes you’re dealing with high levels of distrust, right? Yeah. So the question is, how do you get out of distrust? At least establish some working trust. You might not be the closest of friends or whatever it is, but because it’s best to work with people with whom you can have high trust.

But oftentimes that’s not the case. Going back to just the example with Chavez, when he told me, for example, that, you know, they could stop calling me a monkey on national television. I said, okay, I know you don’t want to meet with him, but maybe we can build a trust menu. So the next night he delegated his right-hand person who was his minister of interior to meet with me who couldn’t afford to be seen to meet with the opposition. So I would just stay in a villa in a kind of a bed and breakfast, a Posada in the middle of Caracas. And there was a garden and 11 o’clock at night, the minister shows up. I put him on my balcony. And then in the garden, I had a couple of the opposition figures and my colleague Francisco and I shuttled back and forth all night, trying to construct a trust menu.

In other words, a prearranged set of signals, steps that each side could take that were small enough. And it’s like each side, these are the kinds of things that would send us a signal of respect that you know, we can be trusted. And then one person like Chavez picks one thing off that item and says like, okay, he made a speech the next week, which is something the opposition asked him to do saying to the people, do not physically assault or harass the media when they’re covering rallies, you know, those kinds of things. And he did it. So then they did one thing that he had asked for on his list. And then he did one thing. It’s like little signals. You send one signal, the other person sends another signal, send one signal, another signal. These are prearranged preorchestrated and their ways of beginning to rebuild trust or confidence that you can actually depend on the other such that you might then be willing to sit down together.

Tim Ferriss:

Makes perfect sense. You mentioned Warren Buffett.

So I’m going to segue to Warren Buffett here. And this relates to an interest that I have a keen interest in saying no different ways of saying no, the importance of saying no, how to say no. And this is from an interview that you did some time ago, but it talks about your meeting Warren Buffett for breakfast. And at one point this is quitting. He confided in me the secret to creating his fortune lay in the ability to say no. This is now quoting Buffett quote.

I sit there all day and look at investment proposals. I say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Until I see one that is exactly what I’m looking for. Then I say, yes, all I have to do is say yes. A few times in my life and I’ve made my fortune said, I’d love to hear perhaps how you approach. No. And there are different ways to present. No. The positive. No. As one example, and just how you’ve learned to think about no, because there’s getting to yes.

And part of the reason that I found getting past no. So seductive is that when I had my first job out of college, I was technical sales, selling storage area networks to CTOs, CEOs, et cetera, or attempting to, these are seven figure plus systems. And almost inevitably the first answer was always no. So I found the title of the book, very compelling. How do you think about? No, I know that this has been important in your life and I suppose in most lives, but I would just suggest people think about no. And then maybe you can give an example of how to deliver a no in a skillful way.

William Ury:

Back to that breakfast meeting with Warren Buffett, because Roger Fisher and I and Bruce Patton had just worked on getting to yes. And he said, yo, yes. It’s really a good word. He said, but in my line of business, you don’t know, it’s much more important. And it really stayed with me. It stayed with me. And then I wrote, you know, getting past now because people said, asked about getting yes. Yeah. But what if the other side says no. So, but then I thought there’s a trilogy here. There’s a third book here, which is really to do justice to know because no is a really important word.

Buffett is absolutely right. It’s almost like we have a right arm and a left arm. The two most basic words in the language are yes and no. You know, Pythagoras said, you know, the two words that are simplest words in the language, yes and no are the most complicated. They deserve the most study. And that’s true. My whole life has been in some ways a study of the words yes and no.

And also I noticed that I had some difficulty sometimes saying no. I thought I always liked to write about what I’m trying to learn, you know, because that’s the best way to, that’s the best way to learn about it. And so I did some real deep dive into it. And in the end I came up with what I felt was an effective way to say no, which is what I call positive. No. And it’s like a sandwich, a positive. No starts with a yes. It’s a yes, no, yes. You know, no is the, is the meat in the middle.

And it starts with a yes. And the yes is to what is that deep, your deep interest, your deep strategy. You’re saying no, not just to say no, but to say yes to something deeper. And that’s what Buffett was saying to me. He was saying that in order to land on the right deal, that yes to the right deal, I have to say no to a thousand deals that are not quite right. And that’s how I make my fortune. So it all starts with the yes. Actually the effective no starts with a yes. It’s like the roots of a tree.

If your boss is asking you to work over the weekend, you know, you might say, thank you. I actually, I’m going to a wedding this weekend, long promise, whatever it is, I’m not able to work this weekend. So it starts with a yes to what’s important to you. Therefore I’m not able to work with a weekend and then it doesn’t end there. It immediately goes to a yes on the other side. And this is what I can do to try and solve the boss’s problem.

I can work more during the week. I can get Juan and Maria to work with me to try to get it done. But the yes on the other side is some kind of either referral solution, relationship, some kind of way to address the other side that is not a way of backing away from, it doesn’t undermine the no, it’s just offers them another thing. So it’s a yes, no, yes. The no in between is calm. It’s not an angry. No, it’s calm. Matter of fact, strong.

No, no means no. What makes it easier for people to hear it is the yes that precedes it. So they take it not as a personal challenge to the boss’s authority. They understand why you’re saying no. And then it’s followed by a yes on the other side, which might be, you know, I look forward to doing business with you next time, whatever it is, but it’s a positive note that you end up.

Tim Ferriss:

That was going to be my followup question about the yes at the end, because I could see, this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about and practicing, trying to refine for a decade plus now, which is how to say no and do so in a way that is sustainable. In other words, if you have a lot of incoming, if you have a lot of inbound people asking you to, who knows, could be any number of things, host a charity fundraiser, come speak to XYZ invest in this and that help my brothers go fund me campaign cause he’s trying to help people with ALS, whatever it might be. There could be a million of these coming in. And I could imagine if you’re closing yes is sort of a contingency commitment that those things would really snowball. Oh, right, right. So there are times that you just have to say, here’s my positive reason.

Why therefore I cannot say yes. What are some ways that you like to close on a positive note? Is there any language that you have found just to be ready from the quiver go to language for yourself or for others?

William Ury:

One is you want to make sure that the no is not taken personally because oftentimes people don’t like to hear the word no, and that makes it hard to deliver for us. So, you know, you can say, look, my policy is don’t do this. I’m taking us about, you know, you put a very strong yes in the, in the ground that they understand that the no is nothing personal. Right. And then the yes on the other side might just be, I love you to your brother.

So the last note is not no it’s yes, but it could just be a yes to the relationship. You know, how about I wish you much success with the fundraiser. It’s just you don’t have to come up with a contingency plan for everyone. No, don’t even think about that. But if a coworker asks you for help, you could say, look, I’ve got an important work priority. Boss has asked me to do so I can’t help you, but so-and-so might be able to help you. Or, you know, I can’t help you now, but in three weeks I could help you. And that we’ve got to be careful. It’s got to be absolutely right. If you’re true, right, right. Got to be really careful about that.

You don’t want to like leave a door open that you’re going to regret later. But in some cases it’s just like a pleasant relationship affirming, wishing you success. Godspeed.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah. There’s one that I received. I don’t want to misattribute it, but I want to try to give attribution. I think he was Guy Kawasaki a million years ago. Who’s a very well known. He was known as an evangelist from Apple computer and it’s gone on to do angel investing and many other things has written some great books.

And I asked him for something. I can’t remember what it was. This is back when I was just cutting my teeth early days, just moved to California. And he replied and a guy apologizes if this wasn’t you, but it’s a good line either way. It was basically a very short, like really sorry, can’t make this work. I’ll raise a glass from the sidelines with an exclamation point. And that was it.

But it was delivered in such a way that it was less bruising than it could have been otherwise. Right. That strikes me as a good example.

William Ury:

That’s it. The yes on the other side is an investment in relationship. It’s a sign of respect.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah, that’s probably a helpful way for me to think about it too. How can you really underscore respect in that closing part?

Possible the new book, how we survive and thrive in an age of conflict. What was the impetus or the reasons behind wanting to write this book?

William Ury:

Our friend, Jim Collins.

Tim Ferriss:

Oh yeah. All right. Say more, please.

William Ury:

So what happened was five years ago, I went for a hike with Jim mountain hike lion’s lair.

Tim Ferriss:

I was going to say that can mean a lot of things. He’s a pretty aggressive rock climber.

William Ury:

He is. He’s he’s great. And he likes to ask good questions as you know. And so we were hiking up there. It was the end of November, blue sky, Colorado. And he turns to me and he says, William, he said, do you think you could sum up everything you’ve learned in your life in one sentence, everything you’ve learned about negotiation in one sentence that could be of use to us in these tumultuous times. And I looked at him and he’s, he said to me with a twinkle in his eye, he said, well, you know, Darwin could, you know, and I can give you the exact sentence on page 300 and so of the origin of species where he sums up the entire theory of evolution. And I love challenges and I love simplicity. I’m always trying to like, how do you synthesize something down?

So I took his challenge and I went back and thought about it and our next hike, I talked it through. I said, you know, if I had to do it in one sentence, I went back, you know, I’ve always loved the Latin phrase, omni trium perfectum, which means everything that’s in threes is perfect. You know, there’s something about three. So I was trying to think of what are the three things that I would pass on for these difficult times of the things that I’ve learned, the three most basic things that hang together as one. And so I tried it out on him and then he said, okay, now you’ve got the sentence, write the book. And that’s the origin of possible.

Tim Ferriss:

Well, I can’t let that go as a cliffhanger. What was the sentence? What’d you start with?

William Ury:

So the sentence was taking these impossible conflicts that we’re facing now. I mean, the world’s getting so disrupted, whether you mentioned the middle East, Ukraine, you know, the U S polarization, whatever it is in business, there’s so many conflicts going on. It’s like, it seems to be polarizing, paralyzing us, poisoning us. So I was trying to think of, so the first thing I said, the path to possible, the first thing is go to the balcony. It all starts with us. You got to influence yourself first.

You got to go to the balcony so you can see the larger picture. You know, and we were hiking up. I said, you know, it’s that balcony view that you can see as you’re looking down at the Valley. It’s an inside job. It’s self mastery. That’s where it begins. So go to the balcony was number one. And then once you’ve influenced yourself and you can influence the other. And then I thought about going back to getting past, no building a golden bridge, which is making it as easy as possible for the other side to do what you want them to do by listening, by being creative, by being attracting, by writing their victory speech, you know, all of those things go into building a golden bridge.

It actually is a phrase that comes from Sun Tzu, the art of war, which is leave them a way out. I frame it positively as where’s the way forward. You got to be audacious. It’s not just an ordinary bridge. It’s a golden bridge. It’s attractive. It’s persuasive. You’ve thought through what really they want, what are their fears are and so on. So you’ve really built them that golden bridge.

So influence yourself to influence the other. And then the third part of the whole is influence the whole, which is take the third side, which is remember in negotiation, in conflict, we always tend to reduce everything to two sides. It’s labor against management. It’s sales against manufacturing. It’s husband against wife. It’s the Arabs against Israelis. There’s always a third side, which is the surrounding community. The people around were affected by it. And that’s a great power if you can harness it.

So taking the third side to the side of the whole. And I think that’s our most ancestral that our oldest human heritage for dealing with conflict is using the third side. I’ve seen it in so many indigenous cultures and we have to reinvent it today. So my sentence was the path, the possible is to go to the balcony, build a golden bridge and take the third side, influence yourself, influence the other influence, the whole.

Tim Ferriss:

All right.

I love every aspect of that. And I want to hone in on one. And this is a sort of a meta question that I wanted to explore with you related to your comment on the inside job, my experience. And I’m by no means a master negotiator, but I’ve done a fair amount. It’s just all the stuff that I’ve done. We all have, we all have to go. We all negotiate is my experience has been that the better you get at negotiating and a core component of it is creativity.

The more you can harness seeing option C instead of just a versus B for yourself, not just for mutual gain, but actually in your own decisions as well. So I wanted to ask you about inventing creative options, finding creative options could be for mutual gain, could be for personal direction. And I’d love to hear if you’re open to an example of something in the negotiating world. And then if you have one, an example from your personal life or individual life where similar techniques or lenses helped you to see something that maybe wouldn’t have been obvious.

William Ury:

In any situation, I always think about it. You know, you’re negotiating, imagine that you’re negotiating something with someone, there’s a pile of gold on the table. And that gold represents the amount of gain potential gain that lies in whatever deal you can make or whatever relationship you can create.

Well, so often what you find is that people walk away from the table, either without a deal, they leave all that gold on the table or they walk away, just taking away part of the gold. So the question is how do you get all the gold? And the answer is by using our creativity, tapping into our innate potential for creativity. There’s a part of our brain that judges and evaluates. We’ve all been in meetings where you get these killer phrases, like, you know, you raise an idea and they say, Oh, we’ve done that before.

Or we’ve never done that before, or that won’t work. Or that’s the craziest idea, whatever it is. After that, no more creative ideas come out of that meeting. So our ability to invent means separating the cognitive process from evaluating, which is really important from the cognitive process of inventing, of creating. That’s the whole essence of brainstorming, which is you have one golden rule, which is no criticism is allowed. So you try to come up with as many ideas as possible.

And then after you get all the ideas out, then you can start to criticize and develop and improve them. But if you try to do both at the same time, you find you don’t get very far. So you can do that. Like, for example, if I go back, you’d set a, you know, an example from the negotiation world. If I go back to my friend Abelio and that particular conflict, it was freedom and dignity. You know, for dignity, we had to figure out a way in which no one could really tell who won because, you know, like for example, three-year non-compete, you know, they were tangling around. Is it going to be two years, half a year, whatever it is, how much it would be for each thing. And we had to just have no numbers. So I said, no, look, freedom means zero non-compete, you know, because that’s what freedom means.

But it’s just like, there’s no numbers and it’s just, it just disappeared. Or for example, the stock, what was the discount? No, it was going to be one voting stock for one other stock. So that analysts could not tell who won. There was, we tried to remove numbers from it.

Tim Ferriss:

What about seeing creative options outside of negotiation for yourself? Has it translated in that way for you?

William Ury:

Well, for example, right now I’m thinking of taking a sabbatical.

So, you know, I like to think, okay, so what would I do on a sabbatical? Be creative. Like should I learn something new? Should I learn a new language? Should I go off on a hike, a pilgrimage, walking somewhere? I take out a piece of paper and I try to write down things, but even better, what I love to do for creativity is I go for walks or hikes because in nature, somehow, when you see beauty and particularly you get these vistas, I find it enhances creativity. And then I asked friends, what would you do and just investigate it? So come up with the essential thing of creativity is come up with a lot of possibilities and then start to winnow it down.

But don’t just hone in on one because the best way to make decisions is to have a lot of options and then you can start to introduce criteria to try and figure out which one will satisfy you the best.

Tim Ferriss:

So I can’t resist the temptation to ask about your exercise and self-care routines. And this is going to seem like a very non-sequitur, but you mentioned the hiking. And if you don’t mind me asking, what is your current age? 70, just turned 70. All right. So you do not look remotely close to 70.

And I don’t know how much of that is just out of the box Powerball winner of genetics versus other things. I have no idea. Maybe it’s an amazing skincare routine. I don’t know. But you seem to be in very, very good shape. What are some of your non-negotiable or ideal self-care routines? What do you do to stay kind of active and fit?

William Ury:

The first thing of which I’ve already indicated is walking. You know, I’m an anthropologist by training and walking is what made us human. Our ancestors walked all the time. I mean, we were nomadic, you know, hunters and gatherers for 99% of our time. So I love to walk and I love to live in a beautiful place, nature if I can. But if I’m in the city, you know, walk in a park or whatever, but there’s something about, or even just walk down the street. But I love walking and I love hiking, climbing mountains.

And so I do that every single day religiously. And it doesn’t even have to be, it’s like ingrained. It’s not even, doesn’t even take a lot of discipline because walking, hiking, you know, I think of the satisfaction that it brings. I mean, it’s, it not only obviously brings physical fitness, cause it’s really good for you just as, as a thing, but emotionally it helps me go to the balcony. It calms me down. It lowers the stress level. Intellectually, mentally, it leads to creativity. It’s where I do my best ideas. It’s I walk all my books. You know, that’s where the ideas often come from.

Tim Ferriss:

And you mean that you ideate on your books when you’re walking?

William Ury:

Yeah. I ideate. That’s what I mean. Are you recording anything? I do. I do record. I do record. I used to have little post-its. I used to write on those things.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah. That sounds more labor intensive.

William Ury:

But now I just record. Yeah. I just record cause things come. It’s quite amazing. Just creativity. It’s like you’d listen, you tune in, you’re relaxed. Beauty inspires. I find beauty, especially, you know, I work in a lot of difficult, heart-wrenching conflicts. Beauty is kind of like a balm. It’s just kind of like, it regulates the nervous system. And then, you know, the last thing of course it does is it has a spiritual level, which is like beauty. It’s like wonder awe. And so what I find is walking actually covers the basis. And so that’s my foundation. And then of course, I do some little weights and I do some yoga or some stretching and those I’ve added on. And I, and I realized, and I experiment with those over the years, but the foundation of it, I hope to walk to the day that I die.

That’s my dream.

Tim Ferriss:

How much walking generally are you doing? Is it an hour a day? Is it two hours a day? Is it somewhere in between? What does it look like? When do you go for your walks? I know this is getting very nitpicky, but I’m curious.

William Ury:

I go for a walk whenever I can, but I usually walk first thing in the morning. If I can, I like to go for a hike. I have my favorite hikes, you know, especially ones that kind of get me out alone and where people aren’t around.

You know, I always find my favorite hike of like a Canyon, a stream or just something. It’s like a little Zen rock garden. In fact, just lends itself to more creativity. I also walk with friends later on. I try to do my meetings. If someone wants to meet with me, let’s go for a walk. I live a Lake. We walk around the Lake. So for me, you know, a three walk day would be great.

So I walk between, I would say an hour and a half and maybe could be sometimes as much as three hours a day or whatever it is, or it could be even longer. You know, I speaking of the middle East, I had a crazy idea 20 years ago of who walks, why they fight. So I had an idea of like creating a walking trail through the middle East and 20 years, and it’s been a lifelong hobby passion, but it’s called the Abraham bath and it’s long distance path where we’ve developed maybe about at this point, about 1500 miles of trails and to walk because long, I said, this is a hundred year project, but it’s kind of, it’s just to get people walking because when you walk, you talk, you talk differently, you know, you can work out conflicts while you walk because you know, what’s interesting you’re walking, you’re, you’re side by side facing a common direction and that’s the direction you want to go in negotiation side by side, trying to solve a problem. You’ve got a horizon there.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah. Suppose this like pugilistic sitting across the table facing each other like two predators, it’s a different vibe.

William Ury:

There’s a reason why in negotiation, you know, especially in national negotiations, they talk about walks in the woods. You know, oftentimes that’s where breakthroughs come is when the negotiators go for a walk in the woods.

Tim Ferriss:

I have found similarly, the more I walk, the better I do. And I have thought often about how it makes us human on so many levels is walking. It’s lots of walking.

William Ury:

It’s true. You know, by walking bipedal, that’s what allowed our brains to expand. So walking made us human.

You’re absolutely right.

Tim Ferriss:

I’d like to, if you’re open to it, discuss a little more what seems to be a core competency in negotiation, but in life in general, I mean, life is kind of a whole string of different negotiations, whether it’s with yourself or with other people. And that is uncovering underlying interests because what people ask for versus what they actually want slash need. The older I get, the more continually amazed I am at how different those two sets can be. The cover story of what people say they want versus what will actually make them happy. And sometimes they don’t know.

It takes some detective work to really uncover it. Could you give it another example of uncovering interests? Because I remember for instance, and I’m really pulling this from a faulty memory, but this example, I don’t know if it was in one of your books or maybe somebody told me about it, but there was a real estate developer who wanted to buy this land to develop a shopping center or something like that. And there was this farmer or someone who owned the property and he didn’t want to sell. And it went on and on and on and seemed to be intractable and it came down to ultimately he was afraid to be forgotten. And they were like, what if we put a statue up right in the center of the shopping center that basically would last forever and sort of assure your legacy? And he was like, great. And then they did the deal, but they were stuck in all the surface level stuff for a long time prior to that.

Are there any stories that come to mind about uncovering interests, not just positions?

William Ury:

I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard like that, you know, like where it just turns out to be something simple. You know, I go back to, I’ll give you an example from years ago. I was invited in as a mediator between a separatist group in Indonesia that had been fighting for 25 years for their independence from Indonesia, thousands of people dead. And I was meeting the head of the guerrilla group and the leaders and so on in Geneva. We were about to meet with the foreign minister of Indonesia the next day, but I began by asking them, so I understand your position, it’s independence, but if I may, why do you want independence?

What’s your interest? And there was this long silence like I struggled with it. What do you mean independence? It’s self-evident. We want independence. I said, but why do you want independence? And they struggled with it for a long time. And I finally said, okay, so is it you want your own place in the UN?

Is it because you want political autonomy, the ability to have your own parliament and run things? Is it economic? You want control over your natural resources? Is it cultural? Do you want your kids to go to school in your own language? And we started to unpack it. And the reason why it was so important, it’s a struck me here. They’d been fighting for 25 years, thousands of people dead, and they knew what their position was, but they hadn’t really thought through what their strategic interests were and prioritize them. And the reason why that was so important was because of BATNA, their best alternative and negotiated agreement was to continue the war. And I said to them, are you going to win this war? They said, Oh, the Indonesian army is much stronger. You know, 10 years we’ll still be fighting this war. And I said, is there any way that you can pursue your interests without even giving up your aspiration for independence? And, you know, it’s any way you can meet your interests and autonomy and control over natural resources and so on. And that began a whole conversation with them.

They went back into their movement for a couple of years and lo and behold, a few years later, after that tsunami, they came back and they negotiated an agreement with the Indonesian government, which gave them autonomy control of their natural resources. Kids can go to school in their own language. They can practice their own religion, you know, everything. And there was an election and the governor and the vice governor came from this independence movement. They advanced their interests without surrendering their ultimate aspiration.

They moved it forward. And that to me just showed just the enormous value of always digging behind positions because we’re like that. We’ve got our position to become self-evident, but oftentimes we know our position, but we don’t know what our interests are. We missed a chance to advance our interests.

Tim Ferriss:

Yeah. I was just thinking, as you were telling that story that the longer something has persisted, whether it’s a grudge against your parents or some strife with your significant other or 25 year conflict, the interests may have been clear in the beginning, but somewhere along the line they got replaced with the position and then it becomes this faulty proxy where it’s a, well, it’s self-evident. And it’s like, well, hold on a second. Is it self-evident?

It’s like the label of the thing, but not the thing. I can see how the longer something has lasted, the more likely it is that it’s going to be a good thing. The longer something has lasted, the more likely perhaps it is that the interests have been lost along the way, even if they were extremely clear at some point.

William Ury:

In Getting Yes, we tell the story about these two sisters quarreling about an orange and they quarrel about the orange and finally they cut the orange in half. And one sister takes her half and peels it and uses the half appeal for baking a cake.

And the other sister takes her half peels it and eats the half of the fruit. And they end up with half a peel for one and a half a fruit for the other. When, cause their position was the orange. But if they’d looked behind to what their interests were, which were in cooking and eating, they could have ended up with a whole peel for one and a whole fruit for the other.

Tim Ferriss:

That is great. I need to go back and read Getting Yes. I mean, I bought that as soon as I could, as soon as I could buy it, I got it.

And then Getting Past No followed up and then Possible will be the next edition. What do you hope that Possible does or what would success constitute for you with this book? Comes out a year later. How do you know if it’s been a successful book or not?

William Ury:

Here’s my dream. My dream is if I was a Martian anthropologist right now looking at humanity and I look at it and say, wow, we live in this time of paradox because we have so much abundance, so much potential, so much opportunity to make the world better. You know, we’ve got the technology, we’ve got AI, we’ve got all this stuff.

At the same time, what’s in our way, there’s no limit to what we could do. There’s no opportunity we can’t realize. There’s no problem we can’t solve. If only we can learn to work together and what’s in the way are these conflicts that seem impossible, that seem polarizing and paralyzing. And the reason I wrote Possible was to indicate from my own experience of spending 45 years wandering around the world as a negotiator and an anthropologist, trying to understand these things, seeing where people took impossible situations and found possibilities. And my hope is that we’re all possibleists. I mean, anyone listening to this podcast, you’re a possibleist.

You believe in human potential. My hope, my dream is that there’s a worldwide league of possibleists who are tackling the world’s toughest problems. And that could be your personal issues. It could be issues with yourself, issues with your partner. It could be professional work-life issues. It could be in the community or it can be in the larger world, the political world, but using harnessing our full human potential for what you have here in this podcast, which is our full human potential for curiosity, a full human potential for creativity and our full human potential for collaboration to transform these conflicts. Because if we can transform these conflicts, we can transform our lives.

We can transform our world. That’s my dream.

Tim Ferriss:

Amen. That’s very well said. Very well put. And a worthwhile dream to have, I think. William, this has been an incredible conversation. I’ve been looking forward to it for some time and people can find the book wherever they find their books, Possible How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict. I have found your book so incredibly useful in the past, so incredibly practical.

So I really do hope people check it out and furthermore take the last thing that you just said very seriously. Because as you said, a lot of this is an inside job working from the inside out and it’s highly compatible with a lot of the things, completely compatible with much of what has been, I would say well received on this podcast in the past, like Stoic philosophy, et cetera. And I think your craft and your genius is a living example of in some senses, you know, separating what you can influence from those things you can’t and then being very creative. And I would say as sort of a precursor believer in the possible in crafting potential solutions, not just ways out, but ways forward. And really appreciate all the time today. People can find you on Twitter. It’s all the cool kids call it X now these days at William Ury GTY as in getting to yes. So anything else that you would like to say, any requests of my audience, anything else that you would like to add before we wind to a close?

William Ury:

Well, first of all, it’s been a huge pleasure to speak with you, Tim, and I’m a big fan of your podcast and of your, I believe this possible as mindset and my humble requests to your listeners, is take this possible as mindset, this belief that I think infuses this podcast of this belief in human potential and being curious and being creative and being collaborative and apply it to your own difficult conflicts. And you’ll see that if you can go to the balcony, you can do that inside job, that self mastery, that Stoic philosophy. And if you can then build the other side of golden bridge, you know, something that works for both sides. And if you can take the third side, engage the larger community for the benefit of the community. If we can do those three things, balcony bridge, third side, those are, are human, I believe innate superpowers. If we can awaken them, then I think we can kind of create the world that we want for ourselves and the people that we love.

Tim Ferriss:

William, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic conversation.

I’ve taken all sorts of notes. It was a real pleasure to research for those because it just triple reinvigorated my interest in everything that you have written about and all of the many adventures that you have had. I really appreciate the time and for sharing your life and techniques and perspectives on the show. So thank you for that.