The best way to describe my guest on this Wavemaker conversation is that you could not have a more valuable person on your speed dial. If you’re embroiled in a serious conflict, whether it involves work or family or matters of war and peace, you would be fortunate to have William Ury answer your call. Ury has answered countless calls ever since he co-authored the classic book on negotiation, Getting to Yes. A year and a half ago, I got a call from a friend of mine who is a Brazilian entrepreneur who said, can you help my dad? He’s, you know, the founder of Brazil’s largest retailer, 150,000 employees. And for the last two and a half years, he’s been in mesh in this colossal legal battle with his former business partner. It’s paralyzing the company. Can you help? And I said, well, I don’t know if I can help, but I’d certainly be willing to listen. One day, it’s a Brazilian billionaire. Another day, a Syrian commander. I mean, it was amazing to me that you’d have some of these rebel commanders. And the first question we asked him was, what were you doing before this and how did you get involved? And three of them, believe it or not, had been pediatricians. So the question was, how does a pediatrician end up being a rebel commander? Almost all of them had been tortured and just been humiliated and seen that there was no possibility as far as they could see for nonviolent protest. And so they turned to violence. Now that we need the wisest minds to address the Islamic State’s wave of terrorism, William Urey, whose experience in conflict resolution began in the Cold War, is on call. I mean, Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons that used to be aimed at us. The terrorists, ISIS, has a few tens of thousands of armed men. And so we have to kind of keep it in perspective. But when we see beheadings, for example, it instantly gives a kind of feeling like we immediately need to go in and destroy them. You’ve got to be really clever and strategic in the way in which you deal with an adversary like that. And just going in and saying, OK, let’s bomb doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, as we’ve learned. What it’s going to take to deal with ISIS is a lot of negotiation, not necessarily with ISIS. If you were to reach out to William Urey for help today, all these years after getting to yes, the first question he’d likely ask you is about the adversary we often ignore. Yeah, I have to say, in 35 years of working in very difficult situations, however difficult others are, the person who is the most challenging for us in terms of being the biggest obstacle to us getting what we truly want in life is not the other side. It’s ourselves. It’s our own human, very natural, understandable tendency to react, to act without thinking. As Ambrose Pierce once said, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. On this Wavemaker Conversation, we speak with William Urey upon the publication of his new book, Getting to Yes With Yourself. Bill Urey, welcome to this Wavemaker Conversation. It’s a great pleasure to be able to speak with you today, Michael. I’ve got to start with the headlines, because whether it’s the war in eastern Ukraine to, of course, the wave of terrorism being carried out now by members of the Islamic State movement. And it brings to mind a conversation I had with the co-author of Getting to Yes and your late professional partner, Roger Fisher. I called him right before the United States invaded Iraq, and I asked him, should we negotiate with Saddam Hussein? And what would your guess be that he said? He said, yes. It costs you nothing to talk with the other side. You’re going to learn a lot. It doesn’t mean you necessarily make concessions to the other side, but to talk to them. Why try and deal with your neighbor by cutting the phone line? I think that’s a different concept of negotiation. Negotiation doesn’t necessarily have to lead to an agreement. That’s right. The purpose of negotiation is not always to reach agreement. The purpose of negotiation is to satisfy your interests, to explore, to see whether or not we can listen to the other side, understand their interests, and whether we can find a way to satisfy our interests and address their basic needs, too. Certainly to satisfy interests better than we could with our alternative. And the alternative in that particular case was to go to war, and look where that war has brought us today. One thing I’d love you to be able to pick up on is someplace where I left off last week. We have had so many stories in the news about people and institutions behaving dishonestly, especially in the sports world. Do you have examples of where honesty pays? Is it possible to really have a competitive advantage while you are being honest? In your world, does honesty pay? I have to tell you, Michael, that in 35 years of being in this business and interviewing and working with some of the world’s leading negotiators, be it in the world of sports or the world of politics or the world of business, that interestingly enough, the thing that the top negotiators, the best negotiators I know, value most, believe it or not, is despite the fact, you know, we think of negotiation as kind of like a little trick here, a little trick there, a little manipulation here and there. The thing that they value the most, believe it or not, is their reputation for honesty and fair dealing. Now, why would that be? Why would that be? Because they find that, sure, in any one deal, by being dishonest, you can gain a momentary advantage. But in life, we’re going to have hundreds, thousands of negotiations with the people who, you know, at work, in the workplace, in the family, in the community, in the world. And our reputation will precede us. And if we have a reputation for honesty and fair dealing, people will want to deal with us. We are much more likely to get to yes and to better yeses than we could otherwise. Let me just give you an example, if I may. Many years ago, when I was at Harvard, I spent some time interviewing a former British diplomat who had spent 50 years. And he told me about an incident where he happened to be the chairman of the UN Security Council at the time, right after the 1967 Mideast War. And his job was to negotiate a resolution, a resolution that became known as UN Resolution 242, which still is the primary UN resolution to this day on the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Well, he told me about the negotiations, which were very hard, with all the different powers around the world. And he spent weeks trying to craft that language that could get the great powers of the world to yes. And in the end, he was bringing it to a vote. It was 10 minutes before the vote in the UN Security Council chamber. You know, he’s under enormous pressure from around the world. The spotlight was on the chamber at that moment because of the war. And 10 minutes before the vote, the Soviet ambassador came over to him and said, Ambassador Khariton, I have a favor to ask. I’d like you to postpone this vote by two days. And Khariton looked at him and said, Ambassador Kuznetsov, look, we’ve been at this for weeks. We all know where we stand. You know, he could see in two days, you know, his coalition could crumble. So, you know, he said, I’m sorry, we’re going to have to proceed with the vote. He was under enormous pressure. And Ambassador Kuznetsov said, Ambassador Khariton, I’m afraid you must have misunderstood me. I’m asking you as a personal favor if you will postpone that vote by two days. And as soon as he heard the word personal in there, Khariton told me that he knew he had to grant Kuznetsov his wish. Now, why was that? Because even though the Soviet Union did not have much of a reputation in the world of international affairs for honesty and fair dealing, Ambassador Kuznetsov had that reputation among his peers that he would not take advantage. And so Khariton decided, OK, I have to grant him his wish. He gave him the two days. So two days later, during the UN Security Council, you know, everyone’s about to vote. And suddenly there’s a cheer that goes on from the audience because they see everyone lifting their hands, including the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Ambassador Kuznetsov voted in favor of UN Resolution 242 instead of opposing it. In fact, he’d use those two days, instead of undermining Khariton’s coalition, he’d use those two days to go back to Moscow and say this is the right way to vote. He could only have bought those two days, however. Think about it. He could only have bought those two days if he had a reputation. And if you have that reputation for honesty and fair dealing, you will find that people will give you a break. People will be more honest with you about what they want. You’re much more likely to overcome obstacles in a negotiation and get to good deals. And that’s why successful negotiators value their reputation for honesty and fair dealing more than anything else. Because after all, in negotiation, what’s your most precious asset? It’s your word. So the first edition of your book, Getting to Yes, came out in 1981 in the heart of the Cold War. And here we are today. We don’t trust Vladimir Putin, but there may be people within his circle who we can trust. Bill Ury, as we look at the headlines today, what would you advise the U.S. government to do with Putin? Yeah, I would say it’s an exceedingly difficult situation and it’s extremely important that we think through a path to negotiation. The alternative of not finding a way is just war in the Ukraine, destabilization. The United States and Russia have so many interests to work in common. If we do not find a way to develop that relationship, there’s cooperation on reducing nuclear weapons and all the danger that that poses to the world and especially to us. But also working together in containing nuclear weapons in Iran, putting an end to the war in Syria. So to me, the stakes are very high. It’s not easy because we’ve felt that we can’t trust President Putin. So how do we work in that environment? Well, during the Cold War, we certainly didn’t trust the Soviet Union, and yet we managed to reach arms control agreement after arms control agreement with them. How? Because we made the agreements in many respects independent of trust. We relied on our own national abilities to verify, for example, whether or not the weapons were being reduced and so on. We need to really think very hard about what we want, not react and just out of anger, out of fear. But actually put ourselves in the shoes not just of Vladimir Putin, but of Russian and Russians generally. Understand how we got to this situation. Because if you look at it and you think about it, you put yourself in their shoes for a moment. The prospect of having an adversarial alliance, NATO, right on your border, we wouldn’t like it if the Russians were on the border in Mexico. We don’t like it either. So we need to understand what their real concerns are. Give them reassurances that really address their major concerns. For example, part of a deal has to be Ukraine will not be joining NATO anytime soon. At the same time, it has to be stellar clear that they have to withdraw their troops and their forces and stop interfering in Ukraine. And there’s a deal there to be made if we can figure out and reassure them on their basic concern, their basic needs, not just of Putin, but of Russia and Russians generally. And look at all the influential actors around Putin. We can build a coalition for a more peaceful resolution that can allow the United States, Europe and Russia to work together for the stability of Europe, the stability of the world. It’s interesting you say that because many, many years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, we learned from Khrushchev’s son. It was Russia who the Soviet Union, who in many ways was afraid of the United States and what we would do. And today I’m just reading the in the latest edition of The Economist, a quote from Putin. He says America wants to freeze the order established after the Soviet collapse and remain an absolute leader, thinking it can do whatever it likes, while others can do only what is in that leader’s interests. Maybe some want to live in a semi-occupied state, but we do not. So when you hear that quote from Putin, what would your response be? Yeah, I would draw him out on that and try and understand the mindset because it’s not just his mindset. It’s the mindset of many, many Russians who see the United States that way. And, you know, I’m struck. I spent quite a bit of time working during the Cold War on U.S.-Soviet relations and had the privilege of actually being at a meeting in Moscow where we brought together the surviving participants of the Cuban Missile Crisis, including Khrushchev’s son, to take a look at what were some of the lessons. And certainly some of the lessons were the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the other, understand their fears. I remember, you know, George Kennan, who was the great architect of containment, you know, the great American diplomat and Soviet expert, who in the 90s when he was very old, warning us that if we kept moving the border of NATO closer and closer to Russia, Russia was weak then. They might not react, but in the future they would. He warned us exactly of what would happen right now. And if we don’t listen to that, if we don’t put ourselves in the shoes of the other, understand their legitimate concerns and needs and fears, then we’re going to find it very hard to get to yes with them. To me, that’s the key, is we have to understand the concerns and interests of all sides in this. Putting yourself in the shoes of others and your newest work is about putting yourself, as you put it, in your own shoes. And before we get to that, we’re going to take a little break. Let’s transition now from the Soviet Union, the Cold War, really the current Cold War, into really what seems like an even more difficult and potentially dangerous situation by some orders of magnitude. And that is what is going on with the Islamic State, which we really don’t understand very well and seems to be changing before our eyes. How do you, Bill Ury, even sort of size that up and say, OK, here’s our first move? The fundamental move, if we’re going to deal with an adversary like that, is we have to, I like to use the metaphor, we have to go to the balcony. It’s almost like you’re negotiating on a stage. Part of you goes to a mental and emotional balcony overlooking that stage where it’s a place of perspective. It’s a place of calm and clarity and self-control where you can keep your eyes on the prize. Our biggest enemy in dealing with terrorism is not the terrorists. Ultimately, it’s ourselves. It’s our own reaction to terrorism. Because terrorists, they never win historically. They work by creating terror, by creating fear. And then we overreact and we do ourselves harm. And that’s how we got into Iraq in the first place, 9-11, because all the fear and the anger. But the fear is legitimate and well-founded now, is it not? Well, it is and it isn’t. We have to put it in perspective. We have to look at the fact. I mean, you just said this is by orders of magnitude much more serious than the conflict with Russia. Question is it? I mean, Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons that used to be aimed at us. The terrorists, you know, ISIS has, you know, I don’t know, a few tens of thousands of armed men. And so, we have to kind of keep it in perspective. But when we see beheadings, for example, on social media, it instantly gives a kind of feeling like we’ve got to destroy them. We immediately need to go in and destroy them. And you’ve got to be really clever and strategic in the way in which you deal with an adversary like that. And just going in and saying, OK, let’s, you know, bomb doesn’t necessarily solve the problem as we’ve learned. What it’s going to take to deal with ISIS is a lot of negotiation, not necessarily with ISIS, but with all the other players in the region to build a winning coalition to contain and eventually eliminate ISIS. And so, what that requires is us working with all the players in the region, trying to also figure out who supports ISIS. It’s, you know, ISIS is right now supported by a Sunni population that’s been traumatized by the war in Iraq and the discrimination against them by the Shiite leadership in Iraq and by the war in Syria. So, there was a vacuum. That’s how ISIS came about. And so, we need to be able to figure out what are the legitimate concerns of people on the other side, try to address them, address their fears, address their concerns about being profoundly, you know, humiliated and disrespected. And it’s not also the U.S. to the rescue here, because if we go in and just kind of react and say the U.S. to the rescue, then suddenly we’re going to have boots on the ground and everyone else will back away and say, well, let the U.S. handle it. But in fact, long term, it can only be the other players, the Turks, the Iranians, you know, the Iraqis and so on. We need to help build a coalition that’s the only solution long term to dealing with a phenomenon like ISIS. Negotiation doesn’t necessarily mean negotiating with your adversary. It might mean negotiating with potential allies who are not your allies right now. That’s exactly it. And that’s exactly what’s going to be needed with ISIS, including elements that are supporting ISIS right now. We need to figure out to break them away from ISIS. I don’t know if you were there, but you had a team in Syria speaking and listening to the rebels, the anti-Assad rebels in Syria. And tell me what you discovered there about just how important listening is. The number of them who said, you’re the first ones to really come and listen to us. I mean, was amazing to me that we were trying to understand what is it they wanted? How did they envision the future of Syria? What what drove them? What were their motivations? And by listening to them, we were able to to kind of gather that information on all sides. By the way, those people you just described were these Syrian army commanders who had basically defected to the rebels. Some of them were most, but many of them were not. Many of them actually. I mean, it was amazing to me that you’d have some of these rebel commanders. Three of them had been when we asked them, the first question we asked them was, what were you doing before this? And how did you get involved? And three of them, believe it or not, had been pediatricians. So question was, how does a pediatrician, someone who signs up to be a pediatrician to take care and save the lives of children, end up being a rebel commander? And we tried to understand the psychology of that. And almost all of them had been tortured. They’d gone through a process of torture and just been humiliated and and seen that there was no possibility as far as they could see for nonviolent protest. And so they turned to violence. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know when you were there on the Syrian-Turkish border, which there is a real danger to your life. If members of this Islamic State coalition or informers were to know that, I mean, that is that’s a dangerous place. Right. And even then, you were there two years ago. We didn’t know the words Islamic State or ISIS, did we? I happened to because a friend of mine who was an Italian Jesuit priest living in Syria had been kidnapped by ISIS and held by them. So I knew about them, unfortunately, tragically early on. Did he get out alive or not? We don’t know if he’s alive or not. He was really or he is, I should say, because we don’t know if he’s alive or not. But he was is a great man who was trying in his own way. He was trying to to bring peace to Syria. And so he was talking to all sides. He was in Syria and he went into I was trying to reduce violence. And he was he was held hostage by by ISIS. It almost seems the kidnappings and the murders that are happening now. I was looking back at the 1980s when, you know, getting to yes was getting traction and you had kidnappings in the Middle East. It almost seems tame in comparison, even though it’s it was brutal. But how do you compare these two eras in terms of what is considered almost the norm now? Yeah, it’s true. In some ways, it seems more dangerous these days. Objectively, I don’t know exactly. This is why we need to go to the balcony, because certainly by watching the news, you would think it was more dangerous. Back in those days, which were the days of the Cold War, you know, there was a danger of, you know, of thermonuclear destruction, which is much greater than what any group like ISIS could inflict on the world as terrible as it might be. So we need to put everything in perspective on the balcony. Nevertheless, I would say there’s probably been no time since Roger Fisher and I collaborated on getting to yes, when there’s been a greater need around the world for us to learn the skills of getting to yes. And we need all the tools we can get, which is why I wrote this latest book, because I realized that in many ways we’ve been negotiating with one hand tied behind our back, focused on influencing the person on the other side of the table, when one of our greatest opportunities is to influence the person on this side of the table. In other words, ourselves, because what I find, whether it’s individually or collectively, we often get in our own way. We often sabotage our own ability to satisfy our own interests. Welcome to Play It, a new podcast network featuring radio and TV personalities, talking business, sports, tech, entertainment and more. Play it at play.it. Can you give me a specific example of somebody who really hadn’t tapped in to his own deepest, most critical interests, and you help that person with great results? Yeah, I have to say, in 35 years of working in very difficult situations and with very difficult people, that in the end, I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that however difficult others are, the person who probably is the most challenging for us, in terms of being the biggest obstacle to us getting what we truly want in life, is not the other side. It’s ourselves. It’s our own human, very natural, understandable tendency to react, to act without thinking. As Ambrose Bierce once said, when angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. That’s what happens. We sabotage ourselves. An example of this, a year and a half ago, I got a call from a friend of mine who is a Brazilian entrepreneur who said, Can you help my dad? He’s the founder of Brazil’s largest retailer, 150,000 employees, and for the last two and a half years, he’s been enmeshed in this colossal legal battle with his former business partner over the control. It’s paralyzing the company. It’s stressing out the families. Can you help? And I said, Well, I don’t know if I can help, but I’d certainly be willing to listen. On my next trip to Brazil, I sat down with her and her father and the family there in the family home. The father’s name is Abelio Diniz. He’s one of Brazil’s most well-known, successful, preeminent business people, a highly intelligent, capable human being. And as I listened to him, I realized that, like many of us, he wasn’t sure what he really wanted. I asked him, Abelio, help me understand here, what do you want? And he, like many of us, has a quick list of, OK, what I want is, we know what we want in terms of positions. I want the stock back at a certain price. I want elimination of the three-year noncompete clause. I want some real estate. He had six or seven things. But as I listened, I said, Abelio, what do you really want? I mean, you’re a man who seems to have everything. What do you really want? He said, I’ll tell you what I really want. Freedom. That’s what I want. And I said, Well, what’s the freedom for? He said, Well, it’s freedom to spend time with my family, which is the most important thing in my life, and freedom to pursue business deals and get on with my life and do what I’d like to do. Who can give you the freedom that you most want? Is it really just the other side, your archenemy, the opponent? Or to some extent, can you yourself give yourself your own freedom? Psychologically, that made all the difference. And then when it came to dealing with the other side, once we were clear, he was clear about what his yes was, and he could start to meet that yes himself, that freedom himself, then it became a lot easier to reach an agreement. And in four short days, my colleague and I were able to meet with the other side and forge an agreement where both men came together, sat down, reached an agreement, shook hands, wished each other well, made a joint presentation to the executives and employees of the company, and the thing was over. And it was not just a split the difference kind of grudging compromise. Abelio said to me, You know what, Bill, I got everything I wanted out of this negotiation. I got everything I wanted. But most importantly, I got my life back. Now, how did he do that? By getting to yes with himself first, he was able to get to yes for the other side. Was he transparent and honest with his adversary, his former business partner, about what his new, more finely honed yes was? Well, I was his representative. So I was his negotiator. And so and I think that what happened was when I met with the representative of the other side at a restaurant in Paris, he said, Why are you here? And I said, I’ll tell you why I’m here, because life is too short for these kinds of, you know, win, lose struggles that just end up in losses all around for everyone. You know, the families, the hundred fifty thousand employees with divided loyalties, even strained commercial relations between France and and Brazil. And he said, So how would you settle it? And I said, Well, if we can agree on two basic principles, freedom and dignity in respect, basically, then I think we can settle it. He said, Well, come by my office and tell me how you think that means, you know, what that means in terms concretely in terms of this. And we were able to put it down on one sheet of paper. The lunch was on Monday. The second meeting was on Tuesday. By Friday, we had both men signing the agreement. Now, how did that happen? It happened precisely because I was honest and I have a reputation for honesty and fair dealing. My the person I was dealing with, who was a very distinguished French banker, the head of the Rothschild family had a reputation, too. And because we both had our reputations for honesty and fair dealing and we’re dealing straight with each other, even though there was deep distrust between our clients, we were able to create a bridge that allowed an agreement to be made. Just just recently, for example, there was a family I was consulting. You know, two brothers were fighting about the inheritance and, you know, a lot of distrust and a lot of baggage, you know, and it was just locked in legal dispute. But again, one brother, with help of the other siblings and the sisters, and oftentimes it’s that third side that makes a big difference, brought together and decided, let me be honest and talked about his feelings and apologized for, you know, a very sincere apology for hurting the other’s feelings and so on. Listening, you know, using all these methods, you know, they were able to kind of get to the heart of the issue, which was around emotion, not just about money. And then they were able to, you know, resolve the family feud and put it behind them. But most importantly, not just resolve the inheritance dispute, but, you know, keep the family together. When you’re on the balcony, you keep your eyes on the prize. What’s most important here? Is it a few dollars here and a few dollars there? Or is it, you know, keeping the unity of the family, keeping the family together? The trust has has has eroded. And one of the most encouraging things I’m hearing from you is it is possible to take a situation where trust is eroded and rebuild the trust. Absolutely. And we can rebuild it in part by using third party players like I was in the case of a video or in the case of someone whom both parties can trust, even if they don’t trust each other, who can play either a mediating role or at least a convening role. And then through through, you know, normal human mechanisms like honesty, respect, apology, we can begin to mend the relationship and slowly rebuild trust where trust has not existed. Yes, is such a pivotal word. And yet no is equally important. And in your book, The Power of a Positive No, you urge us to not only say no, but to practice it on a daily basis in a situation that counts. I was so galvanized by this message of of no, not being a negative word, but about setting boundaries and tapping into that inner yes, that you just described for us in a way that allows us to say no to proposals and options that may be good, but not get us to the wisest yes. Michael, life itself is a dance of two words. It’s a dance of yes and no. Yes is the key word of agreement. No is the key word of justice, of fairness, of protection, of strategy. We need both. It’s like you need both arms. You need your left arm and your right arm. Right. And it’s almost like, you know, we’ve developed the muscle of yes, the yes muscle that’s well developed. But oftentimes the other muscle, the other arm of no is not well developed either. It’s because parents don’t want to hear the word no when we’re a kid. You know, they call that the age of the terrible twos. Teachers don’t want to hear it. Bosses don’t want to hear it. And so it either is a little flaccid. You know, people are afraid to say no or we do say no, but we say no in a very destructive way. The key is to rescue the word no, which is an extremely important word. It’s the no. The no is the way we protect our most essential needs. No is the way we protect our inner yes. We need that word no, but it needs to be remarried with the word yes. And so to me, the key is what I call a positive no, which is a no that starts from a yes, that yes inside of ourselves. So that, for example, if you’re saying no to your child, you know, you know, you can’t go out, you know, no, you start with the yes. I am concerned about your safety. You know, that’s where you’re coming from. You start from the yes there. The no itself is very respectful. It’s not rejecting of the other side. It’s just matter of fact. No, you know, you can’t go out. And then on the other side of it, very importantly, is a yes, a yes to the ongoing relationship, a yes to their needs. You know, when you get your homework done, when you’re 16, then you can go out later and so on. So it starts with a yes to yourself, to your own inner yes, to your own needs, to your own values. The no is respectful. And then there’s a yes on the other side. So a positive no is a yes, no, yes. It’s like a sandwich. Clearly in Washington right now, the practice is more the negative no. I see, you know, the positive no, that yes, no, yes being applicable everywhere we need it. I mean, basically, it’s a way to deal with any conflict, whether it’s a conflict in D.C. or whether it’s a conflict in the Middle East, which is you start off from, yes, your core interests, your core needs. You’re honest about those. You’re clear about them so that they know where you’re coming from. The no itself is respectful because what often happens is we use a disrespectful no, a negative no, that just elicits a no back and then, you know, an eye for an eye and we all go blind. And then on the other side of that no is a yes, some kind of positive proposal that actually meets our needs and moves us towards a yes. And so to me, you know, if we could employ, learn to learn to say no in a constructive way in Washington, for example, you know, obviously we’re going to have disagreements as, you know, different political parties will have disagreements. Here’s where we can say no. And yet here’s where we can agree. You know, yes, we can agree on tax reform. Yes, we can agree on getting this country back moving together. Yes, let’s work for ways to have energy efficiency. It allows you to say you’re no, but here are areas where we can move forward. And if we can do that, we can overcome, you know, the deadlock right now that’s paralyzing our country’s ability to solve problems and to move forward. And so this is why getting the yes needs to include the word no. You have a slightly different definition of respect. And tell me about that, because it’s essential, I found, for listening and gathering information and getting to a better resolution than if you did not show the other side respect. Define respect for me in your way. Yeah, to me, respect. I mean, it comes from the Latin. It’s two words. It’s re-inspect. You know, re- means again. Inspect as in like spectacle means to see. It means to look again and see the human being there. It means to, in that sense, what I’m talking about is elemental, basic human respect that is everyone’s birthright. It’s not something the other person has to earn from you. It’s something that everyone is born with. And what I found as a negotiator, what even hostage negotiators use, is that, you know, the cheapest concession you can make in negotiation, the one that costs you the least and means the most to the other side, is to give the other side that basic respect, which often shows itself in the form of listening, actually listening to the other human being. It costs you nothing, and it means a lot to them. Their dignity means everything to them. If we can learn to deploy that, now it’s hard for us to give respect if we feel disrespected. And the other side disrespects us, they reject us, we reject them, we disrespect them, and then we’re off to the races. But it only takes one person to break that cycle, and that person could be us. So where are we going to be able to do that? It starts with self-respect. And this is again where it starts with getting to yes with yourself. If we’re able to give ourselves respect, if we’re able to listen to ourselves, to accept ourselves, to empower ourselves, then we’re much more likely to be able to respect others, even if at first they don’t respect us, and we’re able to break that cycle. People like Gandhi, like Martin Luther King, like Mandela, they were the most masterful negotiators because they were able to give respect to their adversaries, even when their adversaries at first weren’t giving respect to them. And by that, they were able to change the game from a lose-lose confrontation into win-win, let’s find a way to resolve this, let’s reach agreement for a better South Africa, let’s reach agreement with the other side. And to me, that’s the key. It starts with getting to yes with yourself. They were all masters at getting to yes with themselves, doing that inner homework, so that they then could get to yes with others. I just recently interviewed one of the leaders in the field of neuroplasticity, in our evolving knowledge of just how much we can change the wiring of our own brains and create new neural pathways. And it sounds like if you practice going to the balcony, if you practice pausing and listening and do it with determination and frequently, there’s an expression in neuroplasticity, neurons that fire together, wire together. And in many ways, your whole body of work is really about rewiring our approach. That’s exactly it, Michael. And the amazing thing, too, is as far as getting to yes with yourself is concerned, we have one great advantage, which is we get a lot of opportunities to practice every day because we’re with ourselves 24-7. And so just a little bit of practice every day, a little bit of going to the balcony before you go into a difficult situation, taking a moment of silence just to kind of listen to yourself, collect your thoughts, set your intention. Just taking a moment, a moment like that, a moment afterwards to think about, OK, what went right here? What were my lessons? How do I do it differently next time? We can set our neural pathways to help us get to that yes within, which turns out to be our best tool for getting to yes outside. Well, William Ury, author of The New, just released Getting to Yes with Yourself and, of course, the original Getting to Yes and numerous important works in between. And I thank you for joining me on Wavemaker Conversations. It’s been a great pleasure speaking with Michael, and I want to wish all your listeners much success in getting to yes with themselves and with others. That’s William Ury and his newest book, Getting to Yes with Yourself. If you like what you’ve been hearing, I hope you’ll subscribe to Wavemaker Conversations on iTunes. And you can always find this podcast on the new CBS podcast network, Play It. That’s play.it. I’m your host, Michael Scholder. Thank you for listening.