D (3:18)

It's a great pleasure. Renee.

C (3:20)

Let's start right at the heart of it. Why did you choose the word possible for your title?

D (3:25)

Well, for years, decades, actually, having worked in some of the world's hardest conflicts, including wars, people often ask me at the end of all this, are you still an optimist or are you a pessimist? And I've learned to give a different answer, which is, actually, I'm a possibilist. In other words, I believe in human possibility. I believe in the potential of human beings to transform their conflicts, whether it's at home, at work, or in the wider world. And the reason I do is because I've seen it happen with my own eyes so many times in places that. Where it just seemed absolutely impossible. It seemed absolutely impossible when I was a graduate student during the Cold War for the Berlin Wall to come down. And I made many trips. I was involved in US Soviet academic dialogues, and I watched as that happened. I also was in South Africa before apartheid and right after apartheid and watched how an amazing transformation took place at that level. And I've seen it happen, obviously, on smaller levels, too, in families, family disputes, family business disputes that people thought were absolutely impossible. They got transformed. And so that's why I'm a possibleist, and that's why I chose the name Possible for the book.

C (4:46)

You also write Hope is not a feeling, it's a choice. When I read that line, it really stopped me cold. Can you elaborate on it? Explain it to us?

D (4:58)

Yeah, I believe that actually conflict. I'm trained as an anthropologist originally, and conflicts are pretty much inherent in human life. I mean, it's part of. It's part of everyday existence. We have different interests, we have different views, we have different values. Conflict is on the way up, actually, because as there's more change, there's more conflict. So the choice isn't really about ending conflict. The choice is that we can actually transform conflict. We can change the form in which we do carry on our conflicts. Either we can do that destructively through vicious arguments that destroy relationships or violence that destroys lives, or we can do it constructively through dialogue, through negotiation, through collaboration. And so that's why I believe it's a choice, because we could actually create a world that we would hope for through our own choices of how we choose to view conflict and how we choose then to handle conflict, our differences with others.

C (6:04)

You just mentioned that you started out in anthropology and the book contains a lot of interesting anthropological observations and tools. But the rest of the book also blends diplomacy and psychology. How did you arrive at your interdisciplinary approach to conflict?

D (6:28)

Well, I was a graduate student at Harvard in the mid-1970s and I was studying anthropology partly because I grew up, as many of us did under the Cold War. And it never made sense to me why we were prepared to put at risk the fate of humanity itself for conflict seemingly as difficult as the one than existing between the United States and the Soviet Union. And so that's why I studied anthropology. Let me understand my own, my own tribe, the human tribe, and see why we seemingly have this self destructive bent. And then, and then I wanted to get my hands dirty. I wanted to get out of the library. I wanted to actually, you know, anthropologists were participant observers. You know, we, we, we observe the phenomena, but we also like to participate. So I thought, okay, let me see if I can participate. And I went and talked to a professor who, at Harvard who was then working on international negotiation, including on the Middle east at that time, Roger Fisher. And I came out of that writing a paper for an anthropology course, imagining that I was a fly on the wall for a Middle east peace negotiation that was about to take place. Imagining. What would I see, what would I observe as an anthropologist? How would I know if the negotiations were going well or they were going poorly? And I made some very simple, seemingly common sense observations like, well, if things are going poor, they're going to be blaming each other, they're going to be talking about the past. That's where the focus is. If things are going better, they're going to be talking about the present and the future and what we're going to do about it. And you know, they're going to be, you know, in one case, if it's going badly, there'll be adversarial. In the other sense, there'll be more, you know, kind of collaborating on how do you, how do you deal with a very difficult issue? And I sent that paper to Roger. And lo and behold, to my surprise, one Sunday evening I was grading exams in my little Garrett room there in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I got a call at 10 o' clock at night and that said, this is Professor Roger Fisher. I've just read your paper. And I thought it was interesting, the central chart. And I decided to send it to the Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle east because I thought he would be interested. And I was floored. I was shocked. I was speechless. The idea that, you know, that some ideas that I'd had in my little attic room about negotiation could possibly be helpful to a practitioner in what was widely regarded then as the world's most difficult conflict was just like, electrifying. And so Roger invited me to work with him. And my work has been ever since then in the field of negotiation from the point of view the prism of anthropology, but focused practically on what are better ways to deal with our most deep, protracted differences than slugging it out and a destructive fight in which everyone in the end loses.

C (9:41)

Well, that situation, trying to address the Middle east conflicts with the kinds of things that the State Department deals with. And actually, when we think about negotiation generally, we often think about it as external, between two sides. But in the book you write a lot about the inner game. Why is negotiation with ourself so hard?

D (10:08)

Well, yes, because what I've found over the years, being involved in negotiation and mediation, is that the single biggest obstacle, us getting what we want in a negotiation, is not who we think it is. We think it's the other side, you know, that difficult person we're dealing with.

C (10:29)

It's always the other guy.

D (10:31)

Yeah, it's the other guy. Right. And in fact, what I found is the biggest obstacle to us getting what we want is the person I look at in the mirror every morning. It's me. It's, it's our own very natural, very understandable human tendency to react, in other words, to act without thinking. We, you know, as the old saying goes, when you're angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret. And we do that more often than not. And you know, we, we, we end up, even though negotiation is a goal oriented behavior trying to persuade someone, you're trying to get something done, you're trying to get to an agreement, we end up getting in our own way with our own, you know, fears and anger and our own reactive qualities. And so, so I've learned to. I ended up writing a whole book about this after Getty ds, called Getty D, which is the first and most important negotiation that any of us have to conclude, which is if we want to. If we want to influence the other, we first have to learn how to influence ourselves. Negotiation begins with self mastery.

C (11:43)

In your own personal life, what's been the most difficult negotiation?

D (11:48)

Well, actually, I would say the negotiations in my own personal life are the most difficult. Actually, as difficult as negotiations are in the outer world, you know, in coal mines or in the Middle east or wherever they be, the most difficult are the ones. And that's because that's where we get most reactive. Where I get most reactive, or anyone does, is when the stakes are deeply personal. In the family, for example, she. With my daughter or my partner, you know, it's like it's those. Those are where, you know, my buttons get pressed. And that's where I have to learn what I call the first, the foundation of successful negotiation is, I use a metaphor that I. That I adopted from a friend and colleague of mine, Ronnie Heifetz, called going to the balcony. And it's the ability to see the negotiation almost as if you were in a play. You know, you're on a stage, you know, you and the other person, and perhaps there are other people involved too, characters on the stage. And part of you goes to a balcony overlooking that stage, an imaginary balcony, a mental and emotional balcony, where you can get some perspective, where you can keep your eyes on the prize and ask yourself, what's truly important in that situation? What is truly important? What do you want? And going to the balcony then allows you to negotiate much more effectively.

C (13:19)

And you write about several levels of what do you want? That is, tell us, tell us about that.

D (13:28)

What I found, and we made Roger Fisher and I made this. The cornerstone of getting DS is a very simple distinction between what's your position, the things you say you want, and then what's behind that position? What are the underlying interests? What are the underlying wants or fears or concerns or desires or aspirations, the more intangible motivations that drive us to take certain positions. And we used a simple example of that. It came from a woman who lived in Boston about a century ago who is really one of the founders of modern management theory. Her name was Mary Parker Follett, and she was once in a Harvard library and she observed two students quarreling with each other. One wanted the window open and the other wanted it closed. We go and open the window, they over go and slam the window shut. And it got into a little bit of an argument and bothering all the other students in the library. So the librarian wanders over, and she asks the first one, tell me, why do you want the window open? And he says, well, he says, I need some fresh air. And then she goes to the second one, well, why do you want the window closed? He says, well, the draft. The wind is blowing my papers around. I can't work. So then the librarian asks the two, well, how can you get fresh air without you getting a draft? And they think about it for a moment, and one of them has an idea, and he goes into the next room. The room next door opens a window there, thus providing fresh air without a draft. And both students are satisfied. So if you think about that simple situation, what happens? We go into a negotiation. We want the open window, we want the closed window. We're focused on that position, and we get into an argument about it. The librarian, by asking the magical question, why, puts the focus behind the position on the underlying interests. In this case, the interests are fresh air, no draft. And then by identifying the challenges, how do we meet the interests? Not just how do we reconcile the positions. She comes up. They come up with a creative solution, an open window in the next room that solves the problem. And what I find successful negotiators doing, whether it's in a very simple situation like that or in the Middle east conflict, is when they're successful, it's because they're probing behind the positions for what are the true underlying interests, and then trying to satisfy those interests in a way that satisfies the interests of both sides so you can arrive at an agreement. And, you know, a classic example at the moment we were writing that book, was the Camp David peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, where Egypt and Israel were quarreling about the Sinai Peninsula, which had been occupied by Israel in a series of wars in which Egypt had attacked Israel. And they were quarreling about it. And, you know, it could have, in a positional bargaining, naturally, you would have said, okay, where's the line in the sand? And, you know, Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, was demanding a third of the Sinai. And. And Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, was saying, no, we want the entire Sinai. And they could have gone forever trying to draw the line in the sand. Instead, the Americans, in this case the equivalent of the librarian, asked both sides, President Carter, in this case, you know, what are your interests? And for the Israelis, the interest was security. Egyptian tanks had rolled across the Sinai and attacked them. They didn't want that happening again. For Egypt, the interest, the underlying interest was sovereignty. The Sinai had been there since the time of the pharaohs and they wanted it back. And so then the question became not how do you draw a line between the Israeli position and the Egyptian position? The question was, how do you satisfy the Israeli interests, the core interest, and the Egyptian core interest, security and sovereignty? And they came up with an idea of a creative idea of like an open window in the next room of a demilitarized Sinai, a Sinai where the entire Sinai would go back to Egypt. The Egyptian flag could fly everywhere. Egypt got sovereignty and at the same time it was demilitarized. So Egyptian tanks could go nowhere. So Israel, instead of getting a buffer of a third, got a buffer of the entire peninsula. So both sides benefited. It was a classic win win solution based on looking at what are the interests behind the positions, which is the key in negotiation. This episode is brought to you by.

C (18:07)

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D (18:16)

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C (18:22)

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D (18:42)

Absolutely, that's it. I think the thing that we underestimate is every human being is naturally creative. There's a lot of creativity and somehow we keep that in the arts, in the music, in, I don't know, coming up with new inventions. We need to take that same creativity and bring it into the negotiating room at the table. And somehow we often turn off our creative function when we arrive in conflicts. But creativity is the key to transforming conflicts. It's coming up with a creative solutions like an open window, the next room, or a demilitarized Sinai that provide a path forward. Because the truth is these conflicts are really difficult oftentimes and there seem to be limits on everything. You know, there's only so much land, there's only so much money, but there's an infinite amount of creativity. And through creativity, instead of like dividing up a fixed pie where the. Where whatever you get, I get less, we can actually expand the pie first so that everyone can get enough.

C (19:44)

Is there something that tells you as a negotiator that this is the time that the conflict is ripe for resolution?

D (19:53)

That's A really good question. There is a kind of like a sixth sense or a kind of little tickle you get. I mean you could do it with your head to which is you now at some point it's partly the people. You can tell by reading the room by the people, just their focus, they start to relax a little bit more. They, they start to treat each other with a little more respect. There's a little more listening than there's talking. As you know in my original paper, there's more focus on the future than there is on the past. And you can also tell by both sides, basically they feel their interests are starting to be addressed. Creative solutions start to emerge. People look at it in negotiation. Roger Fisher and I coined a term called your batna, which is an acronym standing for your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. In other words, it's your walk away option, your plan B. When people look at their batness, which might be to go to court or to go to war, and they say, you know what? The kind of options that are on the table are more attractive than that. When people see that, then people start to move in the direction of agreement.

C (21:11)

So you're using words like you get the tickle, you read the room. It sounds like you really use your emotional intelligence, your emotional skills as well as what you know about negotiations cognitively.

D (21:29)

Absolutely.

C (21:30)

How do you prepare, especially before high stakes negotiations like international or some others. How do you prepare emotionally before entering those kind of negotiations?

D (21:46)

Well, I like to personally everyone has their favorite ways of going to the balcony, which is what I think we need to do before we go into a tough negotiation is in other words, go to a get ourselves in a state of mind in which we're calm, we can see things more clearly where we've got perspective. And the way I love to do that is go for a walk, which is the simplest thing that human beings have done for eons, which is go for a walk. Ideally in nature I find somehow walking opens up my perspective. You know, you actually physically open up your perspective. You often see farther, further when you're walking obviously certainly than you do in a room and you walk, your breath calms, you get emotionally calm, you can see things more clearly. At least I find that. And nature tends to have that calming kind of co regulating effect on our nervous systems. And so I've often recommended actually in negotiations that people go for a walk. You know, it actually, there's actually scientific studies that have been done that it actually amplifies our creativity. And you, you know, oftentimes Even in the middle of a negotiation, to take a break and go for a walk, have the parties go for a walk, whoever fights while they walk. You know, when you walk, you're moving side by side in a common direction. You have to pace yourself with the other side. That's exactly what's needed to create the right conditions for a negotiated settlement of a difficult issue.

C (23:19)

William, you've been to war zones and fragile democracies over the course of your career. Did any place shake your belief that peace is possible?

D (23:31)

Rene, you know, I have been in many, many really difficult situations. Chechnya in the middle of civil wars, obviously in the Middle east, in Syria, in, in, you know, in Korea, you know, with the Korean conflict, in Africa, Sudan, Ethiopia. But I have to tell you that when I'm there, I'm so, I'm always touched by humanity, by people's. Even in the midst of inhumanity, you see, you see people, you see openings even in the worst of situations, and oftentimes in the worst of behavior, sometimes see the best of human behavior, even in the midst of wars. And so I honestly have to tell you that after 50 years of being an anthropologist, using the world as my laboratory, of going to the most difficult situations, I've yet to see a situation where there are situations which make you depressed, which make you horrified, which, you know, and, but I've yet to see a situation where I didn't think, wow, people here, there are openings. There are possibilities that are just waiting to be explored.

C (24:54)

Not every negotiation succeeds. So let's talk about failure for a moment. What have you learned when a negotiation falls apart?

D (25:04)

Well, in the negotiations I engage in failure or failure or seeming failure is more common than not. There are setbacks. Negotiation takes an enormous amount of patience and persistence, particularly in the difficult situations I face. And I prefer to see failures as learning opportunities in the sense of what I notice is there are failures. But then you, the parties often, and the third parties learn from that, and then there's another one. And every, every major success that I've ever seen is actually comes through a series of so called failures. You know, I'll give you an example. Like in Northern Ireland, for example, the Good Friday Accords, which, you know, Northern Ireland, I mean, people thought, oh, these people are sectarian, there's religion involved, it's Catholics and Protestants. There were all these stories that in the textbooks that the children were drinking the hostility with their mother's milk, and it was absolutely impossible, intractable and gone on forever. People were saying all the same things. They say, about the conflict going around in your neighborhood. And then there was a shift. And it wasn't that the conflict wasn't over, but the war was. And it took place. It took place through. It took place. It started very small, but it took place. Actually. It started with a group of women, actually, on both sides, who Catholic women and Protestant women who had both lost their sons or their brothers or their fathers, and they got together. And at first, anyone who talked with the other side was considered a traitor, but somehow mothers couldn't be so easily impugned, and so it was allowed. And then they created a little space. And then people of faith on both sides, priests and ministers, started to get together. And then the last to really get together were the politicians. And. And so you could sort of see that actually it just starts. It starts small and it's a thread, but it actually shows that even in the most difficult situations, people can find a way to transform the conflict, maybe not end the conflict. They found a way in which they carry on their conflicts through democracy rather than through war, but it shows the real possibilities for people where others have given up hope.

C (27:37)

The next question is, what's one conflict that you would still like to help resolve if you were given the chance?

D (27:46)

Well, I would say the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be one. Another one would be between the Ukrainians and the Russians, which are two conflicts that are bedeviling the world to this day.

C (28:03)

Yes, and you think big there. They're both very prominent and very complicated.

D (28:12)

Very complicated. And yet I believe, actually there are real, real possibilities in both. I've been involved, I've been a student of both for quite a while, and I know things are very difficult. And you have to begin, actually by looking at all the difficulties, all the obstacles. You know, I'm reminded of a quote from Ben Gurion which was to the effect of, In Israel, to be a realist, you must believe in miracles. And so the question, as we look at, say, the conflict there between the Israelis and Palestinians or the conflict between the Russians and the Ukrainians, I think everyone would agree it's extremely difficult. It's going to take a miracle. Everyone would agree. Then you ask yourself, okay, do miracles ever take place? In other words, defining a miracle simply, does a conflict that seemingly seems impossible to a large number of people suddenly become possible? That would be my definition of a miracle. And then, as I've seen in my lifetime, the fall of the Berlin Wall, by that definition, was a miracle. The. The end of apartheid in Africa, South Africa was a Miracle. The, the, the end of the war between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland was a miracle. So even you might say, you know, recently, the, the release of the, all the hostages and the end of the fighting in Gaza for now. I mean, that seemed very impossible to most people and it happened. So then that leads us to the third question, which is how do these seeming miracles happen? How does the impossible become possible? And I believe that we can actually learn from, like scientists from the number of situations where these things have happened and evolve a kind of social technology of peace whereby there's a shift. But one thing I've noticed about that is it, it's not just a political, diplomatic process. There is a larger psychological, social, emotional process that needs to take place as well. You can't just like reach agreement, you know, at the table. There has the people, the public opinion needs to shift and, and the question of how that happens. But there's a, there's been a set of, of experiments now, if you think about it in terms of large scale experiments, and I think we can learn from those and apply them. And I see no reason why, if Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, blacks and whites in South Africa, Russians and Americans could do it. I don't see why Russians and Ukrainians couldn't do it. I don't see why Israelis and Palestinians could do it. I believe in them.

C (31:06)

Well, from your mouth to God's ears. Finally, what advice would you give young people who want to become peacemakers?

D (31:16)

Just start. In other words, look around you. There's conflicts everywhere right now, you know, in your classroom, among your classmates, your families, and actually practice and then obviously learn. You know, there's a lot of, there are courses, there's a lot to be learned online, either books to be read and so on. And then try it out, try it out, just practice. Because each one of us, whether we like it or not, every one of us is a negotiator. I mean, every one of us faces situations every single day, face conflicts every single day, and we have an enormous chance to experience. So just start doing it a little bit like I did when I was a student and, and just look for opportunities. I, I look for opportunities, including, I remember I wanted to get some practice in the outer world, but I couldn't obviously immediately jump into international negotiation. So I was listening to a judge who was a small claims court judge and he was complaining about his caseload being too big. And I said, well, would you take a chance on me and come with another student and we'll try and you can give us a couple of your cases. These are very small cases like people quarreling about a stain on a rug or a landlord tenant disposal dispute or something like that. Small cases and give us a chance and we'll see if we can mediate it and if we're successful then you it'll be off your back and if we're not successful it just goes back to you. And we just started mediating those small cases and got a lot of experience so there are those opportunities now for students to mediate. So just start. Don't wait, just start.

C (33:06)

That's great advice. The book is Possible How We Survive and Thrive in an Age of Conflict by William Urey. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, your experience and your thoughts with us today.

D (33:21)

It's been my great pleasure, Renee. I wish every one of your listeners every success in getting to yes, and.

C (33:29)

Thanks to our researcher Bela Pasakov.