Guest William Ury, co-author of Getting to Yes, talks about his life's work, the power of trust in negotiation, and the importance of listening. He shares stories of navigating difficult negotiations, staying calm during crucial moments, and finding creative solutions. They also discuss real-life examples of challenging negotiations and the power of adopting a mindset of possibilities.
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A Life-Changing Phone Call
In 1977, 23-year-old William Ury received a surprising call from Professor Roger Fisher about his research paper.
This led to Ury working with Fisher on the world's toughest conflicts, sparking a lifelong pursuit of better conflict resolution.
insights INSIGHT
Theory and Practice
Effective conflict resolution requires both theoretical understanding and practical experience.
Ury emphasizes combining observation and participation, like an anthropologist, to develop useful frameworks.
question_answer ANECDOTE
The Coal Mine and the Importance of Trust
Ury's early negotiation experience in an Appalachian coal mine highlighted the importance of trust.
Despite negotiating a better agreement, it was rejected due to miners' distrust of management, leading Ury to live among them to build trust.
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William Ury is the co-author of Getting to Yes, the world’s all-time bestselling book on negotiation with more than 15 million copies sold, and co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation. Bill has devoted his life to helping people, organizations, and nations transform conflicts around the world, having served as a negotiator in many of the toughest disputes of our times, taught negotiation to tens of thousands, and consulted for dozens of Fortune 500 companies, the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon. Based in the mountains of Colorado where he loves to hike, Bill is an internationally sought-after speaker and has two popular TEDx talks with millions of viewers.
Notes:
Your life’s work: “If you had to boil your life’s work down to just one sentence you could leave behind, what would it say?” This is a great question for us to ask ourselves to gain clarity on our purpose and what we were put here to do. What is your life’s work?
On one of Bill's hikes with Jim Collins in Boulder, Colorado, he asked, “When did you first discover your interest in and instinct for what became your life’s work?”
Be trustworthy AND trust willing. Become known as a person who trusts others first without making people earn it. Yes, you’ll get burned every once in a while, but I’ve found it’s worth it. Leading with trust seems to attract the type of people you want to be around.
On a freezing night in January 1977, the phone rang at 10:00 pm. Bill was living in a little rented room in the attic of an old wooden house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 23, writing term papers, and studying hard for graduate school exams in social anthropology. Bill picked up the phone…
“I was particularly struck by Bill’s rare ability to bring calm and optimism to seemingly intractable conflicts and by his blend of intellectual clarity and practical wisdom.” - Jim Collins
Go to hardest places: Instead of sharpening his intellect and insights by doing research sitting in a plush faculty office at some Ivy League institute, Bill decided to “go to the hardest places first,” throwing himself into political negotiations in the Middle East.
“The only book to write is the one you cannot not write.”
What are the 3 victories on the path to possible? The story of the wise old woman and the camels...
The story of Vasili Arkhipov and Sub B-59 (the pause, calm, reactive to proactive).
Bring your spirit of play. That’s one of the things about Bill that I couldn’t help but notice from the second we connected. He was smiling, laughing, and enjoying himself the entire time. He was having fun. What’s the point of doing all of this if we don’t have some fun along the way?
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