Five Mindset Tips from a Top Negotiator
William Ury has been involved in some of the most tense negotiations in recent memory. He's helped Venezuela avoid civil war, facilitated talks in the free-for-all of the Syrian conflict, mediated big corporate conflicts and mergers.
In that process, he learned that what mattered more than the facts of the conflict was the mindset he brought to it.
His book Getting to Yes with Yourself is a handy little handbook to checking your mindset, not just in conflicts of every kind, but in all the extreme situations of life.
1. Don't Impose Your Ego: Too often, people who want to help come in with a fixed idea of how they're going to do that, rather than listening to the people they're meant to be helping. Ury's team in Syria went from one rebel faction to the next listening to all the stories of how they came to be there, rather than proceeding from their own preconceptions. As a result, they gained both an understanding of their motivations and their trust.
2. Boil it Down: Listening not just to others but to yourself is crucial. It takes work to really discover what you want and why you want it in any situation. If you can know that about yourself, you can get to that same truth with other people, which helps you to put yourself in their shoes.
3. Exercise your Right Brain to Overcome Left-Brain Limits: The left hemisphere of the brain is the Newtonian analyst, interpreting the world in terms of hard and fast rules. The right hemisphere is the one that lets you connect to and trust the larger reality of the universe. It is only this capacity that lets us overcome obstacles the left brain says are insurmountable.
Ury suggests making a habit of activities that make that right-brain connection for us.
4. Avoid the Mindset of Scarcity: Chief among left-brain limitations is the tendency to view situations in a win-lose manner, a fight over control of a finite pie. The right brain can help us built trust in win-win scenarios where the pie expands for everyone.
5. Decide to be Free: Nelson Mandela admitted that he felt hatred for his captors even as he was being released from prison. But he decided that he could not be free unless he let go of it. Not to forget or condone, but to let go. It is only this decision that ends intractable conflicts.
Play with these principles over the next week, and let us know what you discovered!
