SIX CHALLENGING STEPS I have spent many years studying the process of getting to yes with yourself, drawing deeply on my personal and professional experiences as well as observing the experiences of others. I have tried to understand what blocks us from getting what we really want and what can help us satisfy our needs and get to yes with others. I have codified what I have learned into a method with six steps, each of which addresses a specific internal challenge. The six steps may at times seem like common sense. But in my three and a half decades of working as a mediator, I’ve learned that they are uncommon sense—common sense that is uncommonly applied. You might be familiar with some or all of these steps individually, but my hope is to bring them together into an integrated method that will help you keep them in mind and applythem in a consistent and effective way. In brief, the six steps are as follows: 1. Put Yourself in Your Shoes. The first step is to understand your worthiest opponent, yourself. It is all too common to fall into the trap of continually judging yourself. The challenge instead is to do the opposite and listen empathetically for underlying needs, just as you would with a valued partner or client. 2. Develop Your Inner BATNA. Almost all of us find it difficult not to blame others with whom we come into conflict. The challenge is to do the opposite and to take responsibility for your life and relationships. More specifically, it is to develop your inner BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement), to make a commitment to yourself to take care of your needs independently of what the other does or does not do. 3. Reframe Your Picture. A natural fear of scarcity exists in almost everyone. The challenge is to change how you see your life, creating your own independent and sufficient source of contentment. It is to see life as being on your side even when it seems unfriendly. 4. Stay in the Zone. It is so easy in the midst of conflict to get lost in resentment about the past or in anxieties about the future. The challenge is to do the opposite and stay in the present moment, the only place where you have the power to experience true satisfaction as well as to change the situation for the better. 5. Respect Them Even If. It is tempting to meet rejection with rejection, personal attack withpersonal attack, exclusion with exclusion. The challenge is to surprise others with respect and inclusion even if they are difficult. 6. Give and Receive. It is all too easy, especially when resources seem scarce, to fall into the win-lose trap and to focus on meeting only your needs. The final challenge is to change the game to a win-win-win approach by giving first instead of taking. YES TO SELF: 1. Put Yourself in Your Shoes. 2. Develop Your Inner BATNA. YES TO LIFE: 3. Reframe Your Picture. 4. Stay in the Zone. YES TO OTHERS: 5. Respect Them Even If. 6. Give and Receive. CHAPTER 1: Put Yourself in Your Shoes From Self-Judgment to Self-Understanding When people ask me what is the most important skill for a negotiator, I usually respond that, if I had to pick just one, it would be the ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Negotiation, after all, is an exercise in influence, in trying to change someone else’s mind. The first step in changing someone’s mind is to know where that mind is. It can be very difficult, however, to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes, particularly in a conflict or negotiation. We tend to be so focused on our own problems and on what we want that we have little or no mental space to devote to the other side’s problem and what they want. If we are asking our boss for a raise, for instance, we may be so preoccupied with solving our problem that we don’t focus on the boss’s problem, the tight budget. Yet unless we can help the boss solve that problem, the boss is unlikely to be able to offer us a raise. There is one key prior move, often overlooked, that can help us clarify both what we want and, indirectly, what the other person wants. That move is to put yourself in your own shoes first. Listening to yourself can reveal what you really want. At the same time, it can clear your mind so that you have mental and emotional space to be able to listen to the other person and understand what he or she really wants. In the example of the raise, hearing yourself out first can help you listen to your boss and understand the problem of the tight budget. Putting yourself in your shoes may sound odd at first because, after all, are you not already in your own shoes? But to do it properly is not nearly as easy as it might appear. Our natural tendency is to judge ourselves critically and to ignore or reject parts of ourselves. If we look too closely, we may feel, as Goethe says, like running away. How many of us can honestly say that we have plumbed the depths of our minds and hearts? How many of us regularly listen to ourselves with empathy and understanding—in the supportive way that a trusted friend can? Three actions can help. First, see yourself from the “balcony.” Second, go deeper and listen with empathy to your underlying feelings for what they are really telling you. Third, go even deeper and uncover your underlying needs. SEE YOURSELF FROM THE BALCONY Benjamin Franklin, known as a highly practical and scientific man, reflected in Poor Richard’s Almanack more than two and a half centuries ago, “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” His advice was: “Observe all men; thyself most.” If you observe yourself and others in moments of stress during negotiation and conflict, you will notice how easily people become triggered by the other person’s words, tone of voice, and actions. In virtually every dispute I have ever mediated—whether it is a marital spat, an argument in the office, or a civil war—the pattern is reaction followed by reaction followed by yet another reaction. “Why did you attack him?” “Because he attacked me.” And on it goes. When we react, we typically fall into what I call the “3A trap”: we attack, we accommodate (in other words, give in), or we avoid altogether, which often only makes the problem grow. Or we use a combination of all three approaches. We may start off avoiding or accommodating, but soon enough, we can’t stand it anymore and we go on the attack. When that backfires, we lapse into avoiding or accommodating. None of these three common reactions serves our true interests. Once the fight-or-flight reaction gets triggered, the blood flows from our brain to our limbs, and our ability to think clearly diminishes. We forget our purpose and often act exactly contrary to our interests. When we react, we give away our power—our power to influence the other person constructively and to change the situation for the better. When we react, we are, in effect, saying no to our interests, no to ourselves. But we have a choice. We don’t need to react. We can learn to observe ourselves instead. In my teaching and writing, I emphasize the concept of going to the balcony. The balcony is a metaphor for a mental and emotional place of perspective, calm, and self-control. If life is a stage and we are all actors on that stage, then the balcony is a place from which we can see the entire play unfolding with greater clarity. To observe our selves, it is valuable to go to the balcony at all times, and especially before, during, and after any problematic conversation or negotiation. LISTEN WITH EMPATHY Psychologists have estimated that we have anywhere between twelve thousand and sixty thousand thoughts a day. The majority of those—as high as 80 percent—are thought to be negative: obsessingabout mistakes, battling guilt, or thinking about inadequacies. For some, the harsh critical voice of our inner judge is stronger, for others weaker, but perhaps no one escapes it. “You said the wrong thing!” “How could you have been so blind?” “You did a terrible job!” Each negative thought is a no to yourself. There is a saying that goes, “If you talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself, you wouldn’t have any.” Self-judgment may be the greatest barrier to self-understanding. If we want to understand other human beings, there is no better way than to listen to them with empathy like a close friend would. If you wish to understand yourself, the same rule applies: listen with empathy. Instead of talking negatively to yourself, try to listen to yourself with respect and positive attention. Instead of judging yourself, accept yourself just as you are. Empathy is often confused with sympathy, but it is different. Sympathy means “to feel with.” It means to feel sorry for a person’s predicament, but without necessarily understanding it. Empathy, in contrast, means “to feel into.” It means to understand what it is like to be in that situation. Listening to yourself with empathy goes one level deeper than observing. To observe is to see from the outside, whereas to listen is to feel from the inside. Observing offers you a detached view, whereas listening gives you an intimate understanding. Observation gives us the understanding of a scientist studying what a beetle looks like under a microscope, whereas listening gives you the understanding of what it feels like to be a beetle. You can benefit from both modalities together. Anthropologists have found that the best way to understand a foreign culture is to participate in it actively and at the same time to maintain an outside observer’s perspective. I find this method, called participant observation, is equally useful when it comes to understanding ourselves. UNCOVER YOUR NEEDS If you listen to your feelings, particularly recurrent ones of dissatisfaction, you will find that they point you in the direction of unmet concerns and interests. Properly interpreted, they can help you uncover your deepest needs. In my negotiation experience, I find that people usually know their position: “I want a 15 percent raise in salary.” Often, however, they haven’t thought deeply about their interests—their underlying needs, desires, concerns, fears, and aspirations: Do they want a raise because they are interested in recognition, or in fairness, or in career development, or in the satisfaction of some material need, or in a combination of these? In negotiation, the magic question to uncover your true interests and needs is: “Why?” “Why do I want this?” One valuable practice is to keep asking yourself why—as many times as necessary—until you get down to your bedrock need. The deeper you go in uncovering your underlying needs and interests, the more likely you are to invent creative options that can satisfy your interests. In the case of the raise, for example, if your interest is in recognition, then even if budgetary constraints prevent your boss from giving you as high a raise as you had hoped, you might still be able to meet your interest by obtaining a new title or a prestigious assignment. Uncovering interests opens up new possibilities that you might not have thought of before. FROM SELF-JUDGMENT TO SELF-UNDERSTANDING Putting yourself in your shoes helps you become your friend rather than your opponent when it comes to negotiating with others. It helps you not only to understand yourself, but to accept yourself just as you are. If self-judgment is a no to self, self-acceptance is a yes to self, perhaps the greatest gift we can give ourselves. Some might worry that accepting themselves as they are will diminish the motivation to make positive changes, but I have found that the exact opposite is usually true. Acceptance can create the sense of safety within which we can more easily face a problem and work on it. As Carl Rogers, one of the founders of humanistic psychology, once noted: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.” Now that you have put yourself in your shoes and uncovered your needs, the natural question to ask is: Where can you find the power to meet those needs? That is the next challenge in getting to yes with yourself. CHAPTER 2: Develop Your Inner BATNA From Blame to Self-Responsibility The blame game is the core pattern of almost every destructive conflict I have ever witnessed. The husband blames the wife and vice versa. Management blames the union and vice versa. One political enemy blames the other and vice versa. Blaming usually triggers feelings of anger or shame in the other, which provokes counterblame. And on it goes. It is so tempting to blame those with whom we are in conflict. Who started the argument, after all, if it wasn’t the other person? Blaming makes us feel innocent. We are the ones who were wronged. We get to feel righteous and even superior. And blaming also nicely deflects any residual guilt we might feel. The emotional benefits are clear. But, as I have witnessed in countless conflicts over the years, the costs of the blame game are huge. It escalates disputes needlessly and prevents us from resolving them. It poisons relationships and wastes valuable time and energy. Perhaps most insidiously, it undermines our power: when we blame others for what is wrong in the relationship—whether it is a marital dispute, an office spat, or a superpower clash—we are dwelling on their power and our victimhood. We are overlooking whatever part we may have played in the conflict and are ignoring our freedom to choose how to respond. We are giving our power away. If we want to get to yes with others, particularly in the more difficult situations we face every day, we need to find a way to get past the blame game. We need to reclaim our power to change the situation for the better. The opposite of the blame game is to take responsibility. By responsibility, I mean “responseability”—the ability to respond constructively to a situation facing us, treating it as ours to handle. No matter how challenging or costly it might be, taking responsibility lies at the heart of genuine leadership. And the rewards were great: taking responsibility made it possible to get to a yes in the form of restored confidence with the stakeholders. Once you get past the blame game and take responsibility, it becomes much easier for you to get to yes with others. The real work starts from within. Taking responsibility means taking responsibility for your life and your relationships. And, perhaps most important, it means making an unconditional commitment to take care of your needs. OWN YOUR LIFE It seems like a simple question—Who is really responsible for our lives?—but somehow the answer eludes us more frequently than we would like. Even though intellectually we know that we are responsible for our words, our actions, and even our reactions, we often look at our lives, wondering how we got where we are and typically find the answer in external factors: “I’m not where I want to be in my career because my boss hates me and has blocked my advancement.” “I can’t travel because I don’t have the money.” “I live here instead of the city where I really want to live because my family pressured me to stay.” In other words, it was not our decision; someone else or some external circumstance is to blame. Perhaps no one has expressed the truth of our power to choose more vividly than Dr. Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, his wrenching and poignant account of his own experiences as an inmate for three years in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other Nazi concentration camps. As he learned in the hardest way, even when we are utterly deprived of freedom, we remain free in the end to give our experience the meaning that we choose. In the midst of unimaginable suffering, he chose to take responsibility for his life and his experience. He reached out and helped people in need, giving them solace and whatever little nourishment he could spare. In a situation where seemingly he had no power, he reclaimed the power to govern his own life. Taking responsibility for our lives may seem heavy at times, but in fact it can be liberating. It can free up enormous energies that have long been trapped in the drama of blaming others as well as ourselves. It is the blame game, the absence of responsibility, which keeps us imprisoned as victims. The moment we recognize that we are in a prison of our own making, the walls begin to crumble and we are free. By owning our lives, we can start living them to the full. OWN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS If the blame game lies at the root of most of the conflicts I have ever witnessed, taking responsibility for the relationship lies at the root of most of the truly successful resolutions I have ever seen. Think of your relationship with someone at home, at work, or in the community that has been problematic for you. Have you ever felt tempted to blame the other person and to cast yourself in the role of victim? It is all too common to blame others for negative aspects of a relationship with them. But, as we all know, every relationship—and every conflict—has at least two parties. OWN YOUR NEEDS In Getting to Yes, Roger Fisher and I argued that your greatest source of power in a negotiation is your BATNA—your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. Your BATNA is your best course of action for satisfying your interests if you cannot reach agreement with the other side. If you are negotiating a new job offer, for example, your best alternative might be to seek another job offer. In the case of a contractual dispute, your best alternative to negotiation might be to resort to a mediator or take the matter to court. If you cannot agree on a price with one car dealer, you can find another dealer. Your BATNA gives you the confidence that, no matter what happens in the negotiation, you have a good alternative. It makes you less dependent on the other side to satisfy your needs. It gives you a sense of freedom as well as power and confidence. We can, however, increase our power from within in a way that is always available to us, no matter what our outer situations might be. In a negotiation or conflict, well before we develop an external alternative to a negotiated agreement, we can create an internal alternative to a negotiated agreement. We can make a strong unconditional commitment to ourselves to take care of our deepest needs, no matter what other people do or don’t do. That commitment is our inner BATNA. Genuine power starts inside of us. In the example of a job offer negotiation, while your outer BATNA might be to seek and accept another job offer, your inner BATNA is your commitment to yourself that, regardless of whether you successfully negotiate this job offer (or another job offer, for that matter), you will take care of your needs for satisfaction and fulfillment in your work no matter what. The key phrase is no matter what. Your inner BATNA is your commitment to stop blaming yourself, others, and life itself for your dissatisfactions no matter what. It is your commitment to remove the responsibility for meeting your true needs from the other person’s shoulders—and toassume it yourself no matter what. This unconditional commitment gives you the motivation and the power to change your circumstances, especially in a difficult situation or conflict. Your inner BATNA is, in effect, the foundation for your outer BATNA. CHAPTER 3: Reframe Your Picture From Unfriendly to Friendly REMEMBER YOUR CONNECTION TO LIFE “A human being,” Einstein once wrote, “is part of the whole called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness . . .” MAKE YOUR OWN HAPPINESS In negotiation, perhaps the biggest driver of win-lose thinking is a mindset of scarcity. When people feel there isn’t enough to go around, conflicts tend to break out. Whether it is a fight between different department heads in the same sales organization over their slice of the budget or a quarrel between two children over a piece of cake, the game quickly becomes win-lose. In the end, both sides often end up losing. The fight damages the working relationship between the departments so that both fall short in meeting their numbers and, in the midst of the kids’ quarrel, the piece of cake falls on the floor. In my work as a mediator, I have found that one of the most effective negotiating strategies is to look for creative ways to “expand the pie” before dividing it up. For example, the two departments could explore ways in which, through greater cooperation, they could increase sales and justify an increase in the budget for both. Or the children could find some ice cream to add to the cake so there is more for both. There may be limits to tangible resources, but there are few limits to human creativity. I have observed hundreds of negotiations in which both parties were able to create more value for each other through such creativity. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert likes to challenge his audiences by asking a question about happiness: “Who is likely to be happier: someone who wins millions of dollars in the lottery or someone who loses both their legs?” Everyone believes the answer is obvious—but it is not. The astonishing answer from the research is that, after a year passes, the lotto winners and the amputees are about as equally happy as they were before the event. The research suggests that, with a few exceptions, major events or traumas that occur even three months earlier have little to no effect on our present happiness. The reason, Gilbert goes on to explain, is that we are able to make our own happiness. We change the way we see the world so that we can feel better. We are much more resilient than we imagine. “The lesson . . . ,” Gilbert says, “is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing.” As Gilbert’s research suggests, we may think that happiness is something to be pursued outside us, but it is actually something that we make inside. APPRECIATE LIFE’S LESSONS FROM UNFRIENDLY TO FRIENDLY In Man’s Search for Meaning, Dr. Viktor Frankl tells the story of a young woman, a patient of his, who lay desperately ill in a Nazi concentration camp: This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’” Here she was in a place of great suffering, about to die, lonely and isolated, away from all family and friends, yet astonishingly, Frankl describes this young woman as “cheerful” and “grateful” for the life lessons her hard fate had brought her. By befriending a tree, actually just a single branch with two blossoms, she found a way to connect with life in the face of imminent death. She was thus able to make her own happiness and relish her last remaining hours. Even in such dire conditions, she was able to answer Einstein’s question in the affirmative and experience the universe as a friend in the form of a tree. CHAPTER 4: Stay in the Zone From Resistance to Acceptance Our best performance comes from being in a state of relaxed alertness, paying attention to the here and now. Research psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this state “flow” in his celebrated book about the psychological state of high performance and inner satisfaction. Athletes sometimes call this state the “zone.” If tennis players, for example, get preoccupied with their last point or the next point, they will not perform well. Being fully present—being in the zone—they can surrender to the moment and play their best. Former sprinter Mark Richardson, talking about his experience of being in the zone as a runner, explains: It’s a very strange feeling. It’s as if time slows down and you see everything so clearly. You just know that everything about your technique is spot on. It just feels so effortless; it’s almost as if you’re floating across the track. Every muscle, every fiber, every sinew is working in complete harmony and the end product is that you run fantastically well. LEARN TO LET GO As George Bernard Shaw once observed: “People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.” ACCEPT THE PAST “When I think of what Craig has done to me, I feel furious,” said one client of mine enmeshed in a business dispute to me during a moment of candor. “So it gives me pleasure to attack him. If I settle our dispute, what will my life be like without my private war?” He was so focused on the past and on the pleasure of revenge that he had lost sight of his true objectives in the negotiation and in life. As a mediator in family feuds, labor strikes, and civil wars, I have witnessed the heavy shadow of the past and how it can create bitterness, resentment, and hatred. I have listened for days to blame and recriminations and who did what to whom. I have observed how easily the human mind gets bogged down in the past and forgets the present opportunity to end the conflict and the suffering. Holding on to the past is not only self-destructive because it distracts us from reaching a mutually satisfying agreement, but it also takes away our joy and even harms our health. And it affects those around us who are our biggest supporters in life. Watching us hold on to the past and poison our present takes away their joy and well-being. It is a loss for everyone. If we truly realized how much it costs us to hold on to the past, how self-destructive it ultimately is, we might not wait so long to let go. In the dispute above, once my client was able to let go of his temptation to dwell on the past and to settle his differences with his adversary, he told me he was a different man, feeling much lighter. Even his young children had noticed—and probably worried about—how much their father had been consumed by the conflict. When it ended, they saw, clearly relieved, a noticeable change in their father: “Daddy is not on the cell phone all the time,” they told their mother. Letting go of the past can be truly liberating. In a speech at the UN, former U.S. president Bill Clinton recalled a question he once asked Nelson Mandela: “Tell me the truth: when you were walking down the road that last time [as Mandela was released from prison], didn’t you hate them?” Mandela replied: “I did. I am old enough to tell the truth. I felt hatred and fear but I said to myself, if you hate them when you get in that car, you will still be their prisoner. I wanted to be free and so I let it go.” Here was a man who had spent twenty-seven years in prison and had every reason to be bitter and angry. The great and unexpected gift he gave to his compatriots was to help them let go of the heavy burden of the past so that they could get to yes and begin to build a free South Africa for all. By learning to accept and forgive his former jailers, Mandela inspired thousands of others to forgive too. One was a young fellow prisoner at Robben Island, Vusumzi Mcongo, who had been severely tortured in detention for his role in leading a student boycott. “We cannot live with broken hearts,” Mcongo said. “In time we have to accept that these things have happened to us, that those years have been wasted. To stay with the past will only bring you into turmoil.” Forgiving those who have wronged us does not mean condoning or forgetting what they did. It means accepting what happened and freeing ourselves from its weight. The first beneficiary of forgiveness, after all, is ourselves. Resentment and anger tend to consume us and hurt us perhaps much more even than they hurt the other. Holding on to old resentments makes about as much sense as carrying our bags while traveling on a train; it only tires us out needlessly. As important as it is to forgive others, perhaps the most important person to forgive is oneself. Without doubt, at some point each of us has felt regret, guilt, shame, self-hatred, and self-blame for allthe ways in which we have broken promises to ourselves and hurt ourselves as well as others. These feelings naturally tend to fester and take our attention away from the present moment. That’s why the poet Maya Angelou urged that forgiving ourselves is crucial: If you live, you will make mistakes—it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself . . . If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror. TRUST THE FUTURE As the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne noted four centuries ago: “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.” In the end, fear ends up doing more damage to us than the very danger it imagines. “He who fears he shall suffer,” Montaigne concluded, “already suffers what he fears.” Winston Churchill once quipped, “The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” He went on to say, “I am an optimist. It does not seem much use being anything else.” Trust in the future, as he knew well from the horrors of war, does not mean ignoring life’s problems. On the contrary, trust is an attitude with which we can actively deal with our problems. Why not try out this attitude and see if trusting—that you can handle whatever life brings you—works better for you than continually worrying about the future? In the end, perhaps the surest way to free yourself from unnecessary fears is to remember your inner BATNA and your yes to life. Your commitment to take care of your needs and your confidence that life is on your side will give you a sense that, no matter what happens in the future, everything will be okay in the end. An old Chinese proverb counsels: “That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.” EMBRACE THE PRESENT A key to staying in the present moment, I have learned, is to be able to focus on what lasts while accepting what passes. It is to stay anchored in our essential connection to life while we say yes to situations that pass us by—some good, some painful. Let the passing pass, let the lasting last. By focusing on what is lasting—life itself, nature, the universe—we become more aware of what is passing, more appreciative of the preciousness and temporary nature of every experience. In turn, as we become more aware that these experiences won’t last forever, we become less reactive in situations of conflict—after all, whatever the conflict is, this too shall pass—and we find it easier to look for the present opportunity to get to yes with others. FROM RESISTANCE TO ACCEPTANCE If the first step in saying yes to life is to reframe our picture of life as friendly, the second step is to stay in the zone—a place of high performance and satisfaction. Accepting life means saying yes to the past, letting go of lingering resentments and grievances. It means saying yes to the future, letting go of needless worries and replacing fear with trust. And it means saying yes to the present, letting go of our expectations and appreciating what we have in the moment. It is not always easy, of course. It takes strength to forgive the past, courage to trust the future, and disciplined focus to stay present in the midst of life’s constant problems and distractions. But, however great the challenge, the rewards of inner contentment, satisfying agreements, and healthy relationships are much greater. Having examined our attitude toward life, it is time to examine our attitude toward others. Saying yes to life prepares us for the next challenge, which is to say yes to others. CHAPTER 5: Respect Them Even If From Exclusion to Inclusion In my negotiation experience, I’ve long noticed that the cheapest concession you can make, the one that costs you the least and yields the most, is to give respect. To respect simply means to give positive attention and to treat the other with the dignity with which you would like to be treated. The word respect comes from Latin roots that mean “re” as in repeat and “spect” as in spectacles. In this sense, respect means to “look again.” It is to see the other person with new eyes as a human being worthy of positive regard. If we want to get to yes with others, there can be no more important way to begin than to give them basic human respect. Yet, as beneficial as it can be, giving respect is often a difficult concession for people to make. In a problematic situation or relationship, respect may be the last thing we feel like giving. We may think that they do not deserve our respect and that they need to earn it. They may not be respecting us, so why should we respect them? If we feel rejected, as the union leader did, we naturally reject back. If we feel excluded, we naturally exclude back. If we feel attacked, we attack back. Out of pain, we cause pain. It is a mutually destructive cycle that has no end as I have witnessed countless times from families to businesses to communities to entire societies. The usual results are losses all around. But, as the story of the tense negotiation between union and management suggests, it often only takes one person to change his or her attitude toward the other—from antagonism and rejection to respect—in order to change the tone and outcome of a difficult conversation. That person could be us. Once we show respect to the other party, he or she is more likely to show us respect. Respect can breed respect, inclusion can lead to inclusion, and acceptance can foster acceptance. Just as the union leader did, we can reverse the destructive cycle and make it a constructive one. To offer respect, we don’t need to approve of the other person’s behavior, nor do we need to like that individual. We just need to make the conscious choice to treat each person with the dignity that is every human being’s birthright, as difficult as this may be for us. Respect shows up as a behavior but it originates inside of us as an attitude. Respect is essentially a yes to others, not to their demands, but rather to their basic humanity. In this sense, respect is indivisible. When we give respect to others, we are honoring the very same humanity that exists in us. When we acknowledge the dignity of others, we are acknowledging our own dignity. We cannot truly respect others without respecting ourselves at the same time. So how in difficult situations do we change our internal attitude from antagonism to respect? It is a natural process that cannot be forced, only nurtured. Indeed, an attitude of respect begins to emerge organically from within in the process of getting to yes with ourselves: if we have already given ourselves respect through putting ourselves in our shoes, we will find it much easier to respect others. If we have chosen to take responsibility for our lives and actions, we are not likely to blame others. If we say yes to life, we will tend naturally to extend respect to others. Still it can be difficult to give our respect, particularly in conflicts. Three specific actions can help you strengthen your attitude of respect: Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Expand your circle of respect. And, as the opening poem suggests, respect even those who at first may reject you. PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR SHOES Consider the findings of a team of psychologists led by Professor David DeSteno, who recruited thirty-nine people from the Boston area for an unusual experiment. Twenty people were assigned to take a weekly meditation class for eight weeks and then to practice at home, while the remaining nineteen were informed that they were on a waiting list. At the end of the eight-week period, the participants were invited, one by one, to come to the lab for an experiment. As each participant entered the waiting area, he or she found three chairs, two of them already occupied. As the participant took a seat and waited, a fourth person entered the room on crutches, wearing a boot for a broken foot, sighing audibly in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against the wall. Neither of the other two sitting people, who worked for the experimenters, gave up their seats. Researchers wanted to find out whether the participants in the experiment would give up their chair to the injured patient or not. The results: 50 percent of those who had practiced meditation gave up their chair, compared to 16 percent of those who hadn’t meditated—a threefold difference! DeSteno explains this dramatic difference by pointing to the documented ability of meditation to enhance attention—our ability to see others—as well as to foster a view that all beings are connected. “The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the artificial social distinctions—ethnicity, religion, ideology and the like—that divide us,” DeSteno writes. It all comes down then to elementary respect—the ability to see another human being. Having given ourselves a “second look” through meditation, we are better able to give others a second look too. The paradox reflected in this research is striking. By paying attention inside themselves through the practice of meditation, people were better able to pay attention outside themselves by showing kindness. The deeper we go inside ourselves, the farther we can go outside. EXPAND YOUR CIRCLE OF RESPECT Few political leaders have developed the ability to expand their circle of respect more than Abraham Lincoln. A man of great heart, he had the tragic responsibility of leading the United States during its darkest hour, the devastating and fratricidal Civil War. During the waning months of the war, Lincoln spoke publicly about the need to bind the wounds of the nation and to treat the defeated South with generosity. On one occasion in the White House when Lincoln was speaking sympathetically of the plight of the South, a Yankee patriot took him to task. “Mr. President,” she decried, “how dare you speak kindly of our enemies when you ought to be thinking of destroying them?” Lincoln paused and addressed the angry patriot: “Madam,” he asked, “do I not destroy my enemies when I turn them into my friends?” Taking a lesson from Lincoln, we might look around and ask ourselves if there are any “enemies” in our lives whom we can “destroy” by turning them into our friends. RESPECT THEM EVEN IF THEY REJECT YOU If this strategy of meeting rejection with respect can be applied in more extreme situations like hostage taking or tragedies like Azim’s, it is far easier to consider in ordinary daily situations. The next time your boss or your spouse or a colleague says or does something that makes you feel rejected and you feel the natural impulse to react, try going to the balcony instead to observe your feelings and thoughts. Put yourself in your own shoes and remember your inner BATNA, your commitment to take care of your deepest needs. If you feel more confident in your ability to make your own happiness, you will be less reactive to the other person’s offensive behavior. Having given yourself respect, it will be easier for you to give others respect and to accept them even if at first they reject you. It is not easy, of course, but with practice and courage you can often turn the cycle of mutual rejection into mutual respect. FROM EXCLUSION TO INCLUSION It may not be easy to change the dynamic of a difficult interaction or relationship from antagonism and rejection to respect, particularly when you feel under attack, but the rewards are great. By showing respect, we are more likely to receive respect. By accepting, we are more likely to be accepted. By including, we are more likely to be included. If we can say yes to the basic dignity of others, getting to yes becomes a lot easier and our relationships at home, at work, and in the world become far more productive and satisfying. One final challenge remains in the process of getting to yes with yourself: to change the win-lose mindset that so often prevents us from arriving at mutually satisfying solutions. CHAPTER 6: Give and Receive From Win-Lose to Win-Win-Win As challenging as it can often be to find win-win solutions in our negotiations and relationships, I believe that the process of getting to yes with ourselves allows us—and indeed asks us—to aim for an even more audacious goal. It invites us to pursue “win-win-win” outcomes, victories not just for us and the other side, but also for the larger whole—the family, the workplace, the nation, and even the world. In a divorce, as spouses struggle with each other, how can the needs of the children be met? In a dispute between union and management, how can the organization stay financially healthy to provide good jobs for everyone and their families? In a conflict between two ethnic groups, how will people stay safe? The key to finding win-win-win solutions that serve everyone is to be able to change the game from taking to giving. By taking, I mean claiming value only for yourself, whereas by giving I mean creating value for others, not just yourself. If taking is essentially a no to others, giving is a yes. Giving lies at the heart of cooperation. It is a behavior but it originates inside of us as a basic attitude toward others. Most of us adopt an attitude of giving in certain settings, as when we are with our family, friends, and close colleagues. But how can we cultivate an attitude of giving and cooperation with those who are not so close to us or even with those who may be in conflict with us? That is the challenge. GIVE FOR MUTUAL GAIN The well-known Chinese billionaire Li Ka-Shing, who began his life in arduous and poor circumstances and went on to become one of the wealthiest men in the world, was once asked by a magazine interviewer about the secrets to his business success. One key, he said, was that he always treated his partners fairly and, in fact, gave them a little more than he took for himself. Everyone wanted to be partners with him and it was his partners who helped him to become wealthy. The most successful negotiators I know tend to be people who focus on addressing the interests and needs of their counterparts at the same time as looking after their own needs. In doing so, they find ways to create value and expand the pie for both sides and end up generally with better agreements than people who just try to claim as much as possible for themselves at the expense of others. Solid research supports this approach. In a comprehensive analysis of twenty-eight different studies of negotiation simulations, led by Dutch psychologist Carsten De Dreu, the most successful negotiators turn out to be people who adopt a cooperative approach that focuses on meeting the needs of both parties. GIVE FOR PLEASURE AND MEANING When I teach negotiation, I often use an ancient fable from Aesop. It is the tale of the North Wind and the Sun, who one day started arguing about which one was more powerful. Was the North Wind more powerful or was it the Sun? Unable to resolve the dispute by argument, they decided to put the matter to a test. From on high in the sky, they looked down on the earth and spied a passing shepherd boy. The North Wind and the Sun decided that whoever could pluck the cloak off the shepherd boy’s shoulders would be deemed the more powerful one. So the North Wind went first. He blew and blew and blew as hard as he could, trying to rip off the boy’s cloak. But the harder he blew, the more tightly the boy wrapped his cloak around his body and refused to let go. Finally, after a long while, the North Wind took a pause for breath. Then it was the Sun’s turn. The Sun just shone, as it does naturally, and bathed the boy in her warmth. The boy loved it and finally said to himself, What a beautiful day! I think I will lie down for a moment in this grassy meadow and just enjoy the sun. As he prepared to lie down, he took off his cloak and spread it out as a blanket. So the Sun prevailed in her argument with the North Wind. I find that this old fable has a lot to teach us about the value of giving. If the North Wind’s attitude was to take, the Sun’s attitude was to give. The nature of the Sun is to shine. It does not matter whether a person is rich or poor, kind or mean—the Sun shines on everyone. Its natural approach is win-win-win. And as the fable suggests, the Sun’s approach is more powerful and more satisfying than the approach of the North Wind. GIVE WHAT YOU ARE HERE TO GIVE Perhaps the most enduring way to strengthen our attitude of giving is to find a purpose or activity that makes us a natural giver. Just like a muscle, the attitude of giving benefits from exercise. Through a purpose, giving can become engrained in the fabric of our lives. A purpose is the answer to the questions Why do we get up in the morning? What makes us excited? What inspires us? For some, a purpose may be to raise and care for a family; for others, it might be to play music or create art. For some, it may be to build something that has never been built; for others, it might be to care for a garden. For some, it may be to give service to customers or to mentor younger colleagues; and for still others, it may be to help people who are suffering. If we can discover a purpose that makes us come alive, it can be not only a source of inner satisfaction but also an excuse to give to others around us and to strengthen the giver in us. Throughout this book, I have shared the story of my daughter’s medical challenges. Just as I was concluding the writing, something remarkable happened for her that illustrated the benefits of finding a purpose. One morning, Gabi announced to Lizanne and me that she intended to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, which was four months away, by breaking a Guinness World Record. It had long been a dream of hers and a few years earlier, she had tried for the longest hopscotch course and then for the most socks on one foot. This time she said she wanted to attempt the longest-held abdominal plank, a core-strengthening exercise that involves keeping your body absolutely straight in a horizontal position as you prop yourself up on your forearms and toes. As I’ve mentioned earlier, Gabi was born with a medical condition that has required fourteen major surgeries on her spine, her spinal cord, her organs, and her feet in the course of her life. While trying out for the school volleyball team a few months earlier, Gabi’s coach had asked her to do the plank while the other girls ran, which Gabi has difficulty doing. The coach was astonished to find Gabi still holding the plank position twelve minutes later when the other girls had returned. Seeing the coach’s surprise, Gabi immediately thought, Whoo, Guinness World Record! She wrote to Guinness and learned that the official record for women was forty minutes. Gabi then waited two months until after another major surgery to begin her training. Lizanne and I were surprised, yet not really surprised, to find out about Gabi’s project. Despite all the adversities in her life, we have never seen her feel sorry for herself. She never falls into the trap of powerless victimhood. We have always marveled at her zest and enthusiasm for life, her ability to take each day and make it fun for herself. We have been astonished at her ability to pick up her life after each surgery, seeing life as essentially on her side. She seems to naturally live in thepresent, not losing time in regrets about the past or worries about the future. Throughout her childhood, Gabi never lost her underlying yes to self and her exuberant yes to life. Lizanne and I were supportive of Gabi’s dream and encouraged her to go for it. Weeks went by as Gabi trained to beat the record. In her informal attempts, she went from twenty minutes to twenty-five, to thirty, and once, when her mother was distracting her by asking her questions, she made it past forty minutes. Gabi shared in an interview: "Originally I thought I was going to break the record for me because that’s something I always wanted to do. But the idea came up that I could do this for a cause. And I really liked that idea, especially when I figured out that I could do it for Children’s Hospital. They helped me not only walk and run, but do something extraordinary. I wanted to help them so other kids like me could have a better experience. I wanted to raise money and awareness so the plank could be something much more than a record." Gabi’s original purpose extended naturally from giving to herself to giving to others as well. Then, one week before the scheduled attempt, Gabi received an e-mail from the current world record-holder, Eva Bulzomi, alerting Gabi that she had just smashed her own record by an incredible twenty-five minutes. Her new time was 1 hour, 5 minutes, 18 seconds. Guinness had not certified it yet, but it was in process. Lizanne asked Gabi, “Wow, how do you feel about it?” “This makes it a little harder,” Gabi replied in her low-key manner, undaunted and as determined as ever. Finally the big day arrived. Gabi’s friends and family gathered around to watch her make the attempt. After holding the plank position for thirty-five minutes, about halfway toward her goal, she hit a wall of discomfort and pain in her arms and tears began to fall on the mat. Gabi’s friends began to sing and entertain her in order to distract her from her pain. As the minutes went by, friends and family started to cheer and to drop down to the floor to do the plank themselves. Finally, at an hour and twenty minutes, Gabi stopped. She had doubled the existing world record. I felt awe and relief as I helped her carefully out of the plank position. A week later, Gabi appeared on Good Morning America, where an official from the Guinness Book of World Records presented her with the official award. The news went around the world on social media as the video of her breaking the record was seen in over a hundred and fifty countries. She not only inspired thousands of people to test their own limits and turn their own perceived weaknesses into strengths, but in the process she raised over fifty-eight thousand dollars for Children’s Hospital Colorado, more than eleven times her target. Gabi was remarkably successful in getting what she wanted and, at the same time, benefiting others, many in ways we will never know. She didn’t start her planking project with the purpose of giving to others but she ended there. She learned to appreciate the joy of giving and receiving. As Gabi discovered, nothing strengthens the attitude of giving more than rooting it in a purpose. FROM WIN-LOSE TO WIN-WIN-WIN Start the negotiations by focusing on what you could give to each other, rather than what you could take results in a genuine win-win outcome. In fact, it goes well beyond a win-win to a win-win-win solution as the benefits spread far and wide beyond the two parties to their families, to the company and its employees, and even to the society at large.
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