Give Peace a Chance

For nearly 50 years, William Ury has distinguished himself as an expert international negotiator. He’s served as a negotiation adviser or mediator in conflicts in the Middle East, Venezuela, the Balkans, and Chechnya, among other places, winning several international awards for his work in helping to resolve ethnic conflicts.

In 1981, Ury joined Harvard professor Roger Fisher in co-authoring Getting to Yes, an influential guide for business negotiation that became a classic, selling more than 15 million copies in more than 35 languages. Since then, Ury has penned nine more books on negotiation, dispute resolution, and the prevention of violent conflict and nuclear war.

Making Peace Possible

In his latest book, Ury turns his focus from the process of negotiation itself to negotiators. He proposes a startling thesis: that “the world needs more conflict, not less.” Conflict is a natural part of the human experience, Ury says. It offers opportunities to collaborate toward creative solutions that can make the world a better place. But it takes a certain kind of mindset, Ury avers, to turn conflict and division into harmony and progress: one of seeing opportunities where others see only roadblocks, of viewing negative possibilities as a challenge to forge positive ones. Ury calls this the mindset of a “possibilist.”

The real problem is not conflict but rather the destructive way we deal with it.William Ury

Possibilists, Ury says, treat conflict as an opportunity to exercise curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. They rely on an attitude of “humble audacity” — that is, a combination of the humility to learn and grow from feedback and mistakes and the audacity to work toward solutions that satisfy everyone, even when others view these solutions as impossible. Every conflict presents a choice: Will you choose to transform the conflict constructively, or will you react destructively, creating further division? In essence, his book aims to turn readers into possibilists by teaching approaches, techniques, and tools to transform conflict into concord. Ury addresses a broad audience: anyone who’s willing to step up to resolve a conflict that touches them — at work, at home, at school, or on the street.

Three Steps to Harmony

Ury deconstructs the challenge of finding a path to peace into three components. First, he says, you must “go to the balcony” — a metaphor for gaining a wide perspective. Imagine you’re standing on a balcony, elevated above the conflict taking place below you. From that vantage point, you can see the big picture, identify possibilities, and thoughtfully choose where to focus your attention.

Second, Ury avers, you need to raise a “golden bridge” — an attractive solution that will entice your counterpart to cross toward you. Ury notes that the phrase “golden bridge” dates back to translations of The Art of War by Sun Tzu, who advised military strategists to “build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.” In the case of a negotiation, Ury says, you ought to build your counterpart a golden bridge to “advance across.”

Creativity offers us our greatest opportunity to open up possibilities where none seem obvious. Creativity is the key to making the impossible possible.William Ury

Third, Ury advises enlisting a “third side” — independent observers from outside the conflict who can assist in resolving it. Ury gives the example of ending apartheid in South Africa: In this conflict, the third side consisted of individuals and organizations around the world — churches, protestors, sports federations, statesmen, governments, and the United Nations — all of which exercised influence in favor of change. Including a third side recognizes how conflict always takes place within a context and always affects more than the parties directly involved, Ury says.

Smoothing the Path

Throughout the book, Ury offers strategies and techniques for each stage of the negotiating process. For example, he recommends building pauses into the negotiation agenda, so both parties can take a breath and gain perspective; practicing deep listening, so you gain information about what solutions might be attractive to your counterpart, while also helping them feel heard; and determining what needs, values, and other deep motivations are driving each party, including yourself.

Ury often presents these nuggets in the context of fascinating stories from his own career or that of his colleague Roger Fisher. For example, to build trust (a crucial task in tough negotiations), Ury notes that professional negotiators sometimes use a technique called a “trust menu” — that is, a list, presented to each party, of ways they could signal respect for one another. Ury describes how, when he worked as a conflict mediator for former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, helping to prevent civil war by reducing hostility with the opposition, Chávez’s trust menu included a promise not to refer to opposition leaders as “coupsters, traitors, drug traffickers, and terrorists.” They, in turn, agreed not to call Chávez an “assassin, tyrant, animal, crazy, and demented.”

The possibilist mindset is a curious, creative, and collaborative way of engaging with our differences in these divided times.William Ury

Ury goes behind the scenes at Camp David during the forging of a historic accord between Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, describes recruiting basketball star Dennis Rodman to supply insights into the mind of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and recounts how he descended into a Kentucky coal mine to speak with miners in a bid to avert a nationwide strike. Colorful stories like these, combined with valuable lessons in creative conflict-solving, make Ury’s book compelling reading.

A world as rife with division, polarization, and winner-take-all attitudes as ours needs negotiators on every street corner and in every living room. By addressing a general audience and making expert negotiation skills accessible to everyone — not just those who occupy boardrooms and other halls of power — Ury makes peace more possible in homes, schools, neighborhoods, and communities. Readable, actionable, and compassionate, Ury’s book is one the world needs.