Possible, p.8
Possible, page 8
KEEP ASKING WHY
It is often not enough to ask ourselves why? just once. To get to the deepest level of the iceberg, we may need to keep asking why?—two, three, four, even five times in succession.
“I have a question for you,” announced the sales director of a software firm where I was giving a workshop on negotiation some years ago. His voice had a tone of frustration and desperation.
“Our biggest customers are constantly demanding changes to the software. They want us to tailor it to their needs, but it is very costly and time consuming. They don’t want to pay for it, and it’s cutting very seriously into our revenues. The situation is untenable. I need to say no, but I just can’t. They are our most important customers, after all.”
I recognized that he was avoiding a conflict that needed to happen—in a constructive way—if the business was going to succeed. In an effort to help, I asked him a series of why? questions:
“Why do you want to say no? What are you trying to protect?”
“Maintain revenues,” he replied.
“Okay, fine, but why do you want to maintain revenues?” I asked.
“Because we need to make a profit,” he said with a tone of finality.
“Of course you do. But tell me why you need to make a profit,” I said.
“So our company can survive!” he exclaimed.
“I got it. Now humor me and tell me why exactly you want your company to survive,” I persisted.
“So we can all have jobs!” he said with a tone of exasperation as he motioned to his colleagues in the room.
“But why do you want a job?” I asked.
He paused and looked at me, quizzically.
“Well, so I can put food on my family’s table!”
There was real emotion in his voice. I sensed from his tone that we had reached bedrock. Feeding his family was his most basic underlying need.
It was an uncomfortable process for him. With each answer, he thought he had concluded the matter. But as he continued, more and more resolve came into his voice. The discomfort paid off.
I said to him:
“So, going back to the question you asked me, next time you find yourself in the situation of having to say no to a really important customer, imagine that saying no is allowing you to put food on your family table. You are not just maintaining revenues; you are protecting your family. That will give you the strength you need to say no when you need to.”
Asking yourself why—repeatedly—can bring you strategic clarity, and with that clarity comes resolve and power. It’s like the roots of a tree: the deeper the roots go, the stronger the tree will stand even in the midst of stormy weather. Putting food on the family table had a much deeper meaning and strength for the sales director than an interest in maintaining revenues or generating profit did.
UNCOVER BASIC HUMAN NEEDS
“It looks like I’m going to be fighting this man until my last day. Maybe it’s my destiny and I should just accept it,” my friend Abilio Diniz sighed to me. I could hear the tremendous frustration and anger in his voice.
Abilio, one of Brazil’s best-known business leaders, was then over two years deep into a bitter dispute with his French business partner. The conflict had taken over his life. It was poisoning him with rage, keeping him from his family, and unsettling the lives of the company’s many thousands of employees.
By the time I got involved, the board meetings had grown highly explosive, with at least a dozen law firms and multiple PR firms engaged, countless lawsuits, character assassination in the press, and suspicions of corporate espionage. Even the presidents of France and Brazil had gotten onto the phone with each other to discuss its impact. The Financial Times called the dispute “perhaps the biggest cross-continental boardroom showdown in recent history.”
The clash centered on a dispute between the business partners over control of Brazil’s leading supermarket retailer, Pão de Açúcar. The supermarket had begun as a local neighborhood bakery that belonged to Abilio’s father. When Abilio was a boy, he had worked behind the counter. He had helped his father build the bakery into a huge supermarket chain. Pão de Açúcar was his identity and his lineage.
Many years later, needing funds to expand the business further, he had brought in a leading French businessman, Jean-Charles Naouri, as his partner. Abilio had taken the much younger man under his wing and had taken pleasure in mentoring him.
“We were close,” Abilio reflected to me. “He would come to our home and bring gifts. I visited him at his home, too, in Paris.”
Abilio loved to make business deals—it was one of the secrets of his success. However, in 2011, when he sought to merge the business with another big retailer, Jean-Charles objected and filed a lawsuit. Each partner felt betrayed by the other, and a hotly contested battle began.
Emotions run high, positions become entrenched, and destructive fighting breaks out. Attack leads to counterattack. This dispute was like so many others we face today.
“All the doors to negotiation are closed,” Abilio’s daughter Ana Maria had first written to me, asking for help. While the email was polite and measured, it bore many of the hallmarks of angst and heartache that are common in difficult disputes. It was clear that she and the family were at their wit’s end. They wanted their father and husband back.
Unsure of whether I could help, I offered to listen at least. On my next trip to Brazil, Abilio invited me to his home for lunch with his entire family. It was a beautiful morning. Sunlight poured in through the windows as I was graciously welcomed by his wife, Geyze. I could feel the love and concern for him from his family, but he wasn’t able to relax into their warm embrace.
Abilio’s youngest child, a lively boy of three, ran around the room. But his father was too preoccupied with his dispute to appreciate his young son’s energy and enjoyment. I looked at the boy and his spirited six-year-old sister, then back at Abilio. He was seventy-six at the time. His time was precious. I remember thinking to myself, “What kind of life do these children have when their father is engulfed by a fight that is draining his life force?”
I also sensed the terrific anger inside him. He was known for having a volcanic temper. I could sense that the first opponent he needed to face was himself. If I was going to be of any help, I would need to help him get to the balcony.
He and I sat down in his living room surrounded by glass looking out on the garden and the pool. I had just finished up a couple of long days of teaching, and my voice was strained. I wanted to be sure he could hear me so I could connect with him. Each time before I spoke, I sprayed a bit of honey into my mouth. Though my voice was weary from overuse, his voice carried a weariness that reflected the emotional weight of the situation.
So I began my conversation by asking him my go-to question:
“Abilio, what do you really want from this negotiation?”
Like any good, intelligent businessperson, he knew the answer to the question. He immediately rattled off the list of his demands.
“I want all my stock to be convertible so I can sell it. I want the elimination of the three-year non-compete clause. I want the company headquarters. I want the company’s athletic team.”
“I understand that all those things are important to you. But what do you really want?” I persisted.
He paused and looked at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you are a man who seems to have everything. You can do anything you want. You have these beautiful young children here. What do you really want at this moment in your life?”
He took a few moments to grapple with the question.
Finally, he took a deep breath.
“Liberdade,” he said with a sigh. “Freedom. I want my freedom.”
That was it. When I heard the tone and deep emotional resonance with which he pronounced the word freedom, I knew he had reached his bedrock need. It touched him. And it touched me. Who, after all, does not want to be free?
Before our meeting that day, I’d read about Abilio—the boy and the man—in his memoir. Freedom is important to all of us, but it had special resonance for Abilio. One morning in December 1989, as he was leaving his home, he was kidnapped by a group of urban guerrillas. He was pushed at gunpoint into a car and held hostage in a coffinlike box with only pinholes for air. He was constantly assaulted by loud music. He was sure he would die until suddenly he was rescued a week later during a surprise police raid.
Now, years later, he found himself held hostage again, this time to a conflict that utterly consumed him. He needed to understand himself, yes, but, if I was to help, I, too, needed to understand him.
Up to that moment, I wasn’t sure whether I was the right person to help him get the material items he demanded. But when he said he wanted his freedom, I began to think that perhaps I could help him after all.
I realized that it wasn’t just an ordinary business conflict but an all-too-human conflict with all its psychological complexities and possibilities. It was the kind of conflict we all face today in our families, our workplaces, and the larger world.
“And what does freedom mean to you, Abilio?” I asked.
“Time with my family,” he said as he pointed to his children, “which is the most important thing in my life.
“And the freedom to make the business deals I love to make.”
He could have replied, “Freedom from my enemy” or “Freedom from this nightmare.” That would have been negative freedom. Instead, he focused on positive freedom, freedom for. He focused not on what he wanted to escape from but on what he wanted to move toward.
In conflicts, we often get so caught up in taking positions that we lose sight of our basic human needs. Yet in my work, I have found that the conflicts that truly trouble us, big and small, are usually not just about surface interests but are driven by deeper motivations. In the opening example about my daughter, Gabi, the basic needs my wife and I cared most about were Gabi’s safety and well-being. For the Acehnese leaders, the basic needs included political autonomy and cultural identity. My friend Abilio’s basic needs were freedom and dignity. Other basic needs include security, economic sustenance, belonging, and respect. Needs go deeper than wants and desires.
Here’s the secret: At this deeper level, you will discover less conflict and more possibility than at the surface level of positions or even at the middle level of interests. In Abilio’s dispute, the positions could not have been more opposed. At the level of interests, there was less conflict but still considerable tension: a better financial deal for Abilio generally meant a less favorable one for Jean-Charles. But at the level of needs, more freedom for one did not mean less freedom for the other. Nor did more dignity for one mean less dignity for the other. On the contrary, the agreement we reached offered both men dignity and the freedom to pursue their big dreams.
Here’s what I have learned from conflicts such as this: the deeper we go into motivations, the more possibilities we find for transforming conflict. So don’t just stop at positions or even interests. Keep zooming in until you reach basic human needs.
PAY ATTENTION TO EMOTIONS AND SENSATIONS
Emotions and sensations offer perhaps the surest indicator that we have uncovered basic needs. There was something in Abilio’s tone when he pronounced the word liberdade—freedom—that gave me a sense that I had hit gold. It is like the ring of a bell when you hit it just right.
Tone of voice can be revealing, often more than words, precisely because tone conveys emotions. The way Abilio pronounced the word freedom sounded sad, wistful—almost as if freedom were an elusive dream to him. If his first answer to my question about what he really wanted had come from his head, clear cut and logical, his second answer sounded as though it came from his heart and gut.
In negotiations, it is common for us to think of emotions as getting in the way. But emotions—and the physical sensations that accompany them—carry vital information about the deeper motivations that drive us. Fear, anger, and frustration can be signs that some basic need of ours is not being met. If we can pause and listen to our emotions and sensations, we will find that they are saying to us:
“Pay close attention. Something important may be at stake.”
In conflict situations, I find it very helpful to zoom in and notice what emotions and sensations I’m feeling. When I feel angry, it tells me that an important boundary may have been crossed.
“What is that boundary?” I ask myself.
When I get a queasy feeling in my stomach or feel a slight pang in my chest, I get curious. I have come to understand these sensations and feelings as possible signposts pointing me in the direction of my basic human needs.
“What needs of mine are not being met?”
Taking a pause allows me to zoom into myself and notice my emotions and sensations. Because I have paused, I don’t need to react to the emotions that arise but can simply observe them. Pausing provides me the emotional distance necessary to digest valuable information about my needs without getting reactive.
Isn’t that interesting? I can say to myself.
When I reach the deepest need inside myself, I often feel a sense of emotional relief and a spaciousness opening up in my chest. I feel my shoulders relax. I feel a yes coming from my gut, which some scientists now call our second brain. These emotions and sensations tell me that I’m on the right track.
Over the years, I have come to appreciate how our emotions and sensations can be good friends and allies, providing vital clues for understanding ourselves—and others around us.
On the path to possible, emotions and sensations are signposts pointing to the underlying basic human needs—such as safety, freedom, and dignity—needs that we must satisfy if we are to transform conflicts and relationships in these turbulent times.
EYES ON THE PRIZE
That one revelatory insight about freedom took Abilio—and me—on a journey of possibility that transformed a bitter conflict with his business partner, Jean-Charles, into a friendly relationship once again. It seemed utterly impossible, yet that was what eventually happened.
Zooming in on what Abilio really wanted proved to be the key breakthrough that led to everything else. From that moment on, freedom became the touchstone that governed my conversations with him and my negotiations with the other side. Freedom became our guiding light. Whenever Abilio fell back into rage and despair, taking refuge in rigid and extreme positions, I would remind him of his realization of what was most important. It helped him let go, bit by bit.
Freedom was what he wanted, and freedom was what he got.
As Abilio said to me the day he signed the agreement together with Jean-Charles:
“I got everything I wanted. But the most important thing is that I got my life back.”
Those who felt the greatest relief, of course, were Abilio’s family members.
“I arrived in Brazil this morning from New York,” wrote his daughter Ana María to me the day after the agreement. “I flew directly to meet my father. I couldn’t wait one more minute to see how he was. I found him very serene and enthusiastic about the future and his new life after Jean-Charles. I was very happy to see him like that.”
But perhaps the most poignant expression of the change came from Geyze and Abilio’s three-year-old son, Miguel.
“Papai isn’t on the phone all the time anymore,” he told his mother.
I was moved by how Abilio and his family chose to celebrate the dramatic transformation of the conflict that had burdened their lives for so long. Together they traveled across the ocean to Cascia, Italy, where they gave thanks to Santa Rita, the Patroness of Impossible Causes. Santa Rita had become a nun while successfully ending a violent family vendetta that had claimed the life of her husband and many others. Her story, like Abilio’s, reminds us that we all have the capability, even when conflicts seem utterly impossible, to find creative ways forward.
As I was writing this book, I visited Abilio, who had become a good friend along with his whole family, for his eighty-fifth birthday celebration. There, in front of his wife and children, his family and friends, he talked movingly about his life and recounted the story of how he had transformed his conflict with Jean-Charles. He declared that the past nine years had been the happiest time of his life. He had been able to truly enjoy his hard-won freedom. He talked about time spent with his family, driving his children to school every morning, and picking them up in the afternoon. And he spoke about the rewarding new business deals he had made in the intervening years.
It left me wondering.
Would Abilio have enjoyed his freedom without the learning and growth stimulated by the conflict? Could this be the hidden gift of conflict—that by putting us in touch with our deepest needs, it gives us a chance to satisfy those needs in a way we might not have done without the conflict?
So my questions for you, as you consider your own conflicts, are:
What do you really want? What is your equivalent of freedom and dignity? What matters most to you? Keep asking yourself the magical why? question until you hit bedrock. Listen to your emotions and sensations as cues. Focus on your basic human needs. Be curious. You may uncover new possibilities you have not yet imagined. That is the great power of zooming in—a power available to each of us at any time.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
Chapter 5
Zoom Out
From Blinders to Big Picture
The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind.
—Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī
It was my first big failure as a mediator.
It started with a dream invitation. “I have a juicy proposition for you,” Stephen Goldberg, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, said to me one evening over dinner at the Faculty Club. “I just got off the phone with a high-level officer at the national mine workers union and an executive from the coal employers association. They have a really tough conflict on their hands at a coal mine in eastern Kentucky.”
