Resolving Conflict with William Ury

A Bit of Optimism

The Optimism Company from Simon Sinek

Business, Education, Careers, Self-improvement

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fear and anger seem to dominate the headlines. So, to start the New Year, I thought it would be a good idea to find out if there is anything we can do to get to a resolution. And William Ury is about the best person to help figure that out. The author of "Getting to Yes" and co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Program, he has helped negotiate disarmament pacts between nuclear superpowers, ease religious and ethnic strife in the Middle East, and find common ground among warring factions in Venezuela. So I called William to see if he could start the new year by resolving, well…all of America’s current problems. And the result made me feel quite hopeful. This is…A Bit of Optimism. If you want to know more about William and his work, check out: https://www.williamury.com/ https://www.xniforpeace.org/ https://www.abrahampath.org/

Transcript

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0:00.0	William Yuri is one of the nicest people I have ever met. Whenever I talk to him, I feel
0:13.5	at ease, I feel like I'm learning, I feel like I can accomplish anything. And this is
0:18.1	probably not by accident. He is best known for being the co-author of Getting to Yes, which
0:24.8	is a staple for any business school student or, quite frankly, most people in the world. It's
0:30.6	sold in astonishing 15 million copies and been translated at a whole bunch of languages.
0:37.4	He also co-founded the program on negotiation for Harvard Law School. He's been negotiating
0:43.7	peace agreements around the world for decades, from nuclear disarmament packs with the Soviet
0:48.3	Union to Arab Israeli conflict to tribal squabbles among the Bushmen of the Kalahari. So I thought
0:55.1	I'd call him to see if he could shed some light on how we can resolve some of the many conflicts
1:00.1	that we have ongoing in our world today. This is a bit of optimism.
1:10.3	You have made a career not only as an author and professor, but a peace negotiator. You've
1:17.5	traveled around the world, whether it's Arabs and Israelis or Venezuela or wherever you've gone,
1:23.3	to negotiate peace amongst people who hate each other. Let's be honest. It seems that's what we need
1:29.6	in our country. That we have two factions and I believe it's more political parties than it is
1:36.1	the average population. I don't think we're still pretty moderate and I think America is pretty
1:40.5	frustrated with the state of the world. But we have two parties of a single nation that accuse
1:46.0	each other of being traders or un-American. There's no listening. There's only talking. So my question
1:50.7	is, have you ever negotiated peace inside a reasonably functional country, inside a reasonably
1:57.6	functional government? How do we get peace in this country, Bill? Great question Simon. You know,
2:02.8	it's funny. It's ironic because I've been wandering the world for the last four decades,
2:08.7	looking for the most intractable conflicts. And to come back and I find an intractable conflict,
2:14.4	an impossible conflict right here in my own country, which has a lot of the same features
	...

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