Possible, p.16
Possible, page 16
“If you’ve never trusted an ANC person before, you’d better get ready to do so now,” he told Meyer.
Ramaphosa pushed hard on the hook to make space for the barb and wrenched it out.
Meyer muttered, “Well, Cyril, don’t say I didn’t trust you.”
That interaction began a personal relationship of mutual trust and respect. Not long after, Ramaphosa and Meyer were authorized by their respective leaders to meet quietly to explore creative ways to overcome impasses in the political negotiations. As violence flared up in the streets, the formal talks were often broken off. The quiet “wizard” conversations helped get the talks back on track, averting a total breakdown that might have led to full-on civil war.
As Roelf Meyer told me years later:
“We developed a confidence that, no matter how intractable the issue, we could find a creative way to work it out.”
That is the power of using wizards.
So whenever I find myself in the midst of a tough conflict, I like to ask:
Where are the wizards?
In other words, where are the people who are trusted and knowledgeable, who can work together informally behind the scenes to overcome impasses and explore creative breakthroughs?
And here’s a radical thought as you contemplate the conflicts around you: Could you possibly be a wizard yourself?
USE THE ONE UNLIMITED RESOURCE
As my fellow anthropologist Angeles Arrien liked to say:
“Conflict is a call to the creative.”
Conflict at its best can spur a creative search that can produce better ideas and, ultimately, better relationships. Conflict can be our friend if we unleash the power of creativity.
The essential transformation is to change an either-or mindset into a both-and mindset. It is to go from a mindset of scarcity to one of sufficiency—and even abundance. It is to turn opposed positions into creative options for mutual gain.
In today’s world, many things seem limited, but the one unlimited resource we all possess is our innate creativity. Creativity offers us our greatest opportunity to open up possibilities where none seem obvious. Creativity is the key to making the impossible possible.
Chapter 8
Attract
From Harder to Easier
It always seems impossible until it’s done.
—Nelson Mandela
What’s he doing in here? Let’s string him up!”
I was in the miners’ locker room, preparing to enter the coal mine for the first time. I was getting into my work overalls and strapping on my oxygen mask when I overheard a miner nearby talking about me.
I swallowed, feeling uneasy.
“It’s rough down there, I’m telling you,” the mine manager, Mike Johnson, had warned me the day before when I had asked for his permission to enter the coal mine.
“I can’t be responsible for your safety—either from machines or accidents. Or men,” he had added ominously.
But I had insisted.
“I got it. I’m willing to take the risk. If they won’t talk to me up here, maybe they’ll talk to me down there.”
Inside, I didn’t feel as confident as I sounded, but I was determined to give it a try.
As I recounted earlier, this mine in eastern Kentucky was enmeshed in intense conflict marked by a spate of wildcat strikes. My colleague Steve Goldberg, a noted arbitrator, and I had shuttled back and forth for many weeks with the union leadership and management to reach an agreement. We had been elated by our success, but then, seemingly out of the blue, the miners had overwhelmingly voted the agreement down. Our elation had turned to gloom. It turned out that they didn’t have an objection to the content of the agreement; it included things they wanted. They just didn’t trust anything management would sign onto.
Rather than give up and go home, I proposed to Steve that we adopt a different approach. This time we would listen to the miners first to learn what was troubling them. And we would encourage both sides to talk out their issues rather than fight. We would try to build trust in the process. Steve sounded a bit skeptical but wished me luck as he went off to France for his summer vacation.
I moved down to Kentucky for the summer. Each day, I went to the mine to hang around and talk to anyone who would speak with me. But I found it hard to get even a moment with the miners. They spent all their time inside the mine, and when they emerged at the end of their work shift, they were in a rush to get home. It was not easy to strike up conversations. They seemed distrustful. I was this young guy from faraway Boston who sounded to them much more like a manager than a miner. As far as they were concerned, I was a man from Mars. I wasn’t fully shunned, but it felt that way.
Days turned into weeks. I began to wonder if I was wasting my time. Frustrated by the lack of progress, I decided that if the miners wouldn’t come to me, I would go to them. I could go down into the mine and talk with them during their shift. Since the mine operated around the clock, I would need to visit the mine during all three shifts, including the midnight one, nicknamed the “hoot owl.” I was determined to listen to as many miners as I could.
That was when I approached Mike Johnson for his permission to enter the mine.
“Okay, it’s your call.” Mike eventually agreed, albeit reluctantly. “You’ll have to sign a release form. I’ll ask Phil to set you up.”
That didn’t sound good to me since Phil, the mine foreman, was widely feared and disliked by the miners. He assigned me a locker in the management locker room. I thanked him but demurred. After all, I was trying to win the trust of the miners, so I asked to be assigned a metal basket suspended high up in the miners’ locker room, a cavernous space where they all got ready for work.
Phil gave me a hard hat. I noticed that it was white like the managers’ hats. All the miners wore black hard hats. So I decided to spray-paint mine another color: green. Phil also handed me a leather belt with a metal plaque with my name and Social Security number engraved on it to identify my body in case of an accident. Lastly, he gave me an oxygen mask and explained how to use it in an emergency.
It was all sounding a bit more dangerous than I had first thought, but I was determined to go ahead with my plan.
The big day arrived. I entered the miners’ locker room, pulled on a chain that lowered my metal basket down from the ceiling, placed my street clothes in it, and put on my work overalls. As I was strapping on my leather belt together with the oxygen mask, I overheard that miner talking about me in a threatening fashion.
“Let’s string him up!”
I glanced around to see if anyone else was paying attention but noticed nothing.
I proceeded—nervously. The mine, a mile down, accessed by an open elevator, was cold, dank, and pitch black. The only way I could see was with a headlamp attached to my helmet. The ceilings were low, and I had to walk bent over. The noise from the coal-boring machines was infernally loud. And the coal dust was thick—so thick that when I blew my nose, the mucus was black.
But down there, the miners did have time to talk. As they rested, chewed tobacco, and spat out the juice, they talked more freely to me about whatever was bothering them. I was on their turf, and they felt more comfortable talking without managers around watching. They were curious about me, too, and started asking questions about my life and where I came from.
By my third trip down into the mine, I started to relax a bit. My plan seemed to be off to a promising start.
On my fourth trip into the mine, I was listening to a coal miner telling me about a complaint he had about management and how they were treating him. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I was jumped from behind by four big strong men. They knocked me down and pinned me to the cold, rocky coal surface. As I struggled without avail to free myself, they violently yanked down my work pants. One man wielded a big knife whose ugly rusty blade glinted in the light of my headlamp.
The man with the knife then proceeded to cut from me . . . a patch of pubic hair. I was in shock, naturally, but I can remember the feeling of intense relief that the operation stopped right there. The four men released me from their grip, and I got up on my feet again. To my utter surprise, each man slapped me roughly on the back, congratulating me and declaring loudly for all around to hear:
“Now you’ve been haired! You’re a regular coal miner just like us!”
The word spread through the mine like wildfire.
It wasn’t how I imagined I would build trust (and I hope those who read this will never have to undergo a similar initiation), but I have to say, it brought about a marked shift in how I was seen. Increasingly, the miners approached me with their grievances. I was able to persuade management to start to listen to their problems and address them through the multistep negotiation process that Steve and I had proposed in the agreement—the one that had initially been rejected.
Gradually, as we were able to settle one grievance after another through negotiation, the miners began to trust the process. The relationship between miners and managers improved. And to everyone’s surprise, the wildcat strikes ceased almost altogether. Step by step, little breakthrough by little breakthrough, the conflict was transformed. It didn’t end, but the form changed from walking out to talking out their problems.
It was a big lesson for me. I learned that it is not enough just to come up with creative ideas for agreement. It is not enough to focus on the substance—the issues in dispute. We need to create an attractive process, a path that attracts the parties to agreement and a better relationship.
MAKE IT EASIER TO SAY YES
In my classes, I like to recall Aesop’s ancient Greek fable about persuasion. Up in the heavens, a quarrel breaks out between the North Wind and the Sun about who is more powerful. After much argument, the two parties agree to resolve the question with a test. They look down on the earth and spy a wandering shepherd boy. They decide that whoever is successful in plucking the cloak off the shepherd’s back will win the argument.
The North Wind goes first and blows and blows—but to no avail. The more the wind blows, the more tightly the shepherd boy wraps his cloak around his shoulders.
Finally, it’s the Sun’s turn. The Sun patiently bathes the boy in warm sunlight. After a while, the boy remarks to himself, “What a beautiful day! I think I will lie down in the meadow for a moment and soak in the rays.” As he lies down, he flicks off his cloak.
So the Sun wins the argument.
I love the wisdom of this fable. The North Wind and the Sun represent two very different forms of persuasion. The North Wind uses force and treats the boy as if he were an inanimate object, trying to rip off the cloak against the boy’s will. The Sun takes the opposite approach. It exercises its natural power to attract. It respects the boy as having a will of his own and creates a conducive environment in which the boy, of his own volition, eventually chooses to remove his cloak. The process may take longer, but it works.
In class, to illustrate the point, I invite a participant to come forward and hold their hands up. I place my hands against theirs. Then I start slowly pushing against their hands.
What do they do? They instinctively push back.
“Did I ask you to push back?” I ask them.
“No.”
They just do it naturally.
This is what I see happen in conflict all the time. We believe that our position is right, so we naturally push for it. It is only human. The more we push, the more the other pushes back. On it goes. Unless we are much stronger than the other side, we find ourselves stuck in a standoff. No wonder so many conflicts today are stalemated.
What is the alternative?
Successful negotiators, I find, often do the exact opposite of push. Instead, they attract.
In a contentious conflict, we may feel like making it harder for the other side. That’s what the North Wind does, trying to make it harder for the shepherd boy to hold on to his cloak. The Sun, by contrast, makes it easier—more attractive—for the shepherd boy to take off his cloak. Taking a lesson from the Sun, our job in difficult situations is to make it easier—more attractive—for the other side to make the decision we’d like them to make.
ATTRACT THROUGH TRUST
There is perhaps nothing more attractive than trust.
I first appreciated this lesson in conflict negotiation as a graduate student in a lively conversation with Lord Hugh Caradon, a retired British diplomat who had spent a half century in the British Foreign Service. He was visiting Harvard, and I was responsible for welcoming him. I had just picked him up from the airport, and we were driving into Cambridge. And he was reminiscing.
Caradon had served as the British ambassador to the United Nations at the time of the 1967 Middle East War. As it turned out, it was Great Britain’s turn to chair the UN Security Council, so it was Caradon’s job to help the council agree on a resolution to end the war.
Caradon’s biggest stumbling block was the Soviets, who had serious reservations. And their vote was critical because they could exercise their veto. After three weeks of arduous negotiation, trying to satisfy all parties, Caradon was under pressure from his government to wrap up, so he called a vote on the proposed resolution.
Ten minutes before the vote, as Caradon was standing outside the Security Council chamber, the Soviet ambassador, Vasily Kuznetsov, approached him:
“Ambassador Caradon, I have a favor to ask. I’m asking you to postpone the vote by two weeks.”
“Ambassador Kuznetsov,” Caradon replied, “I am sorry, but we’ve been talking for three weeks now. I think everyone’s had a chance to weigh in. It’s time to vote.”
Kuznetsov looked at him intently.
“Ambassador Caradon, I’m afraid you have misunderstood me. I’m asking you as a personal favor if you would postpone this vote by two weeks.”
Here Caradon paused his story for a moment.
“So what did you do?” I asked him, my curiosity piqued.
“Well,” Caradon told me, “when Kuznetsov added the word ‘personal,’ I knew I had to grant his request even though I knew I would get a lot of pushback from London and Washington.”
“Why did you?” I asked.
“One simple reason,” Caradon replied. “Even though Kuznetsov represented a power that did not have a reputation for honesty and fair dealing, he personally had that reputation among us diplomats. He had spent years building that reputation.
“Kuznetsov was giving me his personal word. If he was putting his reputation on the line, I knew I could trust him not to use those two weeks to undermine the fragile coalition I had built to support the draft resolution.
“Well, sure enough, the vote took place two weeks later in the UN Security Council chamber. The last country to vote was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. To everyone’s surprise but mine, Kuznetsov raised his hand and voted yes. True to his word, he used those two weeks to return to Moscow to persuade his superiors to drop their opposition to the proposed resolution.”
Caradon’s story left a lasting impression on me. Without his personal reputation for trustworthiness, built up over many years, Kuznetsov would never have been able to buy those two weeks. Without his ability to inspire trust in his political adversaries, we might not have UN Resolution 242, arguably the most important resolution ever on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Even in a situation of distrust, Kuznetsov had what you could call working trust. His word could be counted on. His counterparts would entrust him with sensitive information, knowing he would not use it to their disadvantage. Thanks to his reputation, Kuznetsov had a better chance of success in the myriad of diplomatic negotiations he engaged in.
Trust attracts.
BUILD A TRUST MENU
But here’s the hard question: If neither side trusts the other, how can trust be built?
My work in Venezuela with President Chávez showed me one possible way. As I recounted earlier, Chávez had accepted my proposal to develop a list of practical signals that each side could send the other. The signals would aim to reduce distrust and de-escalate the crisis that was threatening to break out into massive violence. He had delegated his minister of the interior, Diosdado Cabello, to follow up.
Chávez had given me a first signal he would see as a positive sign from his political opponents, some of whom owned the private television channels:
“They could stop calling me a mono [monkey] on their TV stations.”
Accompanied by Francisco Diez, my colleague from the Carter Center, I went straight from my meeting with Chávez to a meeting with his political opponents, about fifteen of them altogether. Francisco and I briefed them about our conversation with the president. We thought they would be pleased to hear that we had cracked the door open to a possible dialogue. But we were wrong.
“We don’t want to engage with him. He’s sly. You can’t trust him,” said Ricardo. The other leaders nodded vigorously.
“I understand you don’t trust him one bit,” I replied. “That’s the whole point of this exercise—to test whether he is trustworthy or not before you would even consider sitting down with him or his people. It’s up to you. Do you want to try this out? It costs you nothing but a little time. Otherwise, no problem, I will just send him a message that this won’t work.”
There was a pregnant pause as everyone stopped to reflect. They looked at one another, then Ricardo spoke again.
“Okay,” he sighed. “Let’s give it a chance. When do you want to do this?”
“No better time to start than now,” I said. I went up to the whiteboard, colored marker in hand, ready to write. I turned to the group.
“Is there anything President Chávez could do now that would send you a credible signal that maybe it would be worth opening a dialogue? Let’s brainstorm a list of five or ten possible actions he could take.”
“He could resign!” María Eugenia called out. Everyone laughed.
