>> Amy Draves: Thank you so much for coming. My name is Amy Draves, and I'm pleased to
welcome Dan Shapiro to Microsoft. He's here to discuss his book, Negotiating the
Nonnegotiable, how to resolve your most emotionally charged conflicts. At Harvard, he's an
assistant professor and is the founder and director of their International Negotiation Program. He
has chaired the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Conflict Prevention and
regularly conducts trainings for corporate and government leaders around the world. Please join
me in giving him a very warm welcome.
>> Daniel Shapiro: So thank you, and thank you to all of you for taking time out of your
schedules to be here today. How are you? I must admit, this was the quietest room I've ever
walked into. I was scared to death to even say, why don't we start? We're going to start. So it is
an honor, really an honor, to be here. I can tell you, my children are extremely jealous that I am
here, in a sense, at the home of the computing world. So just before we begin, a couple of
thoughts. One, show of hands, in the past six months, how many of you have experienced an
emotionally charged conflict? How many of you have experienced an emotionally charged
conflict? Whose hand was not raised? Was your hand raised? Okay, just to make sure. Okay,
good. So we are all human beings here in this. You can put your hand down now. He was like,
yes, it was terrible. Got it. So my goal today is to share with you just the bare sketches of some
research that we've conducted for the past 20 years, which really introduces a new paradigm, a
new way to help you deal with the most difficult conflicts that are in front of you, whether at
work here at Microsoft, or at home in your own personal lives. Before we begin, let me just ask
you one basic question. Does anybody in this room know what a poplar tree is, a poplar tree?
You in the back, you were the first hand that I saw. What is a poplar tree?
>>: I know what they are. I don't know whether I'm good at describing them.
>> Daniel Shapiro: So I know what they are. I'm not very good at describing them. Are they
big, are they small?
>>: Pretty big.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Tall, straight deciduous tree. They tend to grow quite quickly, and few of us
in this room would have much of any concern for what is a poplar tree, if it weren't for the fact
that there was a single poplar tree that sat right at the border between North and South Korea.
And each year, this little poplar tree would blossom, and it would grow, and as it would grow,
and as it would grow, it would block the South Koreans' view of the Bridge of No Return, which
was the conduit between North and South Korea. So each year, out would march a small team of
South Korean soldiers, and they'd go to trim this tree so they could see that bridge, correct the
security problem. And this was fine, year after year after year, until August 6th, 1976, when the
usual team of South Korean soldiers go out to trim the tree. They're trimming for about 15
minutes, 10, 15 minutes, along comes a lieutenant from the North Korean side, walks up to the
lieutenant from the South Korean side. And by the way, this lieutenant from the North has a
much larger team of soldiers behind him. Says to the lieutenant from the South, you try and trim
this tree, we are going to shoot. We're going to shoot. Okay, fair enough. And anyway, they
literally chased away this South Korean team. However, this was a security concern, and it did
not stop the South Koreans from trying to trim the tree. They come back about two weeks later.
August 18th, 1976, now, with a much larger team, South Korean soldiers, US soldiers and UN
officials, and all there for the single purpose of what? Of what? You're like, I don’t know, this
is after lunch -- of trying to trim the tree. That's right. And they get there, and once again,
they're trimming for about 10 minutes. Along comes that lieutenant from the North Korean side,
now with a much even larger team, North Korean soldiers, walks up once again to the lieutenant
from the South. You try and trim this tree, we are going to shoot. We're going to shoot. And for
those of you who remember what happened next, this did not stop the South Koreans from trying
to trim the tree, and this situation turned into a bloody, bloody mess. There were a number of
South Koreans who were injured, and North Koreans. There were two US soldiers not just shot - decapitated. Caught on camera, broadcast around the world, and we've felt what's that like in
our recent world, the trauma that can induce. I was presenting this case fairly recently at my
home institution at Harvard Law School, and after I was presenting this case to a group of
international military people, business leaders, lawyers and others, I was walking out of the room
innocently enough, and this one gentleman comes storming up to me, face as red as you can
imagine. Shapiro, he says to me, I don't think you understand. I don't think you understand. He
says, I was there. I was at West Point, the US military college, at that point in time. I knew
those boys who died. I knew their families. He says, we were not just feeling grief at the loss of
our soldiers, he says, we were feeling utter, utter humiliation at the way our boys died. And
surprise, surprise, this situation now reaches the highest of the high in the United States, where
then President Ford was faced with a very difficult decision. What do you do? And you are all
leaders in this room? What would you do? And the President turns to one of his lead advisers,
asks his advice. This lead advisers says, you know what I think we should do, Mr. President?
What do you think we should do? The adviser says, I think we should bomb the North Koreans.
And the President thinks about it, and ultimately decides that a more appropriate strategy would
be to simply cut down this damn tree. So back to the scene now at the DMZ zone between North
and South Korea, you now have 813 human power coming back to the scene. You have F-4
fighters. You have F-5 fighters. You have a 64-man armed platoon trained in taekwondo. You
have three B-52 bombers circling around, overhead, with the single purpose of what? Cutting
down this tree. And do they do it? Yes. How long does it take? About an hour. Is there further
incident? No. But as I was learning about and researching this situation, what struck me and
struck me hard, is this was literally almost World War III. Literally, almost World War III, and
over what? Over a tree? And obviously, it's over much, much more than just a tree, but it begs a
couple of fundamental questions, and these are the two we're going to really be focusing on
today. Why do we get stuck in emotionally charged conflicts? And two, how do you get out? If
this conflict were between the United States and Canada over a tree between our borders, the two
of us will just get together, how do we deal with this, and five minutes later, we're done. We
have an answer. There's something unusual that comes into play when emotions start to come
into our most important conflicts, and we're going to talk about that today. And more
specifically, two big goals, so one, what I'm going to do today is to explore why conventional
approaches to negotiation, to conflict resolution, tend to be insufficient when dealing with
emotionally charged conflicts. And two, I'm going to share with you a powerful framework that
we've been developing, that I've been developing, over the past 20, 25 years that can help you
boost collaboration. So this framework, what you're going to learn today, is what I believe to be
the fundamental mindset that traps us in difficult conflict situations, whether it's over there
between North and South Korea, or whether it's here in the offices here at Microsoft. And two,
I'm going to also share with you five emotional forces that we found tend to pull us toward that
dangerous mindset. If you become aware of these forces, you can counteract them. So let me
just give you the 30-second version of background about where these ideas come from. The
ideas we'll be talking about are based upon my work, literally now across the continents over the
past 25 years, starting back during the transitional period in Eastern and Central Europe, building
a conflict-resolution program there for youth, to help them move forward in an open society.
Since then, I've been working with organizations of all kinds, grassroots organizations in conflict
situations, all the way up to working with heads of state, CEOs of major organizations and
everything in between. And that is all true, but putting that aside, my greatest learning, and I can
promise this only by the end of our time today, my greatest learning has come from negotiating
from three of the hardest bargainers the world has ever seen. Let me show them to you. These
guys, and I don't know if any of you have anything like these things in your own life. These are
my children. How many of you have children? And just to be fair, how many of you were a
child at some point? Some of you still did not raise your hands. Don't go along with these
computer stereotypes, Microsoft, he's actually not a human. There are a couple of robots there.
No, but these are my children, and the reason I show you this slide is to simply say that, yes, you
are negotiating and dealing with conflict at work. Every organization has conflict. It's a natural
part of organizational life, but just as true, negotiating, and you're dealing with conflict at home.
And the problem is this. The practical problem, emotionally charged conflicts, we all get into
them, but if you don't deal with them well, they can damage your relationships. They can
damage productivity, and they can damage your wellbeing. You start to feel stressed out. You
get sick more often, and so on. The organization suffers. And it's a problem at home. It's also a
big problem for any organization, and I believe this to be the true secret for an organization to go
from good to great or from great to even better. Why? Let me show you this. Look at the
organizational cost of conflict. This is just a small list I put together. One, you have the legal
fees. People don't get along or somebody doesn't like Microsoft, they sue. What are the other
costs of conflict? You have the poor decisionmaking. When I don't like you at work, you don't
like me, and all of a sudden, we're not focused on the content or the algorithm that we're
supposed to be working on. I'm focusing on the fact that I want to sabotage you. You want to
sabotage me. Think about all the time that is devoured to conflict. You and the other party
negotiating, dealing with the conflict, the manager, the human resource people. You have the
worker turnover. All of a sudden, your superstar players here start moving to one of those other
superstar organizations, and you ask, well, what happened? Is it just about the pay? Probably
not. You have the increased healthcare costs. You have the toxic corporate culture that can start
to emerge, the reputational damage that becomes at risk. And what you'll notice here is that it's
only that top line that typically gets into the financial spreadsheets. Legal. Everything else is a
hidden cost of conflict. And to me, what this means, that this can become Microsoft's -- a core
source of value expansion and growth, how can you deal with conflict most effectively? So the
typical approaches to dealing with conflict tend not to work very well when it comes to
emotionally charged conflicts. So what's your name?
>>: [Puj].
>> Daniel Shapiro: [Puj], what are we negotiating over? We're in a conflict. You and me, you
hate me, I hate you, what are we in a fight over? It's a workplace conflict. What is it?
>>: Could be anything.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Okay, could be anything, and I say, no, it could be nothing. And he says
everything. Okay. It drives me crazy. When do we -- say it again?
>>: When do we release the product.
>> Daniel Shapiro: And I say we need to release the product in the next two weeks, because our
competitors are going to get that thing out or a similar product. We're going to lose our market.
And you're saying you need another two months for your research division to go through the
research? You know what, [Puj]? I think you're nuts. My microphone agrees. So now one way
of us trying to deal with our conflict situation is to fight it out. I argue, [Puj] argues. Am I
saying it correct? [Puj] argues back. We're fighting. I fight. He confronts. I confront back.
What's the problem with this? What's the obvious problem?
>>: Poisonous.
>> Daniel Shapiro: It doesn't go nowhere. It goes downward. We spiral into conflict. Another
way we can try and deal with our conflict is to avoid it all together. So I say, you've got get this
thing out in two weeks, and [Puj], he just sort of avoids the conversation. I walk away as well.
Same problem. The conflict is still there. The negative emotions are still there between us. And
in other words, there's still a huge cost of conflict. The third way we can deal with this conflict
situation is to try to talk things out. And this is a standard approach in most negotiation
trainings. You have a problem. Just talk it out. So [Puj] and I try to sit down, but underneath
our conversation and our words, I still dislike [Puj]. I don't trust him. I don't think he's working
as hard as he should. [Puj] is thinking I'm an abusive colleague. So as much as we try to talk
things out, there still is this underlying problem that is there, an emotional problem. So how do
you make sense of conflict? What's going on? What can you do? My argument, how do you
deal with these conflicts, it has nothing to do with your behaviors, or very little to do with your
behaviors. It fundamentally has everything to do with mindset, and what I would like to
introduce you to is what in the book I call the tribes effect. Now, the tribes effect, I define it as a
divisive mindset. All of a sudden, [Puj] and I might be best friends and colleagues, but we start
getting into this charged conflict, and it becomes me versus you. Us, our division, versus theirs,
and this is the single deadliest challenge of conflict. It's a mindset problem. And I have -- I don't
want to go into detail on this now, but I've developed an educational exercise over item. I
describe it in detail in the book. Initially, I had developed this for use in Eastern and Central
Europe in Macedonia, when there was emerging conflict between the Macedonians and the
ethnic Albanians. How do you help them see the nature of the emerging conflict between their
sides? The exercise is called the tribes exercise. Let me give you the one-minute version. I
described a variation of it that I did at Davos, at the World Economic Forum, several years back.
How many of you have heard of the World Economic Forum? Most of you. So this is an
international organization, nonprofit, most known for its summit east January in Davos,
Switzerland, in the mountains of Switzerland, where they bring together typically 30 or 40 heads
of state, as well as leading executives, CEOs from the top 500 companies, civil society leaders
and so on. So I did this little exercise there. I divided our group of 45 people -- we had a deputy
head of state in our room. We had CEOs from Fortune 50 companies, venture capitalists, peace
security experts. Divided this group up into six smaller groups. I said to them, you have 50
minutes to create your own tribes, in your small groups. And I had a set of questions that they
needed to answer. I in fact even asked them, please dress up in your tribal outfits. So they had
balloons on their heads and crazy things like that. Fifty minutes later, we come back into the
room. You see these six different tribes, sitting in the room. They feel like independent tribes. I
welcome everybody back to the room, and all of a sudden, the lights go completely black in the
room. And at this point, into the room bursts this intergalactic alien with bulging eyes, huge
head, who says, I am an intergalactic alien. I have come to destroy the Earth. I will give you
one opportunity to save this world from complete destruction. You must choose one of these six
tribes to be the one tribe of all of the tribes. You cannot change anything about your tribe or
yours or yours or yours, and if you cannot come to agreement by the end of three rounds of
negotiation, says this alien, the world will be destroyed, ha, ha, ha, and out floats this alien. Just
to fast forward a bit, three rounds later, boom, our world explodes at Davos. And I have run this
exercise now dozens and dozens and dozens of time, with leadership around the world, with
Harvard students, MIT students, mid-career students, diplomats from all across parts of Asia,
Australia, the Middle East and various different parts there. And again, and again, and again,
boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, with but very modest exception, the world explodes again and
again. And you ask, why? What's happening? And those leaders at Davos, they had some of
the most brilliant minds. They had an incredible portfolio of experience negotiating serious
conflict situations. And yet the world exploded. How do you explain that? That's the tribes
effect. The moment they start moving into this realm, it's no longer all of us leaders working
together -- we're friends. It's now, no, my tribe versus yours, and in the course of only 50
minutes, I can put people into such a mentality that they would rather explode that world than
save it. Now, think of your own lives. You're born with a particular religion or ethnicity or race
or this or that, raised within that particular narrative. Even the very fact you are all Microsoft
and you're not some of those other people down the street, or you might be -- where do you work
within Google -- oh. No, no, no, you don't know his side job? No, I was thinking about your
competition. Boy, this is all taped. Forget it. I'm out of here. Bye-bye. Thank you. No, you
know what, I was scared to death coming here that I was going to do that slip. I even told
somebody beforehand, I was like, what if? Because you're like the center of the Earth, and I was
like, I would not want to offend you. We're going to talk about this. I actually did that on
purpose. We'll tell you why in a little bit. No, it is identities. I did not do it on purpose, but how
did you feel when I said that? How did you feel? How did you feel?
>>: Surprised.
>> Daniel Shapiro: You felt surprised, and why?
>>: I thought you were prepared.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Fair enough. How else did you feel? How else did you feel? How'd you
feel, honestly? I can take it, baby.
>>: Well, I'm at Microsoft, so ->> Daniel Shapiro: You are at Microsoft. This is true. I will validate that, yes.
>>: And so I felt hurt.
>> Daniel Shapiro: You felt hurt, and this, my friends, is let me move it forward. Because what
we found is that there are -- let's forget this for a moment. There are a set of forces that pull you
toward that tribes effect. Notice how I did do it by accident, but let me use this for real as a
learning experience. There are a set of forces that pull you toward that us/them mentality. The
five forces that our research has uncovered, vertigo, taboos, repetition compulsion, assault on the
sacred and identity politics. Let me flip to number four for a moment. Microsoft is a sacred
concept. You have your entire sacred universe, with Bill Gates and all of those others as the
central figures creating this organization. You have your sacred language. Just as I was walking
down the hallway here, I was talking to one of you, and I said, what do you do? This gentleman,
I don't know where you are now, you said, I do work on algorithms. That's a language. You
have your own sacred language. You have your sacred community. And the moment I come in
and I say, oh, Google -- Microsoft. Voom, we're not together anymore. It took one sentence. It
took not even -- I say Goo. I didn't even say Google. I just go Goo, and that's all it took. And
you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to Google tomorrow. I'm going to it in reverse
tomorrow at Google. But that's all it took, and all of a sudden, we move from, hey, we're cool,
we're friends, to this guy is a loser. I hate you. You've hurt my feelings. Whatever. I won't go
further. But that is the power of these things. I call them the five lures of the tribal mind. And
these things so easily lure us toward that us/then thinking. You could feel it. Again, I didn't
mean to do it, but now you know it. Let me start backwards with number one there, vertigo. So
vertigo, this is a concept that I've been building over the past 15 or so years. How many of you
have experienced an emotionally difficult conflict let's say in the past two months, instead of six?
Most of you. Tell me if you can relate to this, all of you, actually. Think about the last time that
you got so emotionally consumed in a conflict that you could think of nothing else but that
conflict situation. It could have been here at work, today, Shapiro was here earlier. I can't stop
thinking about him. I hate that guy. Whatever it is, but it might be something here at work with
a colleague, and you start getting sucked into the spiraling emotional world that I call vertigo.
And what happens, vertigo is powerful. You're here at work. You can't think of anything else.
You go home at the end of the day, and there your beautiful family is with your kids. They come
running up to you, Mommy, Daddy, we love you. And you see them, and yes, you are there in
body, but where's your mind? Where's your heart? You're back here. And just as true, you can
get into a conflict in the home setting, with your spouse, a family member, a difficult teenager,
and you come to work, and yes, you are here in body, but you're not necessarily here in mind or
in emotion. That's vertigo. It is like this spinning tornado. You're in the middle of the tornado
with that other person. You cannot see anything beyond that tornado. Let me give you one
example. So I just was in DC the other day. I was reminded of a story that I'd heard a number of
years back. There was a professor of mine, an English professor. During my first year of
college, he shared a story. He and his wife were out shopping for a bedspread in the mall in DC,
and his wife thought that they absolutely needed this $500 bedspread, and this English professor,
he thought this was the most foolish decision their family would ever make. And he says, they
start talking about this in the mall, and then arguing, and then arguing more and more and more
and more, until they're screaming at one another. And then he says, just for a moment, my eyes
averted those of my wife. And he said, I saw there was a circle of onlookers watching us. I had
not noticed. And then he said, I looked down at my watch, and 20 minutes had passed. I thought
it was five. We were now late to meet our friends in the mall for lunch. This is vertigo, and
we've all been there. You get so sucked into that spiral, you lose all track of everything else.
How do you deal with vertigo? The long version is in the book, but the short answer, be aware
of it, and when you see that little tornado coming in your direction, ask yourself one simple
question, do I really want to go there? And sometimes, you might decide, yes, I do. You have
so offended me, Shapiro, that we want to go there, and you all walk out. Other times, you might
think, you know what? I'm not sure I do. That's vertigo. Let's move on to the second of these
lures, and to do so, we're going to do a little exercise. What I ask you to do now is to pair up
with somebody beside you and literally, please, everybody find a partner, preferably somebody
you do not know. Find a partner, and if you do not have a partner when our exercise begins,
somehow, I'll try and humiliate you. So try and find a partner, please, and literally in 15 seconds.
Anybody not have a partner? You do not have a partner. Anybody else -- somehow, they're
always in the front in the back. Great. Would you mind joining -- what's your first name?
Jesus, great. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. So your task now, let me preface this, your
task is not going to be an easy one, okay? But that's okay. The purpose of our day is to learn, so
here's what I'm going to ask you to do -- don't do what I'm going to ask you to do until I say go.
I want to make sure you all understand the directions, the instructions. So you've all paired up
with somebody else. In just a couple minutes, you're going to be sharing four things with that
other person who you're now partnered with. So here are the four things. So one, with our
presidential campaign happening right now, you're going to be sharing your political leaning.
Whether or not you're from the United States, I don't care. What is your political leaning if you
were to vote in the United States? Are you a Democrat? Are you a Republican, Independent or
something other? Second, human resources will kill me. I'm going to have a major Microsoft
revolt today, but what's your salary? And not what do you write on your tax reports, but what is
your real salary? So that's two. So you're sharing these two things with your partner, so I am
this, this is my salary. Third thing, how attractive do you think that other person is? And just to
be fair, I don't want anybody's feelings to get hurt, so in this sense here, a one means like, eh. It's
not like you're ugly, and a 10 is you are like the hottie of Microsoft. And then the final one, what
do you think the age is of this person? No, no, no, wait, let me tell you why this is cool.
Because after the exercise, they then can share their age, and you can find out were you right or
wrong and in which direction? Good. Okay, so before we begin, any quick questions? Any
questions? No, no, no, no, so let me make this clear. You will share these too. So you share
your own political leaning, you share your salary with the other person. Second two questions,
you're saying to the other, I think you are an eight out of 10, a six out of 10, and I believe you are
46 years old, whatever it is. Good. Any other questions before -- yes, sir.
>>: Can you lie?
>> Daniel Shapiro: Can you lie? Who's your partner? Why do you need to lie? No, no, no, let's
break this down a little bit. Why do you need to lie? What's your thinking on lying? Why
would you want to lie? People at Microsoft don't lie. Why?
>>: I don't want to talk about one.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Why?
>>: I don't want to talk about one.
>> Daniel Shapiro: I'm sorry.
>>: I don't want to talk about the first one.
>> Daniel Shapiro: The first one you're saying. So it's the first one that worries you most? How
many others does the first one worry you the most? Wow, you're okay. Maybe almost one.
Okay, so -- so political leaning. So can you lie? I leave that to your discretion. I suppose
probably not would be a good answer, but that's your choice. Anybody else before we go on
with this exercise? Any other questions. Yes, sir.
>>: Who goes first?
>> Daniel Shapiro: Who goes first? Just yesterday, I was trying a version of this out, and I said
I don't care, and my son breaks in. My eight-year-old son was there at my talk, and he says, just
do rocks, paper, scissors, so you can choose who goes first, but you're going to have about one
minute total to do it. Any other questions before we begin? Yes.
>>: What's the point of this exercise?
>> Daniel Shapiro: To learn, to learn. Yes, and any other questions before we begin? Yes. A
lot of questions.
>>: Is it one, one, two, two, or is it one through four.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Wait, sorry. Oh, what order can you put those in? Can I ask, how are you
feeling right now? The arms are crossed. What's your name?
>>: [Bartek].
>> Daniel Shapiro: [Bartek], how are you feeling?
>>: Funny.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Funny, okay, and what do you mean by funny? Funny can mean like ha-ha,
or funny like awkward?
>>: Awkward, yes.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Awkward, and why?
>>: I don't know, because these are private questions, I would say.
>> Daniel Shapiro: These are private questions.
>>: Yes, somehow.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Yes, or no?
>>: Yes.
>> Daniel Shapiro: So what? Okay, fine. You're all a community here at Microsoft, so why
care?
>>: Okay.
>> Daniel Shapiro: He's so easily persuaded. And if you could write a check for me afterwards,
just $10,000. It's okay. It's funny. Anybody else feeling a little uncomfortable with the
exercise. And your hand was raised very quickly. And why? Let me take you out, why? Why?
Yes, why?
>>: Anxious about the information I'm going to share.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Anxious about the information you're going to share. Let us go to that
question of why are we going to do this exercise, and let me say one more thing. No, we're not
going to do it, so you're off the hook. You can do this afterward if you so want, but it's not my
responsibility. So why did I want you to experience this? This is taboos. Taboos are social
prohibitions. These are big no-nos, things you're not supposed to say or do or feel, and in a
conflict situation, these things tend to drive so much of the conflict. You could feel -- I just put
up four simple questions, and no, they're not simple. Why do I think that people feel
uncomfortable with this? Because the moment you break a taboo, what happens? There often is
a social punishment. Oh, so you think I'm an eight out of 10? And in fact, I just created this
little exercise thing the other day, and I was there, and I told the group, we don't have to do it.
They went, ah, and they really wanted to do it, oddly. So we're there at the reception afterward,
and I didn't know they wanted to do it. We're at the reception afterward, and this one gentleman
comes up to me with a French accent, and he says, you know, I just have to tell you, we've all
been doing your little exercise, and I was like, oh, no. And then he says -- because he was
struggling -- and thank goodness my partner left. I didn't know what to say to this partner,
because she was actually a one, but I didn't know whether to call her an eight so she wouldn't
think she was a one or a 10. He was going crazy. But this is taboos, social prohibitions, and
they can be striking in a conflict situation. How do you talk? Let me give some examples. So
how do you talk about mom's drinking? You know it's driving so much of the dysfunction in the
home setting, and yet nobody talks about it. How do you talk about the fact that, boy, dad never
said I love you? And it just drives that relationship you have with them. And you know if you
say it, you're going to feel demeaned on some level. It's not going to feel authentic anymore. It
feels taboo to talk about. And it's just as true at work. Taboo drives so much of the dysfunction
in a work context, as well. People who are leading somebody else, all of you here, I'm sure,
what do you do when those beneath you do not give you the information you need, because
they're saying hushedly, quietly, don't share the information with the boss. She doesn't like, or
he doesn't like, criticism. You want that promotion? Don't share that information. How you can
ever move forward, to deal with and share information, make effective decisions, if people do
not talk about the core issues driving much of the dysfunction that's there? Even around racial
and gender discrimination, people often say, yeah, yeah, we're dealing with that in our
organization. And then you see after work, small sub-tribes of people saying, you know what, as
much as they say they're trying to deal with this, boy, we have a long way to go. And yet it
somehow feels taboo to actually talk about it. Taboos. And taboos don't just affect us in the
work context. Certainly in the international, as well. So let me give you a quick example. In the
book, there's more details, but this is but one of the ways we've used this with the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. There are a huge number of taboos impeding effective communication
between each side, 100 different topics. So a number of years back in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt,
we put together a group of Israelis, Palestinians, internationals, Tony Blair, who was then leading
the quartet, and others, and we had a private session. And this group asked, well, what are the
major taboos impeding effective communication? Do we want to just keep those taboos there
and not talk about in our situation the salary or so on, or do we want to start to break through
some of those taboos? Which makes sense to break through to move you, so it's no longer me
versus you, the tribes effect, but it's the two of us, working side by side on our shared
differences. That's taboos. My goal today, the purpose of the previous exercise, I wanted you to
feel it. So the next time you are in the office or at home, and there is an issue that you know is
there but it's taboo to talk about, now you have a word. Wait a minute, taboo. How are we going
to deal with this? Should we be dealing with it? Okay, let's move on to the third of these lures,
repetition compulsion. So the idea here is that in all of our lives, all of us sometimes tend to
repeat the same dysfunctional patterns of behavior again and again and again and again. And
you might go to a negotiation course or read a self-help book, and suddenly you come back that
next day, I am a transformed person. For a week. Yeah. And then two weeks later, you're back
to your same dysfunctional patterns of behavior. I have a good friend who has been involved in
a very damaging, emotionally damaging, relationship for years. More than 25 years. Literally
about a month back, she finally decides, I've had enough, and she walks out of this relationship.
And our whole family rejoiced -- all of our friends rejoiced about this particular situation. And
yet I had this underlying fear and discomfort about this thing called the repetition compulsion.
Every day that this good friend was outside of that relationship, should I go back, should I go
back? Oh, I feel like I should go back, even though it was a torturous relationship. And I regret
to say, she did go back about a week and a half ago. But as one of my colleagues, now deceased,
Paul Russell from Harvard Medical School put it, you are a like a mosquito drawn to that fatal
flame. You know that you're not supposed to do this or be in this relationship or do this
particular behavior with your loved one or here at work, and yet there's something that almost
feels instinctual, natural, to not do it. So really quickly, and in the book I give the details on how
you can break out of the repetition compulsion. Basic idea, three parts. So let's bring it down to
two colleagues in the midst of a fight. You and a colleague on your unit, in your area. What
typically happens? Something triggers the conflict. They tell you you must get this project done
within two weeks. They're pressuring you. They don't consult you, or they exclude you in some
way. There's some trigger. But then you start into this little dance, which I call the cycle of
discord. And you say this, they say that, you do this, they say that, and it becomes the same
pattern again and again and again and again. How do you break out of the repetition
compulsion? Work to change any one of these nodes at all. Work to change any single one, and
if you can change one, you break out of that little cycle of discord. Let me put this for you. Let's
do this quickly. I think we still have about seven minutes. Recall a conflictual relationship in
your own life. It could be with your boss. It could be with a peer, with a romantic partner, a
family member. You're not sharing this with anybody, but just bring that to mind. What I ask
you is, what is your typical cycle of discord, when you and that other person get into tension,
what does it look like? And in simplistic -- let me give you it as simplistically as possible. Let's
say my wife and I get into a conflict. So we're in the middle of a house expansion right now. I
just recently got back from the Middle East, walk home, and my wife says, oh, by the way, I
talked to Don. We're going to be doing the kitchen as well, I think. Oh, really? So we're going
to be renovating the kitchen as well? We get into a conflict. Now, one way I could deal with
that conflict is we just go at it. I attack, she attacks back, we get into the cycle. That's one cycle
of discord. Another, I attack, you did what? And she looks at me, just as you all looked at me
when I said Goo, and she goes, you're hopeless. Third way of dealing with the conflict is
withdraw, withdraw. She says to me, oh, we're going to be doing the house expansion. I go
what? And then we just simply walk away from one another. And the fourth, and this is the
most paradoxical in a way, is that I'm the negotiation guy. I'm a problem solver. I like to
collaborate. And I say, well, wait, you said what? You talked to Don? We're going to be doing
the kitchen? Let's figure this thing out. That's collaborating. However, what my wife hear? She
might hear, oh, here he is, disagreeing with me once again, and she withdraws. And the moment
she withdraws, what do I feel? I feel rejected, emotionally rejected, and yet at the same time, her
way of reacting is not negatively intentioned. She's just trying to get her emotional bearings?
How did we break out of this situation? We realized this, and rather than my simply trying to
problem solve immediately our situation, now what do I do? I say, you know what? Why don't
we take a 10-minute break? Let's just try and get our heads together, and would you been open
to coming back, and let's talk about this? And she says, fine, and we're one step ahead now. But
it's not easy to break out of that repetition compulsion. It pulls us toward it, even though we
know we should not go toward it. And we end up in that tribes effect, in the us versus them way
of thinking. So let's move on -- you know what? We've talked about assault on the sacred. I've
done it to you. But assault on the sacred, in short, it's an attack on anything that you believe is
deeply meaningful to you. And as you saw today, it does not have to be about religion per se. It
can be about anything that you hold deeply important. I've worked at Microsoft here for the past
how many years, and you come in, speaker, and you call us that other organization? Come on.
An assault on the sacred. How do you deal with an assault on the sacred? I thought we might -for sake of time, we'll close with this one, but let me just describe this to you briefly with an
example, and what I ask you to do is listen carefully. So part of the work I do is working with
hostage negotiators, working with crisis negotiators, and I thought we might think through an
example, based upon a real-life situation. Let me preface this by saying I was not there in the
actual situation. I had learned about this situation through a training with the New York Police
Department Hostage Negotiation Team. But the basic situation, how many of you have been to
New York City? Hands raised. That's almost -- if not all of you. How many of you have been
in the subway system in New York City? It's a lot of you. So this situation happened there.
There was a gentleman, clearly suffering from extreme mental illness. Most people who suffer
from mental illness are not violent, according to the research. He was an exception. This
gentleman was wandering around on the subway platform, just wandering around. Now, as he's
wandering around, the spots a woman, a woman about 20 years old, carrying a baby in her arms.
And he sees this woman. He runs up to the woman, he grabs this woman -- sorry, he grabs the
baby out of her arms, he pushes the woman into the train track, runs off into the janitor's closet,
locks the door behind him, and that is when the New York Police Department Hostage
Negotiation Team get there. They get there about five minutes later, and they hear behind this
door, if this child is an angel, if this child's a demon. You know what I have to do. If this child
is an angel, this child's a demon. You know what I have to do. And bang, open up, open up,
open up in there. We're banging on the door, and does our approach work? Yes or no? Does it
work, yes or no?
>>: No.
>> Daniel Shapiro: No, of course not. And we are approaching this situation like it is an
interrogation. Banging on the door, you tell me what I need to know. And does that approach
work well in hostage negotiation or interrogation? No. Does it work well even in a softer
version in an office context? Not typically, and this situation just escalates. If this child is an
angel. This child's a demon, you know what I have to do. If this child is an angel, if this child's
a demon, you know what I have to do. And what are you going to say, now, hostage -- what are
you going to say? If this child is an angel, if this child's a demon, you know what -- I'm getting
tired here, please. Come on. What are you going to say? Somebody, what are you going to say?
Say it again.
>>: Angel.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Say it again? And say it again louder, so everybody can hear.
>>: Angel.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Good. This child is an angel. This child is an angel. And that is precisely
what we said on this other side of the door. The child is an angel. The child is an angel. And
did it work? What do you think? Yes or no, did it work? Yes or no?
>>: Yes.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Of course, of course, of course -- of course not. It did not work, because all
of a sudden, this gentleman on the other side of the door suddenly says, angel, angel, angel.
How do you know? How do you know? How do you know this child is an angel? You said
there were three people on the other side of the door? How many people are really on the other
side of the door? And all of a sudden, we had now made precisely the opposite error that we had
made but three minutes ago in this room, and undoubtedly much longer for those real hostage
negotiators. How do you deal with the sacred? Three minutes ago, we're banging on the door, in
a sense, no listening, no inquiring, no learning, and totally tribes effect. Me versus you, and I'm
going to tell you what you need to do, and yet but three minutes later, we are way on this other
side of appreciating the sacred, in a sense over-appreciating, assuming we know more about what
is going on in the mind of that hostage taker than he knows. And that is a dangerous place to be.
Just to break it down, I come home after a long day of work, it's a Friday afternoon. There my
beautiful wife is, taking care of our three kids all day. She opens up the door, and my wife says
to me, I have had the most frustrating day of my life with your three boys. And supposedly, they
are our boys. Now, if my response to my wife is, honey, I know exactly how frustrated you are,
I'm in trouble. I am over-appreciating. I am assuming I know more about what is going on in
my wife's mind than she knows, and I'm in trouble. And here we were, and it wasn't until we
went back to the very bare-bone basics of effective negotiation in a non-negotiable situation,
listening, asking open-ended questions, two things, the hardest things to do in the world when
you're in that tribes effect. Talk to me. How can I help you? What do you want? And once we
started to ask those questions, we started to learn. We started to learn about this gentleman's
perspective. He was not crazy, from his perspective. He was trying to save the world. Save the
world from the demons, bring in the angels, and once we understood that, it completely changed
our approach to the negotiation, because now we could say, you know what? I hear you saying
you're trying to save the world, and in our own small way here at NYPD, we're trying to save the
world, too, so why don't you open up that door and see if we can try and save this world
together? And literally three minutes later, that little door squeaks open, out walks that
gentleman with baby in arms, but it is a challenge, and it is a true challenge when you are dealing
with the sacred, how do you appreciate what the other side holds as sacred without feeling as
though you're giving in or conceding your own beliefs, your own values? So let me just
summarize where we've come. I'll leave the final of these five lures to either the Q&A, or if you
want to read the book, it's in the book, as well. If you don't want to read the book and you want
to know about this fifth one, identity politics, simply watch our current presidential campaign.
So with that, what are the big points? And by the way, let me just say, these pictures you're
seeing here, these remarkable pictures, we just had an event two days ago in Washington, DC,
where we unveiled the reality of these five pictures by my kindred spirit, a good friend, Romero
Britto, the artist, and he drew a picture to represent each of these five lures. That's what you're
seeing there with each of these. So in any case, what are the big points to take away? One,
break out of that thing called vertigo. Don't let that tornado get you. Two, confront taboos. You
may not talk about them, but at least recognize they are there. Three, know your representation
compulsions, those dysfunctional patterns you get into, and make a decision, do you want to go
there next time with your colleague, with your spouse, or not. Four, appreciate what's sacred.
Appreciate it. Don't depreciate what the other side holds as sacred. Create a positive identity is
the fifth, and I want to make one final point about all of these things, so two final points. One,
the idea is that we often take courses on negotiation and so on, incredibly important, but the
problem is, if we don't deal with this mindset and all that is luring us toward it, no amount of
negotiation skills or tools is going to get us over there to the communal mindset that you want
here at Microsoft, or within the departments at Microsoft. And how do you break out? Well,
you want to try and break out of those five lures. And final point thing -- final point, this is not a
quick fix. Reality is not a quick fix. This takes work. It takes work to try to understand what
are my repetition compulsions? Where is vertigo, and so on? It takes work, but with work, I
promise you, the amount of value you can extract is tremendous. The hidden value of conflict
becomes the hidden power of conflict. So with that, let me say a huge thank you all of you, and I
certainly welcome questions, then, as well. So thank you. Yes.
>>: I assume that different cultures have different taboos.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Yes.
>>: So how do you learn about taboos from other cultures that you're dealing with, that you have
to deal with? Like the ones you put up were all common to us, and we knew not to talk about
them.
>> Daniel Shapiro: No, it's a great question.
>>: They seem to be unwritten, as well.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Taboos are typically unwritten rules. That's absolutely right. No, I
remember I was giving a workshop a number of years back, when I was just starting my work in
negotiation in the Arab Middle East. I knew very little about the cultures there at that point in
time. I was doing a workshop. I describe this in the book, actually, and we were all very
engaged. This was for a diplomatic audience, very engaged in the workshop. We're doing a
role-play in the front of the room, and then all of a sudden, a hush came over the room. And it
was sort of like when I said Goo. That was the hush. And I knew something was wrong. We
take a break soon thereafter, and one gentleman comes up to me, and he says, I just want to let
you know that you were sitting like this at one point in time, and the sole of your shoe was facing
a member of the royal family. And I said, oh. This was a taboo. I had severely broken it, and I
said, oh, what should I do, what should I do? I said I'd like to mention it afterward. He said, no,
no, no, don't worry. Don't worry. We get back into the room, and I do. I start off by giving a
heartfelt apology. I didn't mean to do it. Later that day, as we're closing up the program, at the
end of our time together, that same gentleman who told me about my faux pas, my taboo
breaking, he turned to me and he said, you know, I have to say, you are much too sensitive. But
what I heard him say was thank you. That meant something. So I don't think you can always
learn taboos. I think there are so many cultures. In this room, I'd imagine we have 100 different
kinds of cultures represented or more, and subcultures. You can't learn all. One thing that you
can do, if you're working in a new culture, the way you said it was I thought great. Find a
colleague who is in that culture, and for a half hour over coffee, tell me all the unwritten rules.
Oh, so I'm not supposed to shake hands with certain people until they extend their hand to me, or
you're not supposed to put your foot up. What are the taboos? You can have that conversation.
That's the conversation we had in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At the same time, every one of us in this room, we're going to step on something at some point in
time, so I think it requires an openness, and the communication of genuineness, as well.
Question, yes.
>>: So what if one of the taboos is you're not allowed to talk about conflict? You have to
pretend that everything's okay.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Well, welcome to our world. This is our world right now. Nobody's
allowed to talk about conflict in most contexts. There are some families, some organizations,
where you're only supposed to have conflict, but in most situations, you're not. Again, looking
back to the Israelis and Palestinian situation, it's taboo for either side -- for many on either side to
simply sit down and talk with the other side. You're seen as a traitor to your own tribe, to your
own people. So I think it often requires creating what in the book I call, based upon some other
researchers, a brave space. Some sort of private, informal space where people can talk about
some of those issues without the fear of social punishment. This is where, for example, at
Microsoft or somewhere else, a small group who might feel that their salaries are unfairly lower
than others', they might get together over coffee after work and say, you know what? Let's just
privately talk about this and figure out a plan. So there are ways of dealing with taboos without
striking them at the core and just simply breaking them, and as I call it in the book, just tearing it
down. Yes. But it takes work to try and think about those spaces. How do you create a brave
space? Other questions. Yes, please.
>>: Yes. Does negotiation mean avoiding conflict, like avoiding a fight? Because let's take
anything in our history, like freedom, getting our freedom or getting an independence. It always
involves some kind of a fight.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Yes.
>>: Do you think that your book or whatever we learn from this book, we can negotiate an
independence?
>> Daniel Shapiro: Are you thinking of making yourself independent from Microsoft now?
Why not? No, no, negotiation is not the answer to everything. Let me go to the extreme, first of
all, in the other direction. I'm sensitive to this fact, but let me share it. About a half a year ago, I
was in office hours with my students, and it's about 12:30 in the afternoon. This is a week after
the Paris tragedy had happened, the theater tragedy, and a student comes in, and she says, did
you hear? And I said, did I hear what? And apparently, there was a bomb threat on several
buildings in Harvard Yard, including our building. And the students and I got into a
conversation. What do you do? God forbid, someone walks into a room with a gun there, you
can't negotiate in all situations. At that point in time, the students -- the consensus I got from
them is, look, we should just storm this person. Yes, some of us will die, but some of us will
live. You sometimes can't negotiate with some people. So I think negotiation is not the answer
to everything. At the same time, even when you see the shifting terrain in Northern Ireland or in
South Africa or the United States' relationship with Great Britain, there's absolutely a lot of
negotiation that's happening. In any war, there is negotiation that's happening often in parallel to
the fighting that's happening. So I don't think negotiation is the answer to all of our problems. I
think it's absolutely an underused resource in most conflict situations. Final point, if I had the
preference of killing millions of -- having millions of people killed in Syria or having people be
able to talk it out and work it out at a negotiation table, which would I choose? Which is
plausible, that's a whole other argument people will have to think through, but which would I
choose? Absolutely, it's the talking approach and the listening approach. So yes, other
questions, thoughts, criticisms? Yes?
>>: You were saying that people from different tribes talk to each other, they don't enunciate
their underlying beliefs. So that's part of this problem. I read a couple of years ago in Scientific
American, they had this issue about how diversity is great. All the radicals were saying, when
people talk to the people from other cultures, I'll just try to enunciate more. So I don't know,
maybe the difference is that they're describing when people try to cooperate, and you were just
when they have a conflict.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Sorry, could you say it again? I don't quite understand the question.
>>: Sorry. So my question is, you've been saying that when the people from different cultures
try to negotiate, they often don't I guess negotiate their --
>> Daniel Shapiro: Their taboos.
>>: Their taboos and so on. So the article I read a couple years ago, it's when people from
different cultures work together, they try to be more explicit on what they say, because they think
that otherwise the other people wouldn't understand them.
>> Daniel Shapiro: Yes. Oh, no, I don't disagree with that at all. I was saying that people tend - there are always taboos that I might not know about in another group's culture. At the same
time, when you have two cultures who are negotiating, and imagine what you're saying makes
sense, that I might try to amplify some of my beliefs. You might try to amplify some of your
beliefs, so that they're there on the table in some way. I don't disagree with that at all. Yes.
Time for one more? Can you choose it? I don't want to choose. Now I feel like my favorites.
The color purple. Okay, you're the winner here.
>>: Must be the local university here. But in terms of getting an understanding of where the
conflict is going, the spiral effect, now, what are the patterns or techniques, and do they differ
based on gender or age. Like, I'm dealing with parents, a tough issue with them, versus my
spouse. I didn't really get to where -- okay, what's the patterns? Are there set patterns to deal
with them to get winning situations for both sides? I understood the lures of the tribe effect, but
what's now the solution or the patterns of resolving?
>> Daniel Shapiro: That's great. You're right. I gave you half of the book. I didn't give you the
other half of the book. There's a whole other half of the book on what I call integrative
dynamics. So what we talked about is how do you break out of the negative, that negative cycle?
We did not talk -- exactly your point. We did not talk about how do you move toward the
positive. We touched upon it. And for sake of time, let me give you the simplest and best advice
I know in a way. And how do you move toward the positive? It is to appreciate. As soft as this
might sound to an engineering, research, Microsoft organization, perhaps, this is tough, hard,
powerful, a tough thing to do. When you are in the midst of that conflict with somebody of the
other gender or somebody of a different age or culture, appreciate. And what does that mean? It
means three things -- I want to understand where you are coming from. I want to find the merit,
the value in your perspective, and third, I want to let you know. And I could give you countless
examples where we have applied precisely that little formula, both in international conflicts, as
well as in major, major multi-billion-dollar disputes between companies. And what it took to
actually move things forward, one, they had to recognize, we're in this us/them mentality, we
need to break out. And two, let me try and appreciate your perspective to the extent that you feel
appreciated and heard and understood and valued. That's the moment that people go, oh. Not to
stretch it further, but to me, on an emotional level, what happens to conflict, it becomes an
emotional stalemate. I don't agree with you, you don't agree with me. It's precisely at the
moment that each of us most desperately wants appreciation. Appreciate me. You're thinking,
appreciate me. Each of us wants the appreciation, but there's something so very strange in our
human instinctual psyche that prevents either of us from appreciating the other at precisely that
moment. I'm begging for the appreciation. My wife is begging for it. That colleague is begging
for it. No, I'm not going to appreciate you before you appreciate me. Good luck. But as an
point, then, what that means is you have power. You have a lot of power. Some people say,
yeah, interesting stuff, but what if the other person is irrational. I don't believe most people are
irrational. All it takes is one to try and listen a little bit more to that hostage taker, or to that
difficult colleague here within Microsoft. All it takes is one, and you can move things forward
more productively. So with that, let me say a huge thank you to all of you, and by the way,
you're all going to get an apology note from Dan Shapiro. Bless you all. Thank you, thank you.
Yeah, thank you.