Friend of the library, the Senior Vice President and chief operating officer. And with him, he has been a key supporter of Library Programs like todays leading voices. Pennsylvanias largest electricity and gas utilities responsible for leadership with operations. Safety, service reliability, Customer Satisfaction and financial management, and Philadelphia PoliceAthletic League and youth basketball coach and you volunteer for the state Margaret School level x association. And introduce todays guest speakers. Please join me in welcoming mike thank you. Good morning. You cant see what i can see but i have a great speaker, great audience. Just a phenomenal way to start my morning so thank you. Todays lecture is sponsored by pico sport ideas. If you dont have that please pull out any that are aside. Advancing smart energy to provide safe, Reliable Energy services for our customers. And an awardwinning suite of Energy Efficiency programs as part of this. Customers have saved half 1 billion over the last few years. This is many customers can use to grow their business and invest in the local economy. Leading voices inspire all of us to become leaders in the workplace and better people in our daily lives. Todays guest is no exception. Daniel shapiro is one of the leading experts on conflict resolution and negotiation. He made a career out of helping people navigate these critical conversations. As a founder and director of Harvard InternationalNegotiation Program daniel has launched successful conflict resolution initiatives in the middle east, europe and east asia. He served as chair of the World Economic forums Global Agenda Council on conflict resolution and developed conflict Management Program reaching 1 million young people in 30 countries. Latest gentlemen, please welcome daniel shapiro. [applause] good morning, how are you all doing this morning . First of all a huge thank you to the library of philadelphia, special thank you to pico is very fitting at 8 00 in the morning to have an Energy Producer sponsoring our event today. Tremendous honor to be here today with all of you. A simple question, in the past 6 months, how many of you have experienced an emotionally charged conflict . Fair enough. My sense is almost every person considered a human being has experienced these kinds of conflict and does experience them on a regular basis. Question is how do you deal with them most effectively . This is where my research has taken me over the past 25 years. On a personal level, in the office, with your loved ones at home and in the International Sphere. How do we deal with conflict more effectively . Let me start with a different question. Does anybody in this room know what a poplar tree is . What is a poplar tree . In a sentence or two. Obviously it is a deciduous tree, the leaves shake in the wind. This is beautiful. A deciduous tree and the leaves shake in the wind. What is a poplar tree . There is a single surprise surprise, the situation reaches the highest high in the United States, the white house where president ford faces a difficult decision. In philadelphia and beyond, what would you do. He turns to the concert very, what do you think we should do, advisor says you know what i think we should do . I think we should bomb the north koreans. The president thinks about it and ultimately decides a more appropriate strategy would be to sibley try to cut down this tree. Back to the scene now, 813 four fighters, 5 fighters, 64 man train, 64 man, trained in tae kwon do, b52 bombers overhead with the singlepurpose of what . Trying to chop down this tree. Do they do it . Yes. How long does it take . About one hour. Was there further incident . No. As i was learning about this situation, what struck me most, this was literally almost world war iii. Over what . Over a tree . Obviously it is over much more than a tree but it begs two fundamental questions we will be talking about today, questions that are just as relevant in the International Sphere as in the sphere of our own home lives. Why do we get so stuck in these emotionally charged conflicts and two, how do we get out . Something strange about these emotionally charged conflicts. In the United States and canada, we had a problem with a tree at our border, you and i would sit down for five minutes, we got this thing figured out. In asia it was almost world war iii. What accounts for this . That is what we will talk about today. Where do these ideas come from . One more point giving it more specific purpose, talk about some of the elements of the book you have in your hand, negotiated and nonnegotiable, two big things, the basis of a framework we have been researching for many years now. What is the fundamental mindset we found tens to divide people in conflict situations even when it is self sabotaging, when it does not solve your own better good. We have discovered a set of emotional forces that tend to pull us toward this mindset even if it is self sabotage. Where do these ideas come from . They come from a lot of places. One from Laboratory Research that myself and colleagues around the world have been doing. How do you deal with differences more effectively . Secondly, through practical work. My own work is across the continent working with somebody from Civil Society groups, former yugoslavia during the war, working with ceos, business executives, heads of state, across the board, learning from all those experiences and trying to capture that into the form of something useful for others as well. One thing, i can promise you my greatest learning has come from negotiated with three of the hardest bargainers the world has ever seen and you will have to believe me on this one. These are my children. I dont know how many of you have beautiful things that look anything like this but these are my. Noah, zachary, liam, you have to trust me, they are my greatest learning on how to negotiate the nonnegotiable. I shared this picture with you to simply once again reinforce the point that you are negotiating all the time. You are dealing with conflict in many different contextss at work and at home. With that, lets jump into the big challenge. The big challenge for today, how should you deal with emotionally charged conflicts. And the home context it is obvious why you dont one negatively charged conflict the tears the family apart, it tears the relationship of art. You cant avoid conflict but you can often avoid emotionally charged divisive conflict. In the work context, this stuff is costly, typically on the financial spreadsheets, one line deals with conflict, litigation, yet there are all these hidden costs to conflict as well. You seem like a nice enough gentleman but i need you. What is your name . Lets say we are working together and i despise you, you despise me. We are a project team together. How good do you think our decisionmaking is going to be . Good or bad. How much will this share with me . I imagine not much. It can be a little deceptive and vice versa. How loyal will we be to one another . Probably not that loyal. How loyal to our outcomes . All these hidden implicit costs on the organization. You lose your star player takes two years to find a replacement, the star player says i have had enough with this organization. Cost of conflict so the question is how should you deal with conflict most effectively . The single most dangerous element of conflict, not about the behavior, not what you say, but your mindset. There is a mindset let me go back one moment. This is how people conceive the process of conflict resolution. We have a problem between us, there is a conflict and lets rationally float across the waters, deal sidebyside with our differences, we will get to that nice Little Island where we can celebrate our success. Conflict resolution. What is the problem with this picture. This is not what conflict typically feels like. It typically looks like this, it pulls one direction or another, the undercurrents, you cant even see them, pulling far away from one another, the head wind, the tailwind and all of a sudden you think you are making such progress in your conflict and back you go 50 km, 50 years, this to me is the reality of the question, what holds us in all these Different Directions . It is this. Is what i call the tribes affect, a divisive mindset. We might be best friends but the second we get into an emotionally divisive conflict, the moment i feel my identity is threatened, who i am, what i stand for, this thing tends to trip in, to come in. What are the three basic characteristics, call to mind the conflict from your own life, and emotionally charged conflict and think about these. The conflict starts to feel adversarial. We might be best friends but now the conflict is me versus you, us versus them. Point to, all of a sudden my thinking is im absolutely right and legitimate, you are absolutely wrong and crazy. 3, i will argue my perspective to death defending it and i am going to close my ears to your perspective. These of the three basic characteristics of this divisive mindset. It is powerful. We are not immune to it. Nobody. Let me give you an example in brief, the first chapter of the book you have in your hand offers details. How many of you have been to switzerland . The number of you how many have been to dominos, switzerland . The mountains of switzerland . A number of years back i was invited by the World Economic forum to do a little workshop in those mountains of switzerland in january for the annual summit of the World Economic forum. Each january convene 40 or 50 heads of state, the ceo of the top 500 companies, Civil Society leaders, Amazing Group of people with incredible portfolios of negotiation experience. I left with a group of 48 people, led a small workshop, no windows, which is called the tribes exercise and in this room, 45, 48 leaders, one by one, deputy head of state in the room, ceos from fortune 50 companies, peace and security experts. Very impressive group. As they walk in they sit at six different tables. We have this wonderful opportunity at your tables to create your own tribes, to create your own group you feel some identification with, true identification with. You need to answer, here are the supplies, you want to dressing your tribal garb, i had this picture of the deputy head of state with a balloon on his head, wonderful black male that i will never use. They spent 50 minutes creating their tribes and come back to the middle of the room and feeling energy in the room. And in front of the room in the most boring voice, and debrief these exercise and interesting exercise but what is the point . All of a sudden the lights go completely dark. Into the room burst this intergalactic alien, future head, bulging eyes, 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 tribe of all of you. You cannot change anything about your tribe or yours or yours. If you cannot come to agreement by the round of three rounds of negotiation the world will be destroyed. Out floats this alien. As ridiculous as this exercise sound, these Global Leaders in the room realize we are Global Leaders, we will step up to the task. Round one, six chairs in the middle of the room, a representative of each tribe joins, fastforward, around 2, six chairs in the middle of the room, six representatives, one from each group, no agreement. Round 3 lose the leaders now realize they have one final round to save the world from the aliens, from the explosion. It just so happens as they come back into the room, five men, one woman as representatives of their groups and the moment they are to the center of the room, they start yelling, this woman gets so rightly enraged, she literally stands on her barstool she was sitting on, stand on this thing and yells this is just another example of male competitive behavior. You all come to my tribe. Others refuse and 54321 boom. Our world explodes. I have run this dozens and dozens of times. For leadership across from the middle east, australia, United States, midcareer executives but the most monastic substance, the world explodes again and again. In the course of only 50 minutes, we can allow people to create such an identity they are so attached to that they would rather explode the world than sacrifice that identity. Think of the challenges facing the world today. How do we negotiate climate change, international security, security and stability in the middle east or here in the United States. How do you negotiate with isis for these organizations very identity bound, how do you negotiate with fellow family members when you have fundamental valuebased difference. The opportunity, the real problem with these conflicts is not about skills. The opportunity was with the mindset. How can you transform moving away from the tribes affect to a different mindset. The problem is there are all these forces conspiring against us and in negotiating the nonnegotiable i talk about five of those forces and call these things the 5 lords of the tribal mind five emotional forces that tend to pull us toward the tribes affect, that divisive us versus them thinking, vertigo, taboos, repetition compulsion, assault on the sacred and identity politics. Let me touch on a few of these, you can catch the rest in the booklet lets start with the first, vertigo. Think about the conflict you were thinking about earlier, the difficult conflict between you and somebody else at work, at home. Vertigo is the concept when you are so emotionally consumed in a situation that you can think of nothing else but that conflict, that evil other person who perpetrated that grievance against you. That is vertigo. We all know it. The problem is we get into it without realizing it, then we are stuck in this emotional tornado you and me, both sides, you can see outside those emotional walls and you move towards it. Let me give you an example. A wonderful and eccentric english professor. He was in the mall shopping for a bedspread and he says his wife absolutely thought they needed a 500 bedspread and he said i thought this was the stupidest financial decision we were ever going to make. Of course what happens . They start getting into a conflict in the mall arguing more and more and he said we started screaming at one another and all of a sudden, just a moment, my eyes averted those of my wife. There were onlookers watching us and i had not noticed. He said i looked down at my watch, 20 minutes had passed. I thought it was 5. This is vertigo. It is a warped state of consciousness where time and space dont disappear but they become convoluted, very different and all of a sudden the fact that more years ago on tuesday you forgot to put down the toilet seat. That becomes fodder for the current conversation. Is one of my colleagues calls it there is a time collapse. The evil past becomes present. The feared future becomes the inevitable future. It is at 100 , cannot trust you, this will happen. You see this in broadscale largescale conflicts as well. 50 years ago you did this and it is as though it happened yesterday. We are in this world of vertigo. How do you deal with this, i will deal with most of them, feel for what they are. We are going to do exercise, Early Morning philadelphia. A single person, a soul person, find a partner, someone you do not know, someone sitting next to you. Be near that partner, i promise i will humiliate you. Find a partner. [inaudible conversations] does anybody not have a partner . Does anybody not have a partner . This goes into social hour in philadelphia. Thank you for doing that so quickly. The goal of this exercise is to get to better know the person, might be uncomfortable for some of you. It is part of the learning process. The person you are partnered with. Do not start this exercise, to say go. The things you are sharing, point number one, point number one, what is your salary . Not what tax forms say. With a political campaign, propelling forward, what is your political leaning . Democrat, republican, independence, sick of the whole thing, what is the political leaning . The first two you are sharing. The next two you are taking your best guess what it is like with perception of another person. How attractive do you think your partner is. How attractive do you think they are . So nobody walks away traumatized, a scale from 1 to 10, a one is more, you are okay. Attend is you are the higher philadelphia. That is the deal there. How attractive that is, how old do you think this person is . What do you think this other person at age, the cool thing about this is after the exercise is done you discover if you were right or wrong or what direction . Were you too high or too low . That is the exercise. Any questions about this exercise . Any questions . Are we telling or asking . You are telling for the first two, you are still telling but is your best guess what you believe, how attractive this other person is and what age you think they are . It is all telling but a different form of telling. Question over here . What is number 3 . How attractive do you think the person sitting beside you is . Doing this exercise for a group of very established lawyers, mediators from the new york area. Afterwards i was like were not going to do this. Afterwards, theres this reception. I must just tell you, everybody is doing your little exercise, you know. [laughter] and my sister whos a lawyer as well walked away traumatized. [laughter] why are we doing this exercise . My interest is not in traumatizing any of you. Its because of this taboos. Taboos are social prohibitions. They are, as my motherinlaw likes to put it, the big nonos, the things youre not supposed to say, the things youre not supposed to do, the things youre not supposed to feel in in the family or at the workplace. And the problem with taboos in terms of conflict is that these are often the elements that