“Conflict has become a growth industry,” says author and educator William Ury. “The real question now is, how do we deal with it?” It’s a question Ury has been searching for answers to for over 40 years now, beginning with 1981’s groundbreaking “Getting to Yes” (coauthored with Roger Fisher), the perennial bestseller that set the template for modern negotiation technique.

Now, several decades, books and successful corporate and political negotiations later, Ury is back with a fresh perspective on how to manage the conflicts in lives, from thorny work situations to day-to-day disputes with our family members. Describing himself as a “possibilist,” Ury explains in his new book “Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) In an Age of Conflict” why we should lean in to conflict rather than avoid it, and how to achieve more by sometimes saying less.

It’s a refreshingly humane, common sense approach that takes the pressure of "win-lose" out of our most potentially fraught interactions, compelling enough that President Biden was recently spotted conspicuously carrying a copy. Speaking with Salon recently, Ury revealed why we need to go "the balcony" before getting heated, and what's beyond even the "win-win."

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

"Not only is conflict natural, but conflict is surging."

Tell me why we need to rethink our understanding of conflict.

There's a general popular connotation of conflict like a bad thing. The reason why I'm proposing to people that we rethink that is because I think in today's time, not only is conflict natural, but conflict is surging. Conflict has become a growth industry. And we're not going to end it. In fact, it seems like all the trends are for increasing, because the more change in the world, the more conflict. The more disruption in the world, the more conflict. The more social media algorithms promote engagement through conflict, the more conflict we're going to perceive.

To me, the real question now is, how do we deal with it? How do we navigate it? And I want for us to really see our agency, that we have a choice. A lot of people think we don't have a choice, that’s the way things are. In fact, what I've just found in my whole life, is people do have a choice. We can rescue our agency here. We may not be able to end conflict, nor should we. With all the injustice in the world, all the changes that need to be made, we're going to have to engage our differences. It’s going to take creative friction to get to better solutions that will result from people speaking up.

Related

We think of conflict often as very male-centric. I wonder how you see that changing over time in our global and domestic lives as well, because this is a book that is about the world, but also about our families and about our relationships.

Women are natural third siders. They've been playing that role informally for eons. In organizations, there are male egos which get in the way of getting things done. In the world of politics, I deal with what I call "the ME problem," the male ego. I’m not saying women don't have egos, but it's just different. There are anthropological studies about women that show they tend to be more relational. They're less likely to say, “Who's winning this? Am I on top?” Which is, in today's interdependent world, not that effective. Because when you take that kind of win-lose and apply that in your marriage, your marriage is going to be a serious difficulty.

If you bring that mentality to an interdependent world, you're not going to advance........

© Salon