Power of a Positive No

I’ve been reading The Power of a Positive No: Save the Deal Save the Relationship – and Still Say No by William Ury, the author of the earlier bestseller, Getting to Yes. Ury is an experienced mediator, at levels from the corporate to the national, and he is a co-founder of the Harvard Law School Negotiation Program. I found his writing very helpful… just as I do the related Disagreeing Well initiative at University College London, where I was an undergraduate.

Ury’s three-step method for saying a Positive No shows us how to assert and defend our key interests by first, exercising our power; then how to make our No firm and strong; how to resist the other side’s aggression and manipulation; and how to do all this while still getting to Yes and protecting our relationship. The Positive No helps us get to the right Yes, the one that truly serves our interests.

When he asks participants in his executive seminars why they find it challenging to say No, the commonest answers he receives are: “I don’t want to lose the deal”; “I don’t want to spoil the relationship”; I’m afraid of what they might do to me in retaliation”; “I’ll lose my job”; and “I feel guilty – I don’t want to hurt them”.

In reply, Ury gets us to avoid what he calls “the three-A trap”: Accommodation (saying Yes when we want to say No); Attack (saying No poorly); and Avoidance (saying nothing at all), none of which works. Instead, we should “go to the balcony” as he puts it, to adopt a detached state of mind that enables you – as I would put it – to separate how you feel from how you behave.

By sheer coincidence, as I was reading through the book I came across a speech by Obama on my phone that fully reflected Ury’s thinking. Who knows, it may be thanks to Obama’s own Harvard connections. It’s about how the Indian Minister of External Affairs Dr S Jaishankar so offended Trump when he was in his first term by refusing to simply go along with his demands that India should stop buying weapons from Russia, stop doing trade deals with Iran, and generally pick America’s side in every global dispute. India was not into negotiating – they would be making their own decisions. No explanations, no apologies, just making deals with whoever offered the best terms: the Positive No.

Trump took it personally and was furious, and that was the end of the good relationship. What he failed to accept was that America is no longer the super-power that it was, and India is no longer the poor, weak supplicant but a fast-growing world force with a population of 1.4 billion.

It all happened in one conversation, away from the cameras, where Trump was simply told ‘No’. The Indians now expect to be respected, and will no longer simply go along with anything that America demands, explained Obama. But Trump’s entire foreign policy is built on personal relationships. He needs world leaders to like him, to have him feel important, to seek his approval. But Jaishankar treated him as an equal, and just spoke straightforwardly.

“It’s not India that’s the problem,” Trump later said, “It’s one Indian who destroyed our relationship.” The man who dared to say No. It’s about people, about ego. Even allies had choices now, and could say No while also dealing with others. Your power doesn’t come from making others comfortable, Obama explained. You aren’t just grateful for scraps because you need them more than they need you. You know what you value, and without getting angry, you just know what you deserve. Americans now know they must treat India as an equal.

Trump reacted in similar ways to Angela Merkel of Germany, to Emmanuel Macron of France, and to Justin Trudeau of Canada, all of whom had the audacity to treat him as an equal rather than as a superior.

Now Obama told us we can apply these principles in our personal lives. Your boss who demands more work for the same salary, your client who demands the same payment for more product… But do you simply acquiesce? Sometimes relationships aren’t worth keeping, said Obama, like if they require you to accept less than you deserve. Why be silent if there is unfairness? Why compromise your values?

Successful people aren’t the ones who say yes to everything, he concluded. That’s when their character gets tested, as dignity isn’t negotiable.

So there we are, reflections on the power of No from two Harvard fellows.